June 23: Sex on Earth, Labels, Leaving Things in Better Shape

There were five sexes on Tralfamadore, each of them performing a step necessary in the creation of a new individual.  They looked identical to Billy--because their sex differences were all in the fourth dimension.

One of the biggest moral bombshells handed to Billy by the Tralfamadorians, incidentally had to do with sex on Earth.  They said their flying-saucer crews had identified no fewer than seven sexes on Earth, each essential to reproduction.  Again:  Billy couldn't possibly imagine what five of those seven sexes had to do with the making of a baby, since they were sexually active only in the fourth dimension.

The Tralfamadorians tried to give Billy clues that would help him imagine sex in the invisible dimension.  They told him that there could be no Earthling babies without male homosexuals.  There could be babies without female homosexuals.  There couldn't be babies without women over sixty-five years old.  There could be babies without men over sixty-five.  There couldn't be babies without other babies who had lived an hour or less after birth.  And so on.

It was gibberish to Billy.

Vonnegut really was ahead of his time with this discussion of sexes on Earth.  Back in the 1960s, he was talking about homosexuality, and not in any pejorative way.  Homosexuality is necessary for survival in the universe of Slaughterhouse.  Sex and sexuality are very fluid things.  That's a pretty amazing thing for Vonnegut to say.

In our country where the rights of all people who aren't white, male, heterosexual, Christian, and healthy are under attack by white, heterosexual, Christian, healthy men, perhaps every person in Congress needs to pick up a copy of Slaughterhouse Five to read.  Or maybe everyone in Congress needs to spend some time in a Tralfamadorian zoo.

I am not going to write about the Senate's version of Trumpcare in this post.  Not climbing up on a soapbox tonight.  I simply want to say that it really doesn't matter whether a person is gay, straight, Muslim, Christian, black, white, or blue.  Defining someone by any kind of label is dangerous.  I am more than a man or Christian or heterosexual or father or husband or poet or blogger.  I am a fellow traveler on this third rock from the Sun, trying to leave things in better shape than I found them when I arrived.

Every person is important.  I think that's Vonnegut's point in this little passage.  Everyone has something to contribute from the day that they're born to the day they die.  So it goes.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for the chance to make the world a better place.

September 14: End of Life, James Dickey, "The Heaven of Animals"

Last night, I had my students listen to an essay in which a mother is trying to explain death to her two-year-old daughter.  It was quite moving.  Then I had my students write about their beliefs about death.

Now, I know young people usually don't think about the end of life much.  They're too busy thinking about school and beer and pot and sex.  That's just where they are in their development.  However, when I asked some of them to share what they had written, I was a little surprised at the number of my students who simply don't believe in an afterlife.  As one of them so eloquently put it, "It's just the end."

Now, as a cradle Catholic, I grew up with pictures of angels in clouds, wings bright as a snow storm.  From the time I can remember, heaven was as real to me as Milky Way candy bars and my pet turtle Obi-Wan.  I never thought to question its existence.

Now, as an adult, my belief has been tempered by my many experiences with death.  In the past two years, as many of you know, I have seen two of my older siblings die.  And I would be lying if I didn't admit to doubts and questions.  The test of any strongly-held belief is being able to hold it up against strong interrogation.

I can still say today that I believe in heaven.  It's not the same heaven that I imagined as a child.  No clouds or harps or white robes or wings.  I know there is something beyond our existence.  Something where pain and loneliness and fear don't exist.  A better place.

That's what Saint Marty believes.  We are all destined for something better.

The Heaven of Animals

by:  James Dickey

Here they are. The soft eyes open.   

If they have lived in a wood

It is a wood.

If they have lived on plains

It is grass rolling

Under their feet forever.

Having no souls, they have come,   

Anyway, beyond their knowing.   

Their instincts wholly bloom   

And they rise.

The soft eyes open.

To match them, the landscape flowers,   

Outdoing, desperately

Outdoing what is required:

The richest wood,

The deepest field.

For some of these,

It could not be the place

It is, without blood.

These hunt, as they have done,

But with claws and teeth grown perfect,

More deadly than they can believe.   

They stalk more silently,

And crouch on the limbs of trees,   

And their descent

Upon the bright backs of their prey

May take years

In a sovereign floating of joy.   

And those that are hunted   

Know this as their life,

Their reward: to walk

Under such trees in full knowledge   

Of what is in glory above them,   

And to feel no fear,

But acceptance, compliance.   

Fulfilling themselves without pain

At the cycle’s center,

They tremble, they walk   

Under the tree,

They fall, they are torn,   

They rise, they walk again.