September 13: Duck Pond, Writing Life, Stephen King

When I'm up to my knees in honeysuckle, I beat a retreat, and visit the duck pond.  The duck pond is a small eutrophic pond on cleared land near Carvin's Creek . . .

Dillard has many places to which she beats retreats.  There's the log at Tinker Creek.  A cabin located near a dam.  The woods near her own house, where she finds snake skins and cocoons.  And, of course, the duck pond, "choked with algae."

I'm not sure what else Dillard does with her life besides beat retreats and write astounding reflections on life, the universe, and everything, to life, the universe, and everything, if I may borrow from Douglas Adams.  Her existence, at least for the duration of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, seems very . . . unrushed.  A year-long meditation.  And I envy her for it.

Indeed, from what I've read, Dillard was living the life of a full-time writer at the time she published Pilgrim.  She basically took her journals and transformed them into a book.  The closest I've every come to living the life of a full-time writer was when I was in graduate school, getting my degrees.  Even then, I was teaching all the time.  There were no beating retreats in my life.  Ever.

I'm not complaining.  I'm dreaming.  There are some people who somehow live the writing life.  Getting up in the morning, sitting at a desk with a journal or notebook or laptop, and just writing for four or five or six hours.  That's their job.  I've read that is exactly what Stephen King does.  He sits at his desk every day, taking only his birthday (September 21--don't ask me why I know this) and Christmas off.  Other than that, it's all possessed cars and time-traveling English teachers.

I'm not saying that Dillard or King don't have their share of troubles.  I'm sure they do.  However, I would like to try the writing life for a while.  Fully commit myself to writing something that I wanted to read.  That would make me really happy.  That's my dream.

My reality is that I'm the primary income-earner in my family.  One of my jobs provides health insurance.  My weekly checks are sort of necessary, even though they don't always pay all the bills.  Almost, but not always.  I can't live the writing life because my family needs me.

So what is the compromise?  I already rise at quarter to five in the morning every weekday so that I can get to work by 6 a.m.  I can't see myself getting up any earlier in order to write.  I'd probably end up falling asleep at the wheel of my car and becoming a dead writer.  I already stay up late, but that's to grade papers and create lesson plans (you know, the stuff that I can't get done during the rest of the day).  I get between five (on a good night six) hours of sleep every night.

At the moment, the writing life remains a lovely dream for me.

Maybe, some day, Saint Marty will join Annie Dillard at the duck pond.

August 19: The Last I saw, Anniversary, Maya Angelou, "When Great Trees Fall"

After several minutes of rummaging about in the grass at my side, he eased into the water under the bridge and paddled to his den with the jawful of grass held high, and that was the last I saw of him.

Dillard is talking about a muskrat.  She spends days watching for and observing this creature.  The bubbles on the surface of the water as it appears.  The weed stump it chews down.  The mouthful of grass it gathers.  And then, after all of that, Dillard watches it disappear forever into Tinker Creek.

Today was the anniversary of my sister's death.  A year ago today, she took one last breath just before 7:30 in the morning, and then she was gone.  Just before 7:30 this morning, I stopped by the cemetery.  It had rained overnight, and my sister's stone was studded with water drops.  I stood there for several minutes, remembering the chaos of a year ago.  The crying, phone calls, arguing (yes, there was arguing--when my family gathers for any reason, there's always the possibility of disagreement). 

This morning, however, there was peace.  I returned after work with my daughter and son, who wanted to put flowers on my sister's grave.  As we were leaving, my seven-year-old son said, "The world feels like something's missing.  Something big."  I nodded and hugged him.

This evening, to honor my sister, I attended a fundraiser for my sister-in-law, who participates in a cancer walk in New York every year.  It was a good night, full of laughter and food and fellowship.  I wasn't able to donate a whole lot of money, but at least I did something meaningful in my sister's memory.  And had fun.

Saint Marty's sister was a great soul.

When Great Trees Fall

by:  Maya Angelou

When great trees fall,

rocks on distant hills shudder,

lions hunker down

in tall grasses,

and even elephants

lumber after safety.



When great trees fall

in forests,

small things recoil into silence,

their senses

eroded beyond fear.



When great souls die,

the air around us becomes

light, rare, sterile.

We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,

see with

a hurtful clarity.

Our memory, suddenly sharpened,

examines,

gnaws on kind words

unsaid,

promised walks

never taken.


Great souls die and

our reality, bound to

them, takes leave of us.

Our souls,

dependent upon their

nurture,

now shrink, wizened.

Our minds, formed

and informed by their

radiance,
 fall away.

We are not so much maddened

as reduced to the unutterable ignorance 
of
dark, cold

caves.



And when great souls die,

after a period peace blooms,

slowly and always

irregularly. Spaces fill

with a kind of

soothing electric vibration.

Our senses, restored, never

to be the same, whisper to us.

They existed. They existed.

We can be. Be and be

better. For they existed.

She existed.

July 18: Grace Never Flags, Dirty Dishes, Unmade Beds

It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale. So many things have been shown to me on these banks, so much light has illumined me by reflection here where the water comes down, that I can hardly believe that this grace never flags, that the pouring from ever-renewable sources is endless, impartial, and free.

I really love this passage about grace.  Grace like Tinker Creek, constantly flowing, daybreak to daybreak, moving and flowing.  Or a book on a shelf, whispering its never-ending story over and over.  Basically, Dillard is saying that God's grace in inexhaustible, burbling, whispering, at work all the time.

I sometimes forget about grace.  When I got home this afternoon, I found a few dishes in the sink and my daughter's bed unmade.  The first thing that came to my mind was not, "Thanks, God, for my home and family."  I made the bed, washed the dirty frying pan and bowl, swearing the whole time.  I felt a little taken for granted.  You see, I can't stand to have dirty dishes or unmade beds.  I can't even sit on the couch in the living room if I know there's a fork in the sink or a pillow on the floor.

It occurs to me that I do the same thing to God.  God gives me blessings all day long--sunrises, a car, a can of Pringles, a nap--and I completely ignore them.  Instead, I launch into scatological tirades about plates caked with rice and piles of blankets on the floor when I should be giving thanks for the food and the warm bed.  Grace.

Tonight, my daughter is on a trip with the family of one of her dance friends.  I thank God for friendship.  My son just came inside and asked me if he could have a Popsicle at a neighbor's house.  I thank God for a polite son.  I'm working on a new laptop issued to me by the university where I teach.  I thank God for work that fulfills me (even if it doesn't pay all the bills).  Pretty soon, I'm going to help my son take a bath and get ready for bed.  I thank God for fatherhood.

Saint Marty has grace coming out of his butt.

Another perk of grace:  annoying people

January 22: Curse of the City, Fearless, Terry Godbey, "Descent"

Self-consciousness is the curse of the city and all that sophistication implies.  It is the glimpse of oneself in a storefront window, the unbidden awareness of reactions on the faces of other people--the novelist's world, not the poet's.  I've lived there.  I remember what the city has to offer:  human companionship, major-league baseball, and a clatter of quickening stimulus like a rush from strong drugs that leaves you drained.  I remember how you bide your time in the city, and think, if you stop to think, "next year . . . I'll start living; next year . . . I'll start my life."  Innocence is a better world.

I love that Annie Dillard says that self-consciousness is a glimpse of "the novelist's world, not the poet's."  The novelist, with a wider canvas and more space and time, lives in a fictional city, surrounded by faces and storefront windows.  More opportunity for reflections.  The poet, however, lives in a cave on top of a mountain.  In a tent on the edge of a volcano.  In a cabin on the banks of Tinker Creek.  Singular.  Alone.  Innocent.

I think I spend way too much time worrying about people's opinions of me.  In the medical office where I work, I feel scrutinized.  Constantly.  How many phone calls I answer.  How many patients I register.  How much money I collect.  How many registration forms I scan.  How much time I spend answering, registering, collecting, and scanning.  At the university, I get observed by a full-time professor every fall; evaluated by students at the end of every semester; ranked by another group of full-timers every winter.  Someone is looking over my shoulder all day, every day.

I think that's why I write poetry.  The un-self-consciousness of it.  I don't have to think about other people.  It's just me and a pen and my journal.  That doesn't mean that audience never crosses my mind.  Of course, I want to publish.  However, I do not live in a poetic city.  I live in a poetic monastery.  A poetic Fortress of Solitude.  It's a smaller, more insulated place.  Poets are fearless.  No subject is too scary or dangerous or outrageous.

It is Friday.  I have a whole weekend of not worrying about work or teaching.  Nobody staring me down.  No cross-examinations.  Tomorrow morning, I will simply get up, go to McDonald's with my wife and son and sister, and do exactly what I want.  I will blog.  Read.  Maybe work on a new poem or draw a cartoon.

Saint Marty is living large and free and fearless for the next three days.

Terry Godbey is pretty damn fearless, too...

Descent

by:  Terry Godbey

          . . . imagine the eyes staring back
               ---Newsweek article on Andrea Yeats
                         July 2, 2001

Was it like gazing into an aquarium,
looking into their eyes,
tendrils of hair still swaying,
as the bubbles stopped,
their legs quit kicking.
Nothing could stop her
as she drowned her five children
one by one, last night's boats
and ducks bobbing nearby,
after sending her husband
off to work with a kiss.
Did she tell the boys she was doing it
for their own good, that worn phrase
from every mother's lexicon,
or was she silent,
though they surely weren't?
As she wrestled
the 7-year-old into the tub
next to his baby sister,
he must have screamed Mommy, no!
but the woman who read him stories
and kissed his skinned knees
was as irretrievable
as his little brothers, lined up on the bed
like dolls.  He must have seen
that her eyes, floating above him,
were already dead.

Somebody's always watching....