September 2: "Elk River Falls," Labor Day, Waterfall

I'm assuming a lot of you, my faithful disciples, have visited a waterfall at some point in your lives.  You know the sound of crashing water and the touch of mist on your skin.  I've always found the experience of being near a waterfall frightening and a little mystical.

Billy Collins chases waterfalls . . . 

Elk River Falls

by: Billy Collins

is where the Elk River falls

from a rocky and considerable height,
turning pale with trepidation at the lip
(it seemed from where I stood below)
before it unbuckles from itself
and plummets, shredded, through the air
into the shadows of a frigid pool,
so calm around the edges, a place
for water to recover from the shock
of falling apart and coming back together
before it picks up its song again,
goes sliding around some massive rocks
and past some islands overgrown with weeds
then flattens out, slips around a bend,
and continues on its winding course,
according to this camper’s guide,
then joins the Clearwater at its northern fork
which leads it all to the distant sea
where this and every other stream
mistakes the monster for itself,
sings its name one final time
then feels the sudden sting of salt.

I'm not a person who can explain the sources or rivers or streams or lakes, but I do feel the pull of water.  Being a Yooper, I have Lake Superior in my blood.  Perhaps I'm part waterfall, blood crashing through my body at Niagara speeds.  

It was Labor Day in the United States.  Most people get a three-day weekend, culminating on Monday with celebrations of the working class and labor unions.  There are even parades and community picnics in some places.  

Me?  I grilled hotdogs and bratwursts, boiled corn on the cob, and feasted with my wife and kids.  It's really the last hurrah of summer before the work of autumn really begins.  Tomorrow, my son starts his junior year of high school.  My daughter starts her last year in the Upper Peninsula before she heads downstate for medical school.  And the trees commence their annual marathon of oranges and golds and reds.

In a lot of ways, this time of the year reminds me of a waterfall--everything rushing along toward some distant, wintry ocean.  There's no way to slow things down.  Instead, I just seal myself in a barrel, roll myself into the current, and hope there aren't any rocks at the bottom to tear me apart.  

In case you can't tell, Saint Marty is not a fan of pumpkin spice anything.

September 4: "Picking Blueberries, Austerlitz, New York, 1957," Labor Day, Blueberries

Mary Oliver shares a blueberry memory . . . 

Picking Blueberries,

Austerlitz, New York, 1957

by:  Mary Oliver

Once, in summer,

     in the blueberries,

          I fell asleep, and woke

               when a deer stumbled against me.

I guess

     she was so busy with her own happiness

          she had grown careless

               and was just wandering along

listening

     to the wind as she leaned down

          to lip up the sweetness.

               So, there we were

with nothing between us

     but a few leaves, and the wind's

          glossy voice

               shouting instructions.

The deer

     backed away finally

          and flung up her white tail

               and went floating off toward the trees--

but the moment before she did that

     was so wide and so deep

          it has lasted to this day;

               I have only to think of her--

the flower of her amazement

     and the stalled breath of her curiosity,

          and even the damp touch of her solicitude

               before she took flight--

to be absent again from this world

     and alive, again, in another,

          for thirty years

               sleepy and amazed,

rising out of the rough weeds,

     listening and looking.

          Beautiful girl,

               where are you?

There is so much innocence and beauty in this poem.  Oliver, asleep in a patch of blueberries, and the doe, drunk on sweetness, stumbling into her.  Neither afraid of the other.  Both reveling in this moment of solicitude and connection.  Fellow lovers of the color blue.

It has been another early September scorcher.  Labor Day in the United States.  Ninety-five degrees outside, and the smell of barbecuing hotdogs thick in the air.  These lazy last days of warmth and sun always make me nostalgic for a childhood that I don't really remember.

When I was a baby and toddler, my family used to spend two weeks every summer vacationing in a hunting camp near the shores of Lake Superior in Gay, Michigan.  Off the grid.  No phone.  No electricity.  An outhouse down the path from the camp, just after the sauna.  And the constant saw of cicada, all day, every day.  

I was the youngest of nine kids and was frequently under the charge of older brothers and sisters.  Translation:  I was the pain in the ass little brother.  My mother would kick us out of the cabin early morning, and we would disappear into the woods and beach.  Sometimes, she would send us with buckets.

Those buckets were for us to collect blueberries, which grew in abundance around the camp.  I'm not talking the chemically-fattened blueberries you can pick up at Walmart.  I'm talking blueberries sugared by sun and sand and insect.  Each one, a burst of summer on the tongue.

Again, I have no real memories of these vacations.  I only have stories, told by my parents, repeated by my siblings.  But my sister sent me a picture tonight.  Me, tow-headed, deep in a field of bushes with my other sisters and mother.  We're all looking at the camera, almost in annoyance, as if we don't want to be distracted from the sweet, blue enterprise before us.

At least, I want to believe we're picking blueberries, our mother waiting back at camp for us to return with our harvest.  Maybe to make pancakes or muffins or jam.  

We're all so young.  So alive.  So innocent.  

Saint Marty can almost taste the sand and sun in his mouth.

Sweet children, where are you now?

September 7: Society of Friends, What It's All About, Silence and Emptiness

Lessons in religion from a young and jaded Merton . . .

The train crossed the Tiber. The little pyramid and the cypresses of the English cemetery where Keats was buried disappeared. I remembered some allusion in Plautus to a big hill of rubbish and potsherds that had once stood in this part of the city. Then we came out into the bare plain between Rome and the sea. In this distance were San Paolo, and the low hills that concealed the Trappist monastery of Tre Fontane. “O Rome,” I said in my heart, “will I ever see you again?” 

The first two months after I landed in New York, and went to the house in Douglaston, I continued to read the Bible surreptitiously—I was afraid someone might make fun of me. And since I slept on the sleeping porch, which opened on the upstairs hall through glass doors and which, in any case, I shared with my uncle, I no longer dared to pray on my knees before going to sleep, though I am sure everybody would have been pleased and edified. The real reason for this was that I did not have the humility to care nothing about what people thought or said. I was afraid of their remarks, even kind ones, even approving ones. Indeed, it is a kind of quintessence of pride to hate and fear even the kind and legitimate approval of those who love us! I mean, to resent it as a humiliating patronage. 

There is no point in telling all the details of how this real but temporary religious fervor of mine cooled down and disappeared. At Easter we went to the church where my father had once been organist, Zion Church, with the white spire standing among the locust trees on the hill between us and the station. And there I was very irritated by the services, and my own pride increased the irritation and complicated it. And I used to walk about the house or sit at the dinner table telling everybody what a terrible place Zion Church was, and condemning everything that it stood for. 

One Sunday I went to the Quaker meeting house in Flushing, where Mother had once sat and meditated with the Friends. I sat down there too, in a deep pew in the back, near a window. The place was about half full. The people were mostly middle-aged or old, and there was nothing that distinguished them in any evident way from the congregation in a Methodist or a Baptist or an Episcopalian or any other Protestant church, except that they sat silent, waiting for the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. I liked that. I liked the silence. It was peaceful. In it, my shyness began to die down, and I ceased to look about and criticize the people, and entered, somewhat superficially, into my own soul, and some nebulous good resolutions began to take shape there. 

But it did not get very far, for presently one of the middle-aged ladies thought the Holy Ghost was after her to get up and talk. I secretly suspected that she had come to the meeting all prepared to make a speech anyway, for she reached into her handbag, as she stood up, and cried out in a loud earnest voice: 

“When I was in Switzerland I took this snapshot of the famous Lion of Lucerne....” With that she pulled out a picture. Sure enough, it was the famous Lion of Lucerne. She held it up and tried to show it around to the Friends, at the same time explaining that she thought it was a splendid exemplification of Swiss courage and manliness and patience and all the other virtues of the watchmaking Swiss which she mentioned and which I have now forgotten. 

The Friends accepted it in patience, without enthusiasm or resentment. But I went out of the meeting house saying to myself “They are like all the rest. In other churches it is the minister who hands out the commonplaces, and here it is liable to be just anybody.” 

Still, I think I had enough sense to know that it would be madness to look for a group of people, a society, a religion, a church from which all mediocrity would absolutely be excluded. But when I read the works of William Penn and found them to be about as supernatural as a Montgomery Ward catalogue I lost interest in the Quakers. If I had run across something by Evelyn Underhill it might have been different.

I think that one could find much earnest and pure and humble worship of God and much sincere charity among the Quakers. Indeed, you are bound to find a little of this in every religion. But I have never seen any evidence of its rising above the natural order. They are full of natural virtues and some of them are contemplatives in a natural sense of the word. Nor are they excluded from God’s graces if He wills. For He loves them, and He will not withhold His light from good people anywhere. Yet I cannot see that they will ever be anything more than what they claim to be—a “Society of friends.”

The Trappist monk Merton seems to take over here, casting a pretty jaundiced eye at any Christian denomination other than Catholicism.  This Merton is very different from the later version who vehemently opposed war and nuclear proliferation.  Who turned turned to Eastern mysticism as a way to deepen his own spiritual life.  At the end of his life, he was attending an international conference on monasticism in Bangkok, Thailand, when he suffered an accidental death by electrocution.  (Some conspiracy theorists say his death wasn't so "accidental," due to his outspoken beliefs regarding world peace and the Cold War.)

Thomas Merton will probably never be canonized because of these controversial aspects of his life.  (The fact that opposition to war and an interest in Eastern contemplative practices are "controversial" says more about the skewed politics of the Church than Merton's own merits as a Catholic thinker/prospective saint.  These days, that line of thinking will probably deny the canonization of Dorothy Day for her "socialist" leanings on behalf of workers and the poor.)  But I'm not here tonight to argue the merits of Merton's cause for sainthood.  Merton was very human.  He enjoyed the spotlight that his writings brought him.  Yet, he tried to use that spotlight to make the world a better place.  Isn't that the definition of true goodness?

In everything that I do--whether it's leading a poetry workshop, teaching a film class, or registering patients for medical appointments--I try to somehow make a difference in people's lives.  I think that's why we're put on this planet.  To lift up, make better, spread joy and peace.  As a Christian, I know one of my jobs is to teach people about Jesus.  Reading the Gospels aloud to strangers won't accomplish this.  The best way I know how to teach people about my faith is through acts of kindness and understanding.  Helping out.  Acceptance.  That's what it's all about.

Every morning, driving to work, I say a little prayer.  It goes something like this:  "Hey, God.  It's me again.  Sorry for messing up yesterday.  Help me to be a good person today.  Grant me wisdom to say and do the right things.  Let me make somebody's life better."  I figure if I can do that by bedtime, I've earned a good night's sleep.

That doesn't mean that my life is without hardships.  If you read any saint's life story, you know that being a saint is a prescription for difficulty--ridicule, persecution, sometimes torture and death.  Just because I'm a Christian doesn't mean I'm automatically exempt from any of these things.  But it does mean that I have, as the Gershwin song goes, someone to watch over me.  That's the difference.  I'm not alone.  Ever.

Of course, some saints have experienced long periods where it felt like God stepped away from them.  Mother Teresa once wrote to a friend and confessor, "[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see,--Listen and do not hear--the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak . . ." Her silence and emptiness lasted 40 years. Yet, she never stopped trusting in God's love. That's the difference between a normal person and a saint, I guess. Ever present trust.

I have been experiencing God's silence myself recently. I'm not Mother Teresa. Trust doesn't come as easily for me. Yet, tonight, I was reminded of God's love. I went to my parents' house for a Labor Day barbecue. We had grilled cheeseburgers and watermelon. It was a low-key dinner. No place settings. We just grabbed plates and food. Rose, my sister who has Down syndrome, was there. She's really confused these days. Dementia has taken away a lot of her memory. She frequently called me by my brother's name. She called my wife by my daughter's name.

Yet, she was legitimately happy to see my family, although our puppy got on her nerves a little. At one point she turned to me and said, "Martin, I'm glad you're here." (It was the only time during the evening that she used my name.) That was my sister talking to me. I think it was also God talking to me. Reminding me that I'm here for a reason. And that He's glad I'm here.

I'm no saint, that's for sure. But God spoke to me tonight.

And for that miracle, Saint Marty gives thanks.

September 2: Earsplitting Din, Labor Day, Surrender

Arthur is about to be de-brained . . .

"Yes, an electronic brain," said Frankie, "a simple one would suffice."

"A simple one!" wailed Arthur.

"Yeah," said Zaphod with a sudden evil grin, "you'd just have to program it to say What? and I don't understand and Where's the tea?  Who'd know the difference?"

"What?" cried Arthur, backing away still farther.

"See what I mean?" said Zaphod, and howled with pain because of something that Trillian did at that moment.

"I'd notice the difference," said Arthur.

"No, you wouldn't," said Frankie mouse, "you'd be programmed not to."

Ford made for the door.

"Look, I'm sorry, mice, old lads," he said.  "I don't think we've got a deal."

"I rather think we have to have a deal," said the mice in chorus, all the charm vanishing from their piping little voices in an instant.  With a tiny whining shriek their two glass transports lifted themselves off the table, and swung through the air toward Arthur, who stumbled farther backward into a blind corner, utterly unable to cope or think of anything.

Trillian grabbed him desperately by the arm and tried to drag him toward the door, which Ford and Zaphod were struggling to open, but Arthur was deadweight--he seemed hypnotized by the airborne rodents swooping toward him.

She screamed at him, but he just gaped.

With one more yank, Ford and Zaphod got the door open.  On the other side of it was a small pack of rather ugly men who they could only assume were the heavy mob of Magrathea.  Not only were they ugly themselves, but the medical equipment they carried with them was also far from pretty.  They charged.

So--Arthur was about to have his head cut open, Trillian was unable to help him and Ford and Zaphod were about to be set upon by several thugs a great deal heavier and more sharply armed than they were.

All in all it was extremely fortunate that at that moment every alarm on the planet burst into an earsplitting din.

Arthur is still, understandably, in a state of complete panic.  Benjy and Frankie want to remove and dice his brain.  Zaphod seems all for the idea, but Zaphod also performed surgery on his own brain some time in the past.  Things seem to be reaching a crisis point in the book.  What will our heroes do?  Will they escape the bloodthirsty white mice?  Will Arthur be able to save his brain?  Or get his tea?  Stay tuned.

It is Labor Day in the United States, a Monday set aside to celebrate the contributions of the labor movement and unions in the United States.  Of course, few people actually even think about organized labor history on this day.  Mostly, it's about having a three-day weekend and barbecuing one last time before we admit that autumn has arrived.

There usually isn't a whole lot of panic on Labor Day (certainly not on the scale of battling brain-hungry mice).  It's a lazy time.  Unless you're like me.  I just spent several hours preparing for teaching this week.  Lesson planning.  E-mailing.  Tidying up my online course materials.  Labor Day has been about actual labor for me.

Now, however, I feel very prepared for the coming work days.  I don't have to spend hours this evening getting my shit together, which is normally my style.  I tend to procrastinate.  A lot.  This character flaw usually gets me in a lot of trouble during the academic year.  I am determined not to let that happen this semester.  We will see if I'm able to stick to it.

Writing my post last night (actually, early this morning), I said that I felt a real sense of peace in my heart, something that I haven't experienced in a while.  Of course, as I said last night, that kind of peace only comes when you've really reached the end of your rope.  You've exhausted all of your energies to try to change things.  That's when you throw up your arms and surrender.

And that's where I was last night.  Waving the white flag at God and submitting to His will.  God always wins this battle.  Yet, it's a very human thing, trying to take control and run the show.  We all like to believe that we're in charge of our own lives.  In a way, we are.  We make choices which determine the courses of our lives.  Some of those choices are good.  Some of those choices are bad.

God doesn't interfere with freewill.  He just takes the mess that we make of things and transforms it into something beautiful, if we let Him.  Of course, if we continue to make bad choices, God's work is a lot harder.  Some people are more stubborn than others.  They hold onto their "power," refusing to admit their mistakes.  In a situation like that, God doesn't have much to work with.  He has to sit back, watch everything fall apart, and then start putting the pieces back together again.

God doesn't give up on anyone, though.  He may stand back and shake His head when you sneak out at night like a teenager to get drunk or meet up with a girlfriend/boyfriend.  Yet, He will always welcome you home, when you make the choice to return.  Ask the prodigal son.  God's love and forgiveness are infinite.

People make mistakes.  Lots of them.  Including me, believe it or not.  Early this morning, as I was sitting at my laptop, typing a blog post about loneliness, I felt overwhelmingly comforted.  As if God was sitting in the chair beside me, nodding His head, putting His arm around my shoulders.  Before that moment, I had been tired, a little beaten down, and I said aloud, "I give up.  I can't do this anymore.  It's in Your hands, God."  Everyone else was in bed, asleep, and I was sitting at the kitchen table at one in the morning.  Yet, I didn't feel alone anymore. 

I'm sure that I'm not done with despair, or despair's not done with me.  Tonight, though, I hold on to that peace of complete surrender.  I'm going to read a good book this evening.  Maybe play a game with my son before he goes to bed.  Then, when the house is asleep, I will say a prayer of surrender for everyone I love.  I will give them over to God.  My son for his first day of school tomorrow.  My daughter for her second week of college.  My wife for her struggles with mental illness and addiction.  And myself.

As Psalm 55 instructs, Saint Marty is casting all his burdens on the Lord, and the Lord will sustain Saint Marty and everyone he loves.

September 3: Queequeg in His Coffin, Labor Day, School and Schedules

Upon searching, it was found that the casks last struck into the hold were perfectly sound, and that the leak must be further off. So, it being calm weather, they broke out deeper and deeper, disturbing the slumbers of the huge ground-tier butts; and from that black midnight sending those gigantic moles into the daylight above. So deep did they go; and so ancient, and corroded, and weedy the aspect of the lowermost puncheons, that you almost looked next for some mouldy corner-stone cask containing coins of Captain Noah, with copies of the posted placards, vainly warning the infatuated old world from the flood. Tierce after tierce, too, of water, and bread, and beef, and shooks of staves, and iron bundles of hoop, were hoisted out, till at last the piled decks were hard to get about; and the hollow hull echoed under foot, as if you were treading over empty catacombs, and reeled and rolled in the sea like an air-freighted demijohn. Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head. Well was it that the Typhoons did not visit them then.

Now, at this time it was that my poor pagan companion, and fast bosom-friend, Queequeg, was seized with a fever, which brought him nigh to his endless end.

Be it said, that in this vocation of whaling, sinecures are unknown; dignity and danger go hand in hand; till you get to be Captain, the higher you rise the harder you toil. So with poor Queequeg, who, as harpooneer, must not only face all the rage of the living whale, but- as we have elsewhere seen- mount his dead back in a rolling sea; and finally descend into the gloom of the hold, and bitterly sweating all day in that subterraneous confinement, resolutely manhandle the clumsiest casks and see to their stowage. To be short, among whalemen, the harpooneers are the holders, so called.

Poor Queequeg! when the ship was about half disembowelled, you should have stooped over the hatchway, and peered down upon him there; where, stripped to his woollen drawers, the tattooed savage was crawling about amid that dampness and slime, like a green spotted lizard at the bottom of a well. And a well, or an ice-house, it somehow proved to him, poor pagan; where, strange to say, for all the heat of his sweatings, he caught a terrible chill which lapsed into a fever; and at last, after some days' suffering, laid him in his hammock, close to the very sill of the door of death. How he wasted and wasted away in those few long-lingering days, till there seemed but little left of him but his frame and tattooing. But as all else in him thinned, and his cheek-bones grew sharper, his eyes, nevertheless, seemed growing fuller and fuller; they became of a strange softness of lustre; and mildly but deeply looked out at you there from his sickness, a wondrous testimony to that immortal health in him which could not die, or be weakened. And like circles on the water, which, as they grow fainter, expand; so his eyes seemed rounding and rounding, like the rings of Eternity. An awe that cannot be named would steal over you as you sat by the side of this waning savage, and saw as strange things in his face, as any beheld who were bystanders when Zoroaster died. For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books. And the drawing near of Death, which alike levels all, alike impresses all with a last revelation, which only an author from the dead could adequately tell. So that- let us say it again- no dying Chaldee or Greek had higher and holier thoughts than those, whose mysterious shades you saw creeping over the face of poor Queequeg, as he quietly lay in his swaying hammock, and the rolling sea seemed gently rocking him to his final rest, and the ocean's invisible flood-tide lifted him higher and higher towards his destined heaven.

Not a man of the crew but gave him up; and, as for Queequeg himself, what he thought of his case was forcibly shown by a curious favor he asked. He called one to him in the grey morning watch, when the day was just breaking, and taking his hand, said that while in Nantucket he had chanced to see certain little canoes of dark wood, like the rich war-wood of his native isle; and upon inquiry, he had learned that all whalemen who died in Nantucket, were laid in those dark canoes, and that the fancy of being so laid had much pleased him; for it was not unlike the custom of his own race, who, after embalming a dead warrior, stretched him out in his canoe, and so left him to be floated away to the starry archipelagoes; for not only do they believe that the stars are isles, but that far beyond all visible horizons, their own mild, uncontinented seas, interflow with the blue heavens; and so form the white breakers of the milky way. He added, that he shuddered at the thought of being buried in his hammock, according to the usual sea-custom, tossed like something vile to the death-devouring sharks. No: he desired a canoe like those of Nantucket, all the more congenial to him, being a whaleman, that like a whale-boat these coffin-canoes were without a keel; though that involved but uncertain steering, and much lee-way adown the dim ages.

Now, when this strange circumstance was made known aft, the carpenter was at once commanded to do Queequeg's bidding, whatever it might include. There was some heathenish, coffin-colored old lumber aboard, which, upon a long previous voyage, had been cut from the aboriginal groves of the Lackaday islands, and from these dark planks the coffin was recommended to be made. No sooner was the carpenter apprised of the order, than taking his rule, he forthwith with all the indifferent promptitude of his character, proceeded into the forecastle and took Queequeg's measure with great accuracy, regularly chalking Queequeg's person as he shifted the rule.

"Ah! poor fellow! he'll have to die now," ejaculated the Long Island sailor.

Going to his vice-bench, the carpenter for convenience sake and general reference, now transferringly measured on it the exact length the coffin was to be, and then made the transfer permanent by cutting two notches at its extremities. This done, he marshalled the planks and his tools, and to work.

When the last nail was driven, and the lid duly planed and fitted, he lightly shouldered the coffin and went forward with it, inquiring whether they were ready for it yet in that direction.

Overhearing the indignant but half-humorous cries with which the people on deck began to drive the coffin away, Queequeg, to every one's consternation, commanded that the thing should be instantly brought to him, nor was there any denying him; seeing that, of all mortals, some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor
fellows ought to be indulged.

Leaning over in his hammock, Queequeg long regarded the coffin with an attentive eye. He then called for his harpoon, had the wooden stock drawn from it, and then had the iron part placed in the coffin along with one of the paddles of his boat. All by his own request, also, biscuits were then ranged round the sides within; a flask of fresh water was placed at the head, and a small bag of woody earth scraped up in the hold at the foot; and a piece of sail-cloth being rolled up for a pillow, Queequeg now entreated to be lifted into his final bed, that he might make trial of its comforts, if any it had. He lay without moving a few minutes, then told one to go to his bed and bring out his little god, Yojo. Then crossing his arms on his breast with Yojo between, he called for the coffin lid (hatch he called it) to be placed over him. The head part turned over with a leather hinge, and there lay Queequeg in his coffin with little but his composed countenance in view. "Rarmai" (it will do; it is easy) he murmured at last, and signed to be replaced in his hammock.

But ere this was done, Pip, who had been slily hovering near by all the while, drew nigh to him where he lay, and with soft sobbings, took him by the hand; in the other, holding his tambourine.

"Poor rover! will ye never have done with all this weary roving? where go ye now? But if the current carry ye to those sweet Antilles where the beaches are only beat with water-lilies, will ye do one little errand for me? Seek out one Pip, who's now been missing long: I think he's in those far Antilles. If ye find him, then comfort him; for he must be very sad; for look! he's left his tambourine behind;- I found it. Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! Now, Queequeg, die; and I'll beat ye your dying march."

"I have heard," murmured Starbuck, gazing down the scuttle, "that in violent fevers, men, all ignorance, have talked in ancient tongues; and that when the mystery is probed, it turns out always that in their wholly forgotten childhood those ancient tongues had been really spoken in their hearing by some lofty scholars. So, to my fond faith, poor Pip, in this strange sweetness of his lunacy, brings heavenly vouchers of all our heavenly homes. Where learned he that, but there?- Hark! he speaks again; but more wildly now."

"Form two and two! Let's make a General of him! Ho, where's his harpoon? Lay it across here.- Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! huzza! Oh for a game cock now to sit upon his head and crow! Queequeg dies game!- mind ye that; Queequeg dies game!- take ye good heed of that; Queequeg dies game! I say; game, game, game! but base little Pip, he died a coward; died all a'shiver;- out upon Pip! Hark ye; if ye find Pip, tell all the Antilles he's a runaway; a coward, a coward, a coward! Tell them he jumped from a whale-boat! I'd never beat my tambourine over base Pip, and hail him General, if he were once more dying here. No, no! shame upon all cowards- shame upon them! Let'em go drown like Pip, that jumped from a whale-boat. Shame! shame!"

During all this, Queequeg lay with closed eyes, as if in a dream. Pip was led away, and the sick man was replaced in his hammock.

But now that he had apparently made every preparation for death; now that his coffin was proved a good fit, Queequeg suddenly rallied; soon there seemed no need of the carpenter's box; and thereupon, when some expressed their delighted surprise, he, in substance, said, that the cause of his sudden convalescence was this;- at a critical moment, he had just recalled a little duty ashore, which he was leaving undone; and therefore had changed his mind about dying: he could not die yet, he averred. They asked him, then, whether to live or die was a matter of his own sovereign will and pleasure. He answered, certainly. In a word, it was Queequeg's conceit, that if a man made up his mind to live, mere sickness could not kill him: nothing but a whale, or a gale, or some violent, ungovernable, unintelligent destroyer of that sort.

Now, there is this noteworthy difference between savage and civilized; that while a sick, civilized man may be six months convalescing, generally speaking, a sick savage is almost half-well again in a day. So, in good time my Queequeg gained strength; and at length after sitting on the windlass for a few indolent days (but eating with a vigorous appetite) he suddenly leaped to his feet, threw out his arms and legs, gave himself a good stretching, yawned a little bit, and then springing into the head of his hoisted boat, and poising a harpoon, pronounced himself fit for a fight.

With a wild whimsiness, he now used his coffin for a sea-chest; and emptying into it his canvas bag of clothes, set them in order there. Many spare hours he spent, in carving the lid with all manner of grotesque figures and drawings; and it seemed that hereby he was striving, in his rude way, to copy parts of the twisted tattooing on his body. And this tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last. And this thought it must have been which suggested to Ahab that wild exclamation of his, when one morning turning away from surveying poor Queequeg- "Oh, devilish tantalization of the gods!"

Queequeg gets sick, almost dies, has the ship's carpenter make his coffin, and then gets better.  That's the synopsis of this little chapter.  Of course, since this all happens in a novel, the fact that Queequeg is traveling with all of his belongings stowed in a coffin does not bode well.  Generally, to paraphrase the writer Anton Chekhov, if a gun is introduced into a story, by the end of that story, that gun must be fired.  Queequeg now has a coffin.  By the end of this whale tale, that coffin should be used.

It is Labor Day, and I have been busy all day.  Reading myths and grading quizzes and reviewing diagnostic essays.  Now, I'm writing a blog post.  Pretty soon, I'll be barbecuing hot dogs and brats and Italian sausage.  Then, dinner time.  The plan is to see a movie tonight--the sequel to Mamma Mia.  My daughter wants to see it, as do other members of my family.

Today is the last hurrah of summer.  Last time to not worry about school and schedules and homework.  Nothing I have done today has been particularly stressful.  Just time-consuming.  Earlier today, I had a raging headache.  Four Ibuprofen later, I was feeling human again.

Summer is not going out with a bang today.  It isn't going out with a whimper, either.  It's going out with grilled meat and watermelon.  I'm sort of feeling like Queequeg right now, rising from a long season of fallow.  My mind is still clouded.  My mood, dusky.  I've written a lot this summer.  Given a lot of poetry readings.  Traveled some.  Now, there are whales I have to chase and kill.  Harpoon in hand, I am prepared for the long slog to Thanksgiving break.

Saint Marty is thankful this evening for the calm before the storm.

September 4: Loaves of Black Bread, Labor Day, Coming to a Close

When the three fools found the communal kitchen, whose main job was to make lunch for workers in the slaughterhouse, everybody had gone home but one woman who had been waiting for them impatiently.  She was a war widow.  So it goes.  She had her hat and coat on.  She wanted to go home, too, even though there wasn't anybody there.  Her white gloves were laid out side by side on the zinc counter top.

She had two big cans of soup for the Americans.  It was simmering over low fires on the gas range.  She had stacks of loaves of black bread, too.

She asked Gluck if he wasn't awfully young to be in the army.  He said he was.

She asked Billy Pilgrim what he was supposed to be.  Billy said he didn't know.  he was just trying to keep warm.  

"All the real soldiers are dead," she said.  It was true.  So it goes.

There's something ominous about this passage.  Billy and Edgar and Gluck are the last to show up for dinner.  The communal kitchen is deserted.  All that's left is a war widow, some soup, and loaves of black bread.  Soon, Edgar will be dead.  The bombs will start falling in a matter of days.  Things are drawing to a close on the German front.

I have the same feeling this Labor Day Monday.  It has been slow and quiet.  I got up around 8:30 this morning, and I've been working ever since.  Lesson planning.  Grading. E-mailing.  Now, blogging.  I will be having one final summer dinner with my family this evening.  Then, early bedtimes for my kids.  School for them tomorrow.

I always feel this kind of pall on Labor Day.  Much is coming to a close.  Summer and all its attendant freedoms will be memories by tomorrow night.  For myself, this week is going to be incredibly busy. Aside from work work and school work and teaching work, I've got a couple poetry workshops (tomorrow afternoon and Thursday evening) and a poetry open mic (tomorrow night).  That's why I've been so busy today.  Trying to get my shit together for the entire week to preserve what little sanity I still possess.

Welcome to autumn.

Saint Marty is thankful this evening for all the check marks on his to-do list.

September 1: Nighttime Winkings, Teaching and Working, a Little Beauty

One of the true things was his first evening in the slaughterhouse.  He and poor old Edgar Derby were pushing an empty two-wheeled cart down a dirt lane between empty pens for animals.  They were going to a communal kitchen for supper for all.  They were guarded by a sixteen-year-old German named Werner Gluck.  The axles of the cart were greased with the fat of dead animals.  So it goes.

The sun had just gone down, and its afterglow was backlighting the city, which formed low cliffs around the bucolic void to the idle stockyards.  The city was blacked out because bombers might come, so Billy didn't get to see Dresden do one of the most cheerful things a city is capable of doing when the sun goes down, which is to wink its lights on one by one.

There was a broad river to reflect those lights, which would have made their nighttime winkings very pretty indeed.  It was the Elbe.

Billy is in the hospital, recovering from brain surgery after his airplane crashed into the side of a mountain.  He's drifting in-and-out of dreams and reality, jumping back and forth in time.  He can't really tell which is which.

I don't have a whole lot of energy this evening.  It has been a long week of teaching and working.  I'm pretty beat.  I'm sure that I'll be crashing tonight, sitting on the couch, drifting in and out of sleep, like Billy.

This is the last real weekend of the summer.  Labor Day in the United States.  Don't have to go back to work until next Tuesday.  Don't teach until next Wednesday.  Of course, I have a lot of lesson planning and grading to do over the next few days.  I'm going to try to relax a little bit, too.

Tonight, however, I'm going to work on a new poem.  A poem for a wedding that I'm going to on Sunday.  I've been working on the poem for a couple of weeks now.  As usual, it feels as if I'm never going to get it done on time.  But I will.

Saint Marty is ready to find a little beauty tonight.

September 5: Beetle Grubs, Labor Day, Sleeping In

Now also in the valley night a skunk emerged from his underground burrow to hunt pale beetle grubs in the dark.  A great horned owl folded his wings and dropped from the sky, and the two met on the bloodied surface of earth.  Spreading over a distance, the air from that spot thinned frail sweetness, a tinctured wind that bespoke real creatures and real encounters at the edge . . . events, events.  Over my head black hunting beetles crawled up into the high limbs of trees, killing more caterpillars and pupae than they would eat.

It's a good, coming-of-autumn passage.  As I read it, I can almost smell the leaves mulching on the ground.  There's a skunk, an owl, beetles and blood.  Add a girl with a camera running around in a panic, and it could be a scene from The Blair Witch Project.  Dillard is always aware of the changes wrought by the seasons.

It is Labor Day in the United States.  The unofficial end of summer fun and return to the schedules that rule most of our lives:  algebra and band practice and Sunday school and grading and dance lessons.  Throw in some snow storms and arctic blasts, and that's life in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for the next nine months.

I slept in this morning until well past ten o'clock.  I haven't done that in . . . Actually, I can't remember the last time I did that.  When I go to bed at night, I always set an alarm.  Not last night.  It was strange to wake up to sunlight filtering through my bedroom curtains. 

And I didn't even jump out of bed to confront the day.  I climbed out from under the covers, had a bowl of cereal, and watched the movie Little Miss Sunshine with my daughter.  She'd never seen it before.  I didn't get dressed until after noon.  I felt lazy.  I haven't felt lazy in a long time, either.

This weekend, as a matter of fact the whole summer, seems to have flown by.  I'm not sad about that.  My favorite season of the year is autumn.  I love the colors, the holidays.  Halloween and Thanksgiving.  My kids are obviously not excited to return to the school bus tomorrow morning, but they're ready for a change, also, I think. 

Tonight, I will help my wife get my son to bed earlier than he's been to bed in three months.  Tomorrow, after my kids are safely on their way to school, I will help my wife make some chocolate chip cookies for my son and oatmeal butterscotch cookies for my daughter.  That's our first-day-of-school ritual.

Time is flying for Saint Marty.  Pretty soon, he'll be playing Christmas songs in his car.  Actually, he's been doing that since March.

September 7: Last Night, Judith Minty, "The End of Summer," "Ives" Dip, Adventures of Stickman

Last night, I went to visit a poet friend.  She owns a large Victorian-style house with a large, curving front porch.  It was dusk, and a thunderstorm had just passed over.  Lightning still flashed occasionally, and a strong breeze was blowing, scattering the heat and humidity of the day.

We sat on the front porch and talked.  It was an end-of-summer moment.  My friend has just published a new collection of poems, and she's about to set off on a month-long book tour.  We talked about my sister, of whom my poet friend was very fond.  As darkness took hold, I couldn't even see her face clearly.  I could just hear her voice, the slight Southern lilt of her words.

It is the end of summer.  After today, autumn starts in earnest.  Already the maple leaves are turning orange and yellow on my street.  As I left my friend's house last night, she said, "Who knows?  By the time I get back in October, there may be snow on the ground."

I have a coming-of-autumn poem for you from Judith Minty, the Poet of the Week.  Yes, Judith has been a Poet of the Week before, but I find her work incredibly comforting.  She has a clear and beautiful eye for imagery and metaphor.  Her Yellow Dog Journal is one of my absolute favorite poetry collections.  Today's poem is from Walking the Bear:

The End of Summer

by:  Judith Minty

1.
The old bitch labrador swims
in heavy circles.  Under water
her legs run free without their limp.
She stretches brown eyes toward me,
snorting, and the stick I throw
stirs gray memories of ten Octobers,
ducks that fly at the sun and fall.

2.
On the Pere Marquette River, salmon
quiver upstream from the lake, return
to alpha.  At the dam
they leap and throw themselves
through currents, stretch
and spend themselves
against the torrent from the falls.

3.
All week the sky has filled
with orange petals.  Butterflies
floating in cycles toward milkweed,
monarchs freed from the chrysalis,
waiting for the wind's current
to die.  The beach
is covered with torn wings.

4.
Fire, off the merganser's hood.
This summer he nested
in our channel, drifted
with the half-time mallards.  His sharp bill
stabs water to catch bread I throw.
But he belongs by the sea.  I want him
to fly now, before October and guns.

It's a perfect Labor Day poem.  For my international readers, in North America, the first Monday in September is designated as a national holiday, in honor of the workers and laborers.  It has a rather bloody history, connected to the 1886 Haymarket massacre in which several police officers and civilians were killed at a labor rally in Chicago.  These days, Labor Day is about parades and picnics and barbecues and bounce houses in the United States.  And it really marks the end of the summer season.

Tomorrow, the kids return to school and the Halloween and Christmas decorations start appearing in Walmart.  I must say that I haven't enjoyed the year 2015 very much.  I remember my thoughts on the first day of this year.  I sat at home, in my dark living room, looking at my Christmas tree glowing in the corner.  I looked at my wife and said, "This year has GOT to be better than last year."

I never make statements like that any more.  It's like saying, "Well, things couldn't get any worse."  Things can always get worse, and they did in 2015.  I simply want to coast toward December 31 with little fanfare or upset.  That is my goal.  Easy, quiet fall.  Warm, snowless winter.  Then New Year's Eve.

So, this Ives dip Monday, my question is this:

Will the rest of 2015 be quiet and uneventful for me?

And the answer:

These were his happiest years, Ives would think, when the kids were small.  He'd walk down Claremont with his hand on his son's shoulder, his other hand gently guiding his daughter along.  He would stop on nearly every corner and make sure that the light was green and cross himself quickly as they passed every church, trying to teach the children to do the same . . .

Well, that's a pretty happy response.  Ives' happiest years.  I could do with a few happy months.  No more death.  No more ceilings collapsing.  No more leaking roofs or exorbitant car repairs.  Happiness.  Peace.

Saint Marty hopes he can cash that check.

Adventures of STICKMAN

July 26: Life in Turmoil, Control Issues, Classic Saint Marty, New Cartoon

Very warm day.  Close to 90 degrees.  The kind of day that should come with heat warnings for small children, pets, and old people.  Of course, faced with these temperatures, I decided to go for a run around noon.  Two miles.  I didn't run the whole way.  In fact, I walked a lot.  By the time I got home, it looked as though I'd gotten caught in a rainstorm.

It's that time of year, after July 4 and before Labor Day, when the summer already seems over, even though there's still a whole month left.  I have to start thinking about teaching in the fall.  Order my books.  Put together my syllabi.  The fact that so much seems up in the air right now isn't helping.  My sister at the University of Michigan hospital will be undergoing treatments down there for the next six months.  My sister from Washington has extended her stay in the Upper Peninsula to "help out."  She and her kids are now staying until the beginning of January.  My daughter is starting high school, and I'm going to apply for promotion at the college when the semester starts.

If you are a new reader to this blog, I need to explain something:  I don't do well with life in turmoil.  I prefer my days to be predictable:  same meal times, same work hours, same teaching hours, same bedtime.  My life is not going to be like that, at least until January 2.  If you're thinking I have control issues, you would be correct.

In a week's time, I will have my summer vacation.  No work.  No teaching.  For the past couple of years, we've gone to a resort downstate.  Too expensive this year.  Times are tight.  So, we're scaling back.  A night in a hotel with a pool and water slide.  Dinner at a nice restaurant.  Perhaps a boat cruise.  That's it.  I would prefer something a little more...distant.  Removed.

Today's episode of Classic Saint Marty first aired three years ago, when things were very different in my life.  My sister was healthy.  My brother was still alive.  My daughter wasn't a teenager.  I was still working at my old job.  And I wasn't teaching freshman composition in the fall.  Ah, the good old days.

July 26,  2012:  The Clock, an Icicle, Dislocation of Time

To his great astonishment the heavy bell went on from six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to twelve; then stopped.  Twelve!  It was past two when he went to bed.  The clock was wrong.  An icicle must have got into the works.  Twelve!

This little paragraph highlights something that has always fascinated me about A Christmas Carol.  There seems to be some sort of dislocation of time that happens throughout the course of the novel.  When Jacob Marley predicts the arrival of the three Ghosts of Christmas to Scrooge, Marley says that the phantoms will appear on three consecutive nights.  The first at one o'clock in the morning on the following night, the second on the next night at one o'clock again, and the third at midnight on the third night.  When Scrooge wakes up for the Ghost of Christmas Past, he becomes completely disoriented with time because it appears he has slept through an entire day into the night.

This time warp never gets that much attention from anybody.  Readers prefer to focus on the more ghostly elements of the story.  Time warps are the thing of science fiction and fantasy.  Scrooge is not Luke Skywalker or James T. Kirk.  He's a Victorian businessman who happens to have fallen into some kind of wormhole of the space/time continuum, past and present and future coexisting in one place.  Even the twelve nights of Christmas are compressed into a single evening by the Ghost of Christmas Present.

This time dislocation happens to most of us.  I have reached that point in the summer where I look at the calendar and say, "Where the hell has the summer gone?"  Time seems to fly by like a hungry bat chasing a mosquito.  Fall is looming, and I haven't even had my summer vacation yet.  I'm not ready for the leaves to start changing color, but in a few weeks, the green maples will start transitioning to yellow.  Time is passing.  Pretty soon, the Christmas holidays will be upon us again.

I'm particularly aware of the passage of time this summer because of my eleven-year-old daughter who seems to have blossomed into this young lady overnight.  She's still goofy.  She still watches cartoons and the Disney Channel, but in the last few months, she has become willowy and beautiful.  She doesn't sit in a chair anymore.  She lounges.  And she has a friend, who's a boy, who follows her around like Lassie followed Timmy.

I'm experiencing a dislocation of time.  I'm still in May, and it's almost the end of July.  In my mind, my daughter is still three-years-old, sitting in my lap while I read Charlotte's Web to her.  She's actually eleven-going-on-twenty and is starting middle school this fall.  I'm still in the 1980s, when I thought Cyndi Lauper was cooler than Madonna and mullets were never going out of style.  That's how behind-the-times I am.

Saint Marty needs to join the present. or he's never going to make it to the future.  Ahead warp factor five, Mr. Sulu.

Not too fast, Mr. Sulu

Confessions of Saint Marty

August 30: William Stafford, "At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian Border," Labor Day

Tonight, I want to share a poem by one of my favorite poets, William Stafford.

Stafford doesn't get a whole lot of attention these days, but his work leaves me slack-jawed and breathless most of the time.  He's a quiet poet.  His lines sneak up on you like the first snow of autumn.  With silence and bracing beauty.

Saint Marty can't think of a better way to kick off Labor Day weekend than with this poem.

At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian Border

This is the field where the battle did not happen,
where the unknown soldier did not die.
This is the field where grass joined hands,
where no monument stands,
and the only heroic thing is the sky.

Birds fly here without any sound,
unfolding their wings across the open.
No people killed--or were killed--on this ground
hallowed by neglect and an air so tame
that people celebrate it by forgetting its name.

Bill Stafford

August 19: Changing Seasons, Accepting Change, Magic 8-Ball Monday

At work today (my first day without my friend/coworker), I changed some things.  Last week, while I was walking around all depressed about my coworker's impending exit, people kept telling me things like, "Change can be good.  You don't know what's going to happen.  You need to accept change."

Well, I took down all the summer decorations in the medical office.  All the American flags, all the red-white-and-blue lamps and baskets, are gone.  And then I put up pumpkins, scarecrows, baskets of corn, cornucopias.  I plastered the place with silk yellow, orange, and red maple leaves.  When I was done, I stood back and felt really good.

I'm sure, tomorrow morning, when the other employees of the surgery center show up (the nurses and surgical techs and nurse anesthetists), there's going to be a whole lot of whining:  "Summer's not over yet.  You shouldn't have changed things until after Labor Day.  It's too early."

I'm going to smile at every person who says something like that to me, and I'm going to reply, "Change is good.  You don't know what's going to happen.  You need to accept change."

Yes, that may be a little passive aggressive, but I'm OK with that.

My question for Holden Caulfield and company today deals with change:

Will my medical office job suck because of this current change/reduction of staff?

And the answer from Catcher is:

If you want to know the truth, I don't even know why I started all that stuff with her.  I mean about going away somewhere, to Massachusetts and Vermont and all...

Yes, I want to know the truth, but that quote is the equivalent of the Magic 8-Ball answer, "Difficult to see."  It's a non-answer.  Oh, well.

Maybe Saint Marty will ask again next Monday.

Maybe I'll put up some snowmen next week

September 3: Labor Day, Niece in Costa Rica, "Carol" Dip Monday

Happy Labor Day!  It was nice sleeping in a little this morning.  Actually, I slept in almost four hours past my normal alarm clock time (4 a.m.).  I'm feeling quite rested, even if I did just go for a two-and-a-half-mile run, pushing my three-year-old son in a stroller.  I'm ready to face the day.  Almost.  I still have to finish this blog post and take a shower.

I just read the first couple of posts on my niece's new blog.  She is spending a semester in Costa Rica, and she is writing about her experiences in Latin American.  She, at the moment, is still adjusting to her new life.  She's living with a parrot that speaks Spanish.  She's not quite sure what the parrot is saying.  It could be swearing at her, or making lewd comments.  She isn't quite sure.

Since it is Monday, it is time for another Carol dip.  You know, I can't believe that I've been writing about A Christmas Carol for almost nine months now.  I never thought I'd make it this far.  But, I did vow last December to keep Christmas alive every day of the year, and I try to stay true to my word.  Usually.  Any how, I have a few things on my mind today.  I'm just going to pick the one that has been preoccupying me for a good portion of this past week:

Will I find a publisher for my new collection of poems soon?

And the answer from the great book of Dickens is:

Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle from the mice behind the panelling, not a drip from the half-thawed water-spout in the dull yard behind , not a sigh among the leafless boughs of one despondent poplar, not the idle swinging of an empty store-house door, no, not a clicking in the fire, but fell upon the heart of Scrooge with softening influence, and gave a freer passage to his tears.

OK, so Scroobe is weeping in this paragraph.  He's looking at the school he used to attend as a child, and the description is not very pleasant at all.  Mice.  Despondent poplar.  Leafless boughs.  Freer passage to his tears.  It doesn't look like I'm going to be getting a publisher for my manuscript any time soon.

Excuse Saint Marty while he slips out the back door to cry by the empty store-house.



I know how George feels



September 5: Winner Again, Melancholy, Mythology

NOTE:  I tried to publish this post yesterday.  Blogger's new browser has been giving me issues.  But, as my grandmother used to say, "Better late than pregnant!"

Well, the competition was fierce, but, in the end, the winner of the Name the Poem contest is...Wonder Twin, once again.  The subject she chose for the poem is jealousy/envy, something with which I have a little experience.  Congratulations, Wonder Twin.  Watch for your poem on the blog in a couple of days.  Your saint holy card will be hand-delivered within a week.  I promise.

Labor Day always makes me feel a little melancholy.  I'm not sure if it's a hold-over from my days as a youngster, when this day meant the end of summer vacation and the start of another long year of school.  It may also be the chill in the air, the shortening of daylight, the crawl into autumn and winter.  Whatever the reason, I always have this sense that I'm attending some kind of funeral and wake on Labor Day.  The death of summer and all its attendant freedom and warmth.  I know that's not very comforting.

Tonight, I have to get my daughter ready for her first day of school.  I have to pack her lunch, set out her outfit, make her take a shower, get her to bed early.  This year, she's taking a bus to school.  It will be the first time since she started kindergarten that I haven't driven her, walked her to her classroom, and kissed her goodbye.  She's not having any problem with this change at all.  I, on the other hand, am mourning the little girl she used to be.  It's hard letting go of that little pig-tailed child.  I'm sure, when I walk her to the bus stop tomorrow morning, it will be even harder.  Not a big fan of change.

All day, I've been reading/reviewing mythology.  I have to teach tomorrow afternoon, and I have to sound like I know what I'm talking about.  I know the material, but I haven't taught it before.  Therefore, I tend to panic.  I will over-prepare, and then I will relax a little.  Teaching mythology depends a little more on knowledge of geography and history than I'm used to.  I'm comfortable with the cultural and sociological aspects of mythology, but when it comes to knowing the difference between Crete and Turkey, I'm completely at a loss.

Wish Saint Marty luck tomorrow.  He's going to need it.

My little fifth grader