June 12: "The English Professor," Love, "Man at Work"

Billy Collins misdiagnoses someone . . . 

The English Professor

by: Billy Collins

When I asked him

if he was in love,

he accused me

of anthropomorphizing him.

Love is a word that gets thrown around a lot.  For example, this afternoon, someone offered me a Twix candy bar, and I said, "I love Twix!"  Other examples:  I've claimed to love, at various times, The Godfather, Tracy Chapman songs, long naps, cheddar bay biscuits from Red Lobster, writing poems, and River Phoenix.

Love, in our present age, has been devalued as a concept, and I'm just as guilty as anyone else.  The word "love" used to be reserved for certain bonds or relationships between living creatures.  "Love" indicates a depth of emotion and devotion that can't really be applied to songs or food or inanimate objects.  I love my kids and would sacrifice my life for them.  I also love Cheetos, but I wouldn't donate a kidney to get a family-size bag of them.  See the difference?

I try to be very aware of how I use the word "love" in my everyday conversations, reserving it for when I'm interacting with honest-to-God loved ones--my wife or kids or siblings or close friends or dog.  (Yes, pets can be loved ones.)  I can say "I love you" to them without feeling disingenuous.  I truly do love them.

This evening, I hosted a concert at the library.  A duo named Flagship Romance that I admire a lot.  (I almost used the "l" word.)  They sang almost all completely original songs with harmonies so close they sounded like one voice.  It was a lovely way to end my day.  (NOTE:  "lovely" is a much more usable word that doesn't require a marriage license or birth control or paternity test.)  These performers are obviously very passionate about what they do.  (Dare I use the "l" word?)  They have been blessed with incredible musical talents.

I have been blessed, I think, with writing talents.  I can't imagine a day going by without me scribbling or typing a poem or short story or essay or blog post.  Writing is a part of who I am.  Do I love writing?  Hmmmmm . . . I guess it depends on how your define the word.

The ancient Greeks identified and defined eight different types of love:

1. Eros:  sexual passion
2. Philia:  deep friendship
3. Ludus:  playful love
4. Agape:  love for everyone
5. Pragma:  longstanding love
6. Philautia:  love of the self
7. Storge:  family love
8. Mania:  obsessive love

My love of poetry and writing borders on mania at times.  If I'm working on a piece of writing, I can be more than a little obsessive.  My love for my kids:  storge.  My love for the music of Flagship Romance tonight:  philautia tinged with mania.  

A popular saying these days is "Love is Love."  It's mostly used to confront homophobes and transphobes (basically any kind of love phobe).  You don't pick who you fall in love with.  Love picks you.  Period.  As long as you don't eros you cocker spaniel.

Saint Marty is now going mania the shit out of a bag of M&Ms. 

Man at Work

by: Martin Achatz

If you spy me sitting

on a bench by a lake,

staring at a paddling duck,

please know that I'm hard at work

writing a poem.

March 8: The Valley of Loire, Half a Million Pageviews, Dreaming Big

Merton confronts his grandfather's slightly irresponsible spending habits . . .

It was that way all through the valley of Loire.   

When we got to Paris, having left the two old ladies from New Zealand in an obscure town called Saint Mere down in the south, we found Pop and Bonnemaman entrenched in the most expensive hotel they could find.  The Continental was far beyond their means, but it was 1926 and the franc was so low that Pop's head was completely turned by it, and he had lost all sense of values.

The first five minutes in that hotel room in Paris told us all we needed to know about the way it was going to be for the next two weeks, in the whirlwind tour of Switzerland that was just about to begin.

The room was crammed to the doors with so much useless baggage that you could hardly move around in it.  And Bonnemaman and John Paul let it be known that they had sunk into a state of more or less silent opposition and passive resistance to all of Pop's enthusiastic displays of optimism and pep.

When Pop told us about the Loire campaign and the largesse with which he had showered every village from Orleans to Nates, we realized from the mute pain in Bonnemaman's expression, as she turned an eloquent and pleading look to my father, just how the rest of the family felt about all this.  And, seeing what we were in for, we more or less instinctively took sides with the oppressed.  It was clear that every move, from now on, was going to be rich in public and private humiliation for the more or less delicate sensibilities of the rest of us, from Bonnemaman who was extremely touchy by nature, to John Paul and myself who were quick to see or imagine that others were laughing at Pop and felt ourselves included in the decision by implication.  

And thus we started out for the Swiss frontier, travelling in easy stages seven or eight hours a day in the train and stopping overnight.  There was the constant embarkation and debarkation from trains and taxis and hotel buses and each time every one of the sixteen pieces of luggage had to be accounted for, and the voice of my grandfather would be heard echoing along the walls of the greatest railway stations in Europe.  "Martha, where the dickens did you leave the pigskin bag."

On every piece of luggage, by way of identification, Pop had pasted a pink American two-cent stamp, a device which had aroused sharp and instantaneous criticism from myself and John Paul. "What are you trying to do, Pop," we asked with sarcasm.  "Are you going to send that stuff through the mail?"

I have a relative very much like Merton's grandfather--a person who spends more than she earns all the time.  Don't get me wrong--the person I'm talking about is wonderfully generous.  She has bailed me and my family out of a lot of tough financial scrapes.  Yet, she often finds herself in as many money difficulties as I do, and that's quite an accomplishment, since I'm a poet.  Not many people can claim to be as  pocket-poor as a poet.

I have learned over the years to be grateful for the blessings in my life, large and small.  It's the only way I'm able to stay sane most days.  I have to count every moment of grace that comes my way.  By doing this, I'm reminded that God hasn't forgotten me or my family.  Those graces come in many forms--a lick in the face from my puppy, a funny e-mail from a good friend, an unexpected text from my daughter that simply says "I love you," watching The Godfather any day or time.  Like I said, grace comes in many guises.

So, tonight, I'm celebrating a small grace/blessing.  Logging in to type this post, I happened to look at how many pageviews I've received over the past ten years.  I noticed that I just surpassed 500,000 views.  That averages to about 50,000 pageviews every year since 2010.  For some reason, that made me feel really good.  Like what I do on this little blog actually makes some kind of impact in people's lives.

When I wrote my first post ten years ago, I knew nothing about blogging.  It was simply a way to force myself to write something every day.  The idea of faceless readers tuning in every day to read my thoughts really drove me to my keyboard.  I felt responsible to that spectral audience.  And, like most living/breathing entities (yes, I believe blogs sort of have a life of their own), they grow and develop and evolve.  Try a little experiment.  Jump into the time machine.  Go back and read the first blog post I ever wrote.  February 19, 2010.

Here's what I noticed:

• I was a neurotic mess in 2010.  I'm still a neurotic mess.
• I confessed in the first sentence of that first blog post that I didn't know what the hell I was doing.  I still don't know what the hell I'm doing.
• I started out with the idea of writing about the lives of saints.  The original name of this blog was Feasts and Famines.  I changed it after a year to Saint Marty, and now I write mainly about myself.  I became more self-centered over time.  Go figure.
• I had big dreams back in 2010.  I still dream big.
• My daughter was ten when I started this blog.  My son was only two.  My daughter is now majoring in biology with her eyes on becoming a doctor.  My son is in sixth grade, about to become a middle schooler.

Things change.  I've tried to adjust to the changes of the past ten years.  This blog is the record of all the mistakes I've made over the years.  There have been plenty of them.  There will be plenty more in the years to come.

So, thank you all for a really great ten years, and 500,000 views.  I look forward to the next ten years.

Saint Marty is eternally grateful to all his faithful disciples.