February 23: Don't Panic, Greta Garbo, Introverted

Ford introduces Arthur to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy . . .

Ford frowned at the grubby mattresses, unwashed cups and unidentifiable bits of smelly alien underwear that lay around the cramped cabin.

"Well, this is a working ship, you see," said Ford.  "These are the Dentrassis' sleeping quarters."

"I thought you said they were called Vogons or something."

"Yes," said Ford, "the Vogons run the ship, the Dentrassis are the cooks; they let us on board."

"I'm confused."

"Here, have a look at this," said Ford.  He sat down on one of the mattresses and rummaged about in his satchel.  Arthur prodded the mattress nervously and then sat on it himself:  in fact he had very little to be nervous about, because all mattresses grown in the swamps of Sqornshellous Zeta are very thoroughly killed and dried before being put to service.  Very few have ever come to life again.

Ford handed the book to Arthur.

"What is it?" asked Arthur.

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  It's a sort of electronic book.  It tells you everything you need to know about anything.,  That's its job."

Arthur turned it over nervously in his hands.

"I like the cover," he said.  "'Don't Panic.'  It's the first helpful or intelligible thing anybody's said to me all day."

Don't panic.  It's good advice for anyone, no matter what situation you're in.  Panic doesn't help improve any problem.  It simply makes you feel more out-of-control.  Thus, it's a better practice, when in a difficult situation, to take some deep breaths.  I find that withdrawing a little, indulging in a little alone time to gather thoughts and evaluate emotions, helps, as well.

That's what I need to do this weekend.  I was supposed to meet some of my best friends this morning for breakfast.  I love these ladies dearly, but I woke up this morning and found that I didn't have the energy to do peopling today.  I have to play the pipe organ for church this evening, which requires quite a bit of social interaction.  Aside from that, I believe that I will be what my therapist would term "antisocial."  I prefer the term "introverted."

I can go for many weeks without having this introvert time.  My life doesn't allow it very much.  All day, I answer phones, register patients, teach classes.  Social interaction is a necessary part of my life.  After a good span of being social, however, I find that my well runs dry.  I turn into Greta Garbo:  "I want to be alone."

I don't think that I'm unusual in this need.  Being social and outgoing all the time isn't really healthy, I think.  Think of all the celebrities who have self-destructed because of their constant need for attention and interaction, like Andy Warhol or Truman Capote.  (Disclaimer:  I am NOT claiming that I am any where near as talented or gifted as these two artists.  They are simply examples of excess--individuals who were obsessed with being in the limelight.)  Every person needs to be Greta Garbo occasionally.

This Oscar weekend, with another snow-pocalypse in the forecast, it won't be difficult to withdraw from social interaction.  It will be physically impossible to seek out human interaction.  The weather will prevent it.  Apologies to my best friends who wanted to have breakfast with me this morning.  Please understand that I care about you a great deal, but with the upheaval of the approaching work week, I needed to be Garbo (or John Muir or Thoreau--take your pick).

Saint Marty wishes all his disciples time to recharge this weekend.

January 12: Bulkington, Age of Social Media, Chewbacca Mask

I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat aloof, and though he seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates by his own sober face, yet upon the whole he refrained from making as much noise as the rest. This man interested me at once; and since the sea-gods had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate (though but a sleeping partner one, so far as this narrative is concerned), I will here venture upon a little description of him. He stood full six feet in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I have seldom seen such brawn in a man. His face was deeply brown and burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast; while in the deep shadows of his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem to give him much joy. His voice at once announced that he was a Southerner, and from his fine stature, I thought he must be one of those tall mountaineers from the Alleghanian Ridge in Virginia. When the revelry of his companions had mounted to its height, this man slipped away unobserved, and I saw no more of him till he became my comrade on the sea. In a few minutes, however, he was missed by his shipmates, and being, it seems, for some reason a huge favorite with them, they raised a cry of "Bulkington! Bulkington! Where's Bulkington?" and darted out of the house in pursuit of him.

It was now about nine o'clock, and the room seeming almost supernaturally quiet after these orgies, I began to congratulate myself upon a little plan that had occurred to me just previous to the entrance of the seamen.

No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you would a good deal rather not sleep with your own brother. I don't know how it is, but people like to be private when they are sleeping. And when it comes to sleeping with an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town, and that stranger a harpooneer, then your objections indefinitely multiply. Nor was there any earthly reason why I as a sailor should sleep two in a bed, more than anybody else; for sailors no more sleep two in a bed at sea, than bachelor Kings do ashore. To be sure they all sleep together in one apartment, but you have your own hammock, and cover yourself with your own blanket, and sleep in your own skin.
The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I abominated the thought of sleeping with him. It was fair to presume that being a harpooneer, his linen or woolen, as the case might be, would not be of the tidiest, certainly none of the finest. I began to twitch all over. Besides, it was getting late, and my decent harpooneer ought to be home and going bedwards. Suppose now, he should tumble in upon me at midnight- how could I tell from what vile hole he had been coming?

"Landlord! I've changed my mind about that harpooneer.- I shan't sleep with him. I'll try the bench here."

"Just as you please; I'm sorry I cant spare ye a tablecloth for a mattress, and it's a plaguy rough board here"- feeling of the knots and notches. "But wait a bit, Skrimshander; I've got a carpenter's plane there in the bar- wait, I say, and I'll make ye snug enough." So saying he procured the plane; and with his old silk handkerchief first dusting the bench, vigorously set to planing away at my bed, the while grinning like an ape. The shavings flew right and left; till at last the plane-iron came bump against an indestructible knot. The landlord was near spraining his wrist, and I told him for heaven's sake to quit- the bed was soft enough to suit me, and I did not know how all the planing in the world could make eider down of a pine plank. So gathering up the shavings with another grin, and throwing them into the great stove in the middle of the room, he went about his business, and left me in a brown study.

Bulkington will soon become of part of Ishmael's life, in all his height and darkness.  Ishmael is intrigued by him, simply because he is different from the rest of the sailors.  While the other whalers are loud and drunken, Bulkington is quiet and reserved, uninterested in cutting loose, despite just returning from a three-year voyage, if my memory serves.  Instead of being swallowed up by the debauch of his crew mates, Bulkington slips away into the night without a word.

I appreciate solitary people.  They intrigue me.  I think the reason J. D. Salinger remained so famous--aside from being a fantastic writer--is that, after publishing The Catcher in the Rye, he chose to disappear from public scrutiny.  Stayed on his little compound in New Hampshire and sued anybody who tried to photograph or write about him.  That kind of mystery attracts interest.  Think about it.  Who would you rather spend time with--Kim Kardashian or Greta Garbo?  Stephen King or Harper Lee?

In the Age of Social Media, privacy is a difficult thing to come by.  Birthdays and anniversaries and concerts are opportunities for Facebook posts, Snaps, and Tweets.  It's almost a way for anyone to somehow become a celebrity.  You don't need talent.  You just need a YouTube video of yourself wearing a Chewbacca mask and cackling like the Joker.

I am just as guilty as the next person.  I post pictures of myself at football games and band concerts.  I write daily blog posts about my life.  I force my kids to hug each other in front of waterfalls, and then I put that image on some kind of social media platform.  My teenage daughter gets pretty annoyed with me.  When she sees me take out my phone, she immediate pulls her hair in front of her face to avoid being photographed.  She is the Bulkington/J. D. Salinger of our family.

As a writer, I sort of crave an audience for my words.  That's the reason why I've written almost four thousand blog posts.  It's my need to connect with other people through language.  Eventually, J. D. Salinger stopped publishing in 1965, fifty-five years before he died.  I guess he didn't feel the same compulsion to share his work.  However, the rumor persists that there's a vault of unpublished Salinger manuscripts.  That he labored throughout his life on various works.  Salinger has been dead seven years, and a new J. D. Salinger book has yet to appear.

People like Salinger and probably Bulkington care very little about public opinion.  Work for work's sake.  Perhaps they find most human beings silly and of no consequence.  I get that.  I prefer people of substance, as well.  People who care about the things that I care about.  Homelessness.  Racism.  Homophobia.  Universal healthcare.  You know--poets and social activists and saints.

Saint Marty is a solitary man.  Until he drinks a few gin and tonics. 

April 12: Peace, Psalm 35, Greta Garbo

Another psalm down.  I began writing this poem last night, as I was waiting for my daughter to finish up at her ballet class.  It's a time I kind of treasure each week, because I have about 45 minutes completely to myself.  Sometimes I read.  Sometimes I say prayers.  Sometimes I work on poems.  Sometimes I poke around on the Internet.  In short, I do whatever the hell I want.  For 45 minutes.  Heaven.  Yesterday, I started writing this poem.

The last four or five days, I've had a real struggle getting my daily psalm done.  Of course, when a writer starts to struggle, the writer starts to worry about writer's block.  Then the writer starts to focus so much on the struggle, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The writer becomes constipated--no words, no poetry, nothing.  I'm trying to avoid that situation.

I'm typing this post right before I have to go and teach my writing and literature class.  We're into the poetry section of the semester.  My favorite.  I'm showing the students a video of Billy Collins doing a reading.  If Billy Collins can't get someone to like poetry, it's hopeless.  My goal is to change some minds today about what poetry is and can be.

Today's psalm was described by my coworker, Mary, as "peaceful."  I like that.  I rarely write anything to which that adjective can be applied.  I was peaceful when I thought of this poem last night.  I was pretty peaceful, for the most part, during its composition. 

Saint Marty brings you a little peace today...

Psalm 35:  Praise for Waiting

I scribble these lines in my journal

As I wait for my daughter’s ballet

Class to end, her to come out of the studio,

Flushed from grand jeté, allegro, pirouette.

I treasure these moments of waiting

At the end of the day, in my car,

Radio silent, evening creeping into air

Like frost on a kitchen window, delicate

Fingers of cold and dark.  This moment,

Suspended between dinner and sleep,

Seems timeless, the way pictures of Garbo

Seem timeless, black-and-white, eyes

Focused upward, as if some lover

Hovers above her, waiting to press
His lips to hers, taste her meter, rhythm,

Sonnet of skin, snowdrift body.

Words cannot, will not touch these long

Seconds, no verb or adjective coax

Onto page the pure pleasure of possibility,

Reaching out like an unwritten poem.

I close my eyes, understand why Garbo

Disappeared when she did, left the world

Waiting for one last word, one last glimpse.

A snapshot.  My daughter caught mid-leap,

Waiting, always waiting, to descend.

"I vant to be alone."