March 7: Dickens House, God's Love Number Eighteen, Rita Dove, "Old Folk's Home, Jerusalem," New Cartoon

On the afternoon he received the first postcard, [Rameriz] read it to [his wife, Carmen].  In the first postcard Ives and Annie mentioned that London was a revelation, "nothing like Harlem . . . or Brooklyn."  The black men spoke like English lords and everything was storybook tidy.  And they had gone to the Dickens House museum, 48 Doughty Street, to see where Charles Dickens had once lived and worked, and Carmen, coming around momentarily, said "Ay que nice?"  But then she said, perhaps remembering one of the lectures Annie had taken her to, "Ah, Charles Dickens, el gran escritor."

The reason I chose this passage particular passage from Mr. Ives' Christmas is because it's about Charles Dickens and the Dickens House, a place I have always wanted to visit.  Ives and Annie go there on their trip to the British Isles, Annie because she's always loved Dickens and Ives because he loves Annie.  It's a new beginning for them, a rekindling of their passion for each other.  And it's freakin' Charles Dickens' house, where he wrote A Christmas Carol.

It has been a very busy day.  Cleaning.  Shuttling my daughter back and forth to a party.  Going to church.  Making some phones calls I'd put off for a while.  I'm pretty beat.  After I'm done with this post, I plan on putting on my pajamas and maybe working on a new poem.

Charles Dickens always kept himself busy.  I've read Peter Ackroyd's one-thousand-plus-page biography of Dickens, and the one thing that struck me was how Dickens was in a constant state of movement.  He'd write all morning and afternoon, go out to dinner with friends (or go to the theater), and then sometimes walk all night long (twenty or more miles).  A few people have postulated that Dickens may have had bipolar disorder.  Certainly, I had that impression as I was reading Ackroyd's book.  And Dickens, at times, was a very difficult man to live with.  Quicksilver in temper and disposition.

I am lucky when it comes to my wife's bipolar disorder.  My wife takes her medications, goes to her doctor's appointments, and experiences very little of the normal mental illness roller coaster.  That's God's love number eighteen.  My wife controls her mental illness.  Her mental illness doesn't control her.

I have a final Rita Dove poem tonight.  A poem of love and longing and loss.

Pretty much a standard Saturday night for Saint Marty

Old Folk's Home, Jerusalem

by:  Rita Dove

for Harry Timar

Evening, the bees fled, the honeysuckle

in its golden dotage, all the sickrooms ajar.

Law of the Innocents:  What doesn't end, sloshes over . . .

even here, where destiny girds the cucumber.

So you wrote a few poems.  The horned

thumbnail hooked into an ear doesn't care.

The gray underwear wadded over a belt says So what.

The night air is minimalist,

a needlepoint with raw moon as signature.

In this desert the question's not

Can you see? but How far off?

Valley settlements put on their lights

like armor; there's finch chit and my sandal's

inconsequential crunch.

Everyone waiting here was once in love.

Confessions of Saint Marty

March 8: Apply Myself, Stupid Question, Wailing Wall

A lot of people, especially this one psychoanalyst guy they have here, keeps asking me if I'm going to apply myself when I go back to school next September.  It's such a stupid question, in my opinion.  I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it?  The answer is, you don't.  I think I am, but how do I know?  I swear it's a stupid question.

Say what you want about Holden, but he pretty much tells the truth.  Even when he's lying in the novel, he tells you he's lying.  The doctors want him to apply himself at school, but he can't make that promise.  As he says, "[H]ow do you know what you're going to do till you do it?"


I could tell you that I'm going to a tax appointment today.  I could say that I will clean my house, and, after that, write a new poem and finish reading a book.  I could also say that I will put together a script for an Easter sunrise service.  I plan to do all those things.  Am I going to apply myself to get all those tasks accomplished?  I am.  But, I know that, at the end of the day, some of those things will remain unfinished.  I'm in the same boat as Holden at the moment.

I attended a presentation last night.  Our pastor went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and he gave a talk about his experience.  There were pictures of the Church of the Nativity and the Sea of Galilee and the Grotto of Pan.  The picture that stuck with me the most, however, was a picture of people praying at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.

There was the wall of Solomon's temple, and there were hundreds of people along the wall, cramming their prayer slips into the stone cracks and crevices, giving their worries and cares up to God.  I found the image quite moving.  I wish I could do the same, every day.  If I could write down one concern on a piece of paper (say "My tax appointment this afternoon" or "My daughter's dance tuition") and put it in my own private Wailing Wall, my life would be a lot less stressful.  Of course, that's what prayer is for.  I know that.  However, the physical act of writing down a worry, praying over it, and then letting it go seems very liberating.

Maybe that's what Holden needs.  He needs a Wailing Wall to let go of his cares.  In fact, that's what P.O.E.T.S. day is all about.  Letting go of troubles.  I don't have to be in Jerusalem to find the Wailing Wall.  The Wailing Wall is right in front of me, waiting.

Saint Marty simply needs to find a crevice big enough for all of his worries.

Even Presidents go to the Wailing Wall