February 20: Adam's Curse, Thistles and Thorns, Quincy Troupe, "Stillness," Confessions of Saint Marty

The thistle is part of Adam's curse.  "Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee."  A terrible curse:  But does the goldfinch eat thorny sorrow with the thistle, or do I?  If this furling air is fallen, then the fall was happy indeed.  If this creekside garden is sorrow, then I seek martyrdom.  This crown of thorns sits light on my skull, like wings.  The Venetian Baroque painter Tiepolo painted Christ as a red-lipped infant clutching a goldfinch; the goldfinch seems to be looking around in search of thorns.  Creation itself was the fall, a burst into the thorny beauty of the real.

Annie Dillard's little reflection on Creation and the fall is so typical of the poet/writer.  In the thorns and sorrow of the world, she sees beauty.  In fact, she seeks out the thistles, wears them like a crown.  She walks the cursed ground, seeing in everything, I think, reflections of God's goodness.  Dillard relishes the martyrdom of the fall.

That's pretty heady stuff for a Saturday morning, but I kind of find comfort in these thoughts.  I've spent most of my life listening to sermons and homilies about the fallen world, original sin, penance, and redemption.  I'm sure Dillard has, too.  The difference is that Dillard finds much to celebrate in the difficulties of the world, because it is through adversity that evolution/transformation happens.  After a forest fire, Nature rolls up its sleeves and gets to work.  Through ash and smolder, green appears.  Then gold and purple and red.  Destruction can be a prelude to creation.

I think I focus too much on the destruction.  It's an easy trap to fall into.  Sort of like the days following the 9-11 attacks, when all the television stations replayed the images:  the planes striking the Towers; the Towers collapsing; people stumbling out of the clouds of white dust.  Destruction for weeks, months.  It's comfortable to focus on sorrow, dwell in that place of pain.

It's harder to be the goldfinch, looking for thistles and thistledown.  Fluttering golden wings through the thorns.  In the last few weeks, I've found myself focused on the absences in my life.  Being unhappy because I don't have the perfect job or perfect home or perfect life.  I don't recommend this practice.  It leads to sleepless night and exhausting days, filled with anger and unhappiness. 

Today, I'm going to try to break this thorny cycle.  Say "thank You" to God when I feel challenged instead of "why me?".  I'm going to celebrate the ashes of Lent because I know Easter morning is coming.  I have to believe that.  That's what being a Christian is all about.

In the stillness of the storm, Saint Marty finds hope.

Stillness

by:  Quincy Troupe

underneath a midnight sky, fresh snow rests still & white
as a summer cloud formation, stretching there, soft as a bed
of just-picked cotton, beneath tailfire of a streaking jet

& soon the wind will stir up again the murmuring dead voices
lying there, beneath that blanket of chilled glittering crystals
reminding of light refracting jewels covering the earth's hard floor

the tongue-lashing speech of god's sawblading breath is quiet now
so soon, again, after the cold shattering cacophony of language
an avalanche brings, the sound deafening in its power

& louder than the scream of god inside the voice of a shattering
tornado, louder than roaring screams sudsing in the curling finger
at the top of a swelling epiphany, above the wall of water

howling in a tidal wave, drowning everything within the blink
of an instant, the frenzy suddenly leveling off flat as quick as it came
& now lies there a dark still pool mirroring as in a dead duck's eye

wide open there, as if it were a midnight sky holding a full moon
above a whispering chilled landscape sculptured by hands of winter
the snow swept up into heaps & shapes by god's tongue there

reminds of sleeping polar bears huddled together when seen
from above:  scattered around still lifes, the wind picking up snow
swirling it like confetti--voices as if torn away from history.

Confessions of Saint Marty

Febraury 19: Small Pleasuures, Pencil Erasers, Quincy Troupe, "Simple Joys"

I have had a good evening, full of small pleasures.

I had a cheesy macaroni soup for dinner.  One of my favorite Lenten Friday repasts.  Then, I spent the next few hours writing a cover letter and resume for one of my best friends.  It was actually quite fun--the challenge of creating a persuasive letter.  That goes back to my days as an instructor of technical writing.  In the midst of all this, I gave my son a bath and ate some really good chocolate.  As I said, small pleasures.

I think that my time in my son's classroom this morning sort of helped me reevaluate my life a little bit today.  I was surrounded by these kids who were absolutely ecstatic over the fact that they had new pencil erasers and pencils.

Saint Marty bought a new pencil case tonight.  That made him very happy.

And this makes Quincy Troupe happy...

Simple Joys

by:  Quincy Troupe

my young son, porter, watching snowflakes
whoops, in ecstasy, as they collect, like lint
on the font windshield of my car, his growing
hands try to snag them through the tinted glass
as they hit & melt, like dead faces time erases
in a flash, though he misses & leaves only his
handprints on the tinted glass, there, his sudden
simple joy of discovering, suddenly, switching
like the attention span of television
his eyes now locked onto spinning, car wheels
churning in surprise, his imagination scotchtaping
itself to everything, tripping over everything, turning
snowflakes into flowers, brown brushstrokes stroking
the windshield become the tail of our cat, tchikaya
window bars, baseball bats in the eyes of his dazzling
invention, wonder residing there, like magic
everyday the curtain going up on his transforming
pure eyes that see metaphors everywhere
& it gives me sweet joy in this age of cynicism
 to watch & be with him, tripping through discovery--
his simple joys the envy of my caged wisdom

Ice cream . . . another small pleasure

February 16: Cheshire Cat's Grin, Principle of Indeterminacy, Quincy Trouple, "The Other Night"

But in 1927 Werner Heisenberg pulled out the rug, and our whole understanding of the universe toppled and collapsed. For some reason it has not yet trickled down to the man on the street that some physicists now are a bunch of wild-eyed, raving mystics.  For they have perfected their instruments and methods just enough to whisk away the crucial veil, and what stands revealed is the Cheshire cat's grin.

Of course, what Dillard is writing about is the Principle of Indeterminacy, which basically says that it is impossible to know an atomic particle's velocity and position.  It's all about the unpredictability of nature.  Dillard goes on to describe an electron as a muskrat, a creature that cannot be tracked with any accuracy.  The universe is a constant surprise.

Recently, I think my life has been an experiment of indeterminacy.  Nothing I think should or will happen comes to pass.  I think that my sister will survive her cancer diagnosis, and she dies of lymphoma of the brain.  I think that it's not going to snow, and I wake up to five inches of fresh powder in the morning.  I think that Donald Trump will be the punchline of the entire presidential election, and he wins the New Hampshire primary.  Unpredictability.

As many of you already know, I am not a big fan of surprises.  I read the endings of books first.  I read spoilers for movies.  If I could, I would live in a world of complete and utter determinacy.  That's right.  When I wake up in the morning, I want to know what I'm having for dinner.  When I go to bed tonight, I want to know when I'm going to bed tomorrow night.  I embrace sameness.  Predictability.

Now, you probably know what I'm going to do at this point in my post.  That's right--I'm going to provide a poem by the Poet of the Week.  Quincy Troupe.  Troupe is not predictable.  In fact, his poems constantly surprise me, and that's a good thing.

Saint Marty can live with poetic surprise.  As long as he knows about it beforehand.

The Other Night

by:  Quincy Troupe

the other brandy
sweetened night we was
kissin so hard & good
you sucked my tongue
right on out
my tremblin mouth
& eye had to
sew it back in
in order to tell
you about it

 Nothing predictable about Pi . . .

February 15: Blindfolded, Grammy Awards, Quincy Troupe, "Eighth Avenue Poem"

In the eighteenth century, when educated European tourists visited the Alps, they deliberately blindfolded their eyes to shield themselves from the evidence of the earth's horrid irregularity.  It is hard to say if this was not merely affectation, for today, newborn infants, who have not yet been taught our ideas of beauty, repeatedly show in tests that they prefer complex to simple designs . . . 

It's a question of beauty.  Is beauty in simplicity or complexity?  Certainly, it's easy to find beauty in, say, a glass of water.  There's less to take in, consider.  A mere eight ounces of liquid and light.  But nobody in his or her right mind would argue that a glass of water is more beautiful than the Pacific Ocean.  Like a newborn infant, we would all choose complexity (Pacific Ocean) over simplicity (a glass of water).

I have been sitting in my living room, watching the Grammy Awards.  There have been some really great moments (Adele, tributes to Glen Frey and Lionel Richie).  Moments that touched beauty.  Then there have been other moments that simply made me feel old (performances by Kendrick Lamar, Justin Bieber and Skrillex).  I didn't find a whole lot of beauty in the latter.  Art, however, does not need to always be pleasing,  It can be challenging, upsetting.  It can make me feel like a Pope Benedict at a gay wedding.  There may have been beauty in the Biebster's act.  I just didn't see it.

But, that's the way with all art--music, paintings, poetry.  The song doesn't always have to be "Ave Maria."  The portrait doesn't always have to be a Norman Rockwell.  And the sonnet doesn't always have to be by William Shakespeare.  Sometimes there's a Kendrick Lamar or Jackson Pollock or Gertrude Stein.  Art that pushes the limits of beauty.

Quincy Troupe is Poet of the Week.  Troupe isn't always beautiful in what he writes.  He can challenge and confound.  But he isn't Justin Bieber.

Saint Marty is not a Belieber.

Eighth Avenue Poem

by:  Quincy Troupe

on eighth avenue
between 116th and
121st streets
some of the junkies
have feet so bad
they could step
on a dime
and tell you
whether it's
heads or tails

She must have seen Justin Bieber on the Grammy Awards, too . . .

February 13: Pizzazz, God's Thumbprint, Quincy Troupe, "Untitled 3," Confessions of Saint Marty

Of all known forms of life, only about ten percent are still living today.  All other forms--fantastic plants, ordinary plants, living animals with unimaginably various wings, tails, teeth, brains--are utterly and forever gone.  That is a great many forms that have been created.  Multiplying ten times the number of living forms today yields a profusion that is quite beyond what I consider thinkable.  Why so many forms?  Why not just that one hydrogen atom?  The creator goes off on one wild, specific tangent after another, of millions simultaneously, with an exuberance that would seem to be unwarranted, and with an abandoned energy sprung from an unfathomable font.  What is going on here?  The point of the dragonfly's terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows, is not that it all fits together like clockwork--for it doesn't, particularly, not even inside the goldfish bowl--but that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, fringed tangle.  Freedom is the world's water and weather, the world's nourishment freely given, its soil and sap:  and the creator loves pizzazz.

Dillard is thrilled by the wonder of creation, the intricacies of atom, molecule, chloroplast, caterpillar, and cumulus.  She doesn't see the universe as some organized and planned-out event, a divine wedding or birthday party.  No, the universe is a riot of evolutionary leaps, evidence of a Creator in love with creation.  There's God, sitting in front of His canvas, laying on the paint like van Gogh.  Thick swathes and dimples of ocher and umber and canary.

God has been busy all week in the Upper Peninsula.  Looking out the window right now, I see huge swoops and scoops of white, like some frozen seascape.  It's beautiful and humbling at the same time.  Winter storms have a way of reminding me how small and insignificant my contribution to creation is.  This post, for instance, is not going to cure cancer or stop global warming (which exists, despite Republican statements to the contrary).  Perhaps my greatest part in God's chaotic scheme is my kids.  I have taken part in life-creation.  That's God's thumbprint on my life.

I'm watching my son playing in this frozen landscape right now.  He's climbing to the top of a mountain of snow, carrying great white boulders.  He stands there for a moment, and then he tosses them into the air, watches them tumble and roll to the ground.  In some way, I think my son gets God a lot better than I do.  When I see snow, I think of shoveling and muscle ache.  When he sees snow, he thinks of sculpture and play, climbing and falling.  Wonder and awe.

Tonight is all about ballet for me.  Watching my daughter practice and perform.  Another one of my contributions to the universe.  Music and movement and youth and beauty.  And I had a small part in it.  Setting aside her teenage tantrums and stomping, she also gets God a lot better than me, although she is developing a more adult sense of complacency daily.  It's harder and harder to make her joyful.

So, here's Saint Marty's advice to anyone reading this post:  stop and look.  Recognize the work of the Mad Scientist in charge of the universe.  See the beauty and wonder.  My son and daughter do this.  So does Annie Dillard.  And the poet Quincy Troupe.

Untitled 3

by:  Quincy Troupe

birds ski down the day's inscrutable smile
wheeling, banking their diaphanous
sawblading voices, their sword-like sleek feathers
cutting through the day's upper reaches of silence
their convoluted language cacophonous
& raucous, as a lynch mob
in old georgia, the rope-rasping burning of their syllables
hangin their twisting meanings around us & these blooming
dark hours stormy with chaos april brings--
spring leaping suddenly upon us
like a black panther clawing or breath
but is filled with so rare & mysterious
a beauty, it thrills us to death

Confessions of Saint Marty

February 12: A Make-up Post, Dash Off, Quincy Troupe, "Impression 12"

I owe you all a post.

I don't have much time.  In a few minutes, I must leave my office at the university to pick up my daughter from ballet practice.  Night has fallen.  It's almost 7 p.m.  The snow is still blowing, and the temperatures are still dropping.  In this big cavern of a building on the university campus, I am the lone professor in the English Department.  All the others have gone home to grade papers or ignore papers.

Tonight, I have a beautiful little poem for you guys and gals from the first Poet Laureate of the State of California.

Saint Marty needs to dash off now.

Impression 12

by:  Quincy Troupe

buck dance antlers frozen
in the still air
like fingers gripping death
by the side of the crooked road
a young deer dropped down
in its tracks
assumes a praying position
a bullet hole in the middle
of its shocked
forehead