October 3, 2026: “The Cold Outside,” Absence, “The Impossibility of Honey”

Greetings, faithful disciples.

In my last post, I gave you a catalogue of trials and tribulations, from a broken sewer line to a strong bout of clinical depression.  I’ve always believed that the Book of Job in the Bible was allegorical.  I mean, who would believe so much shit could be heaped on the head of such a decent, honest human being?  And with God’s approval?  Today, I would file Job’s story under nonfiction versus religious studies or philosophy.  In short, because of my experiences these last few months, I understand Job’s struggles a LOT more.  

I’m not looking for sympathy.  Everyone deals with sadness and calamities in their lives.  That’s part of being a human being.  The world is a broken place, with broken people calling the shots.  My little laundry list of struggles is pretty inconsequential compared to Super El Niños and genocides and famines.  In fact, most people would look at my life and think, “What the hell do you have to be upset about?”  And those people would be correct.

That doesn’t negate the power of prolonged depression.  Rationally, I know I’m a really lucky person—roof over my head, food in the fridge, warm clothes, and jobs that pay all the bills (for the most part).  Overwhelming sadness, however, is not rational.  It comes from a place of worry, fear, and anxiety.  

Marie Howe writes about looming dread . . . 

The Cold Outside

by: Marie Howe

Soon I will die, he said—that was during the heat wave that summer:

the orange lilies bending toward the house beside the driveway,

the heater in his car broken on blasting.

And the green shade flapped against the window screen,

as if what was out there inhaled and exhaled,

sliding away from the window, banging lightly against the sill,

sucked flat against the screen,

then peeling off and blowing out again.

Today the cold outside is bright and brittle,

heaps of hard snow between the sidewalk and the street,

and look, someone has shoveled a narrow path in front of the bakery,

so that, walking, a person has to step aside

and let another person through,

or pass through as the other person steps aside.

Soon I will die, he said, and then

what everyone has been afraid of for so long will have finally happened,

and then everyone can rest.

This is not an easy poem.  It’s a hard poem, filled with hard reality.  I’ve seen enough of my loved ones fade away and die to know both the pain and relief of loss.  My brother died suddenly, only after suffering for years with the effects of a stroke.  My sister, Sally, struggled for over two years, and my sister, Rose, was in and out of the hospital several times in the last year of her life.  Both of my parents ended up in nursing homes near the end of their lives.

Emily Dickinson wrote that Death “kindly stops” to pick up passengers, because, in the face of immense, daily anguish, mortality IS kind.  Terrifying (if you don’t believe in an afterlife), but kind.  I think Death did kindly stop for my mom, dad, sisters, and brother.  And don’t forget that the other passenger in Dickinson’s fatal carriage ride, besides Dickinson herself, is Immortality.  That’s the reason I find Dickinson’s vision of the Grim Reaper almost hopeful.  It’s not an end.  It’s a journey.

Of course, that knowledge doesn’t make the absence of someone you love any easier.  Loss is loss, and it comes with a whole trainload of grief.  As a way to combat my recent depression, I’ve been streaming episodes of the sitcom M*A*S*H.  It’s a TV show I have clear memories of watching with my entire family, every week.  Sure, my father was sort of MAGA-ish before MAGA was even a thing.  And yes, I didn’t always understand the episodes dealing with the insanities of war when I was younger.  But Hawkeye and BJ and Klinger and Colonel Potter and Hot Lips and the rest of the 4077th showed up every week, without fail.  

I often get stuck on movies and TV shows, watching them over and over and over to the dismay of my wife and son.  I reread books from my youth, as well.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve visited Holden Caulfield or Wilbur and Charlotte or Willy Wonka.  It’s comforting to know how the story ends, even if that ending is incredibly sad.  (Charlotte’s death destroys me every time.)  No surprises.

That’s very comforting for a person dealing with overwhelming fear and anxiety and sadness.  It’s like a security blanket.  Sure Holden has a breakdown at the end of The Catcher in the Rye, but he’s getting help and will eventually be reunited with his beloved little sister Phoebe.  Yes, the Korean War ends and Hawkeye returns to Crabapple Cove, but he survived.  If I know the fates of all these characters I love, I don’t have to worry about the future (which, for me, is a constant source of Sturm und Drang).  

Last Sunday, my puppy was attacked again by a German shepherd.  The attack resulted in some serious wounds that required surgery.  There is a row of staples running down my puppy’s back; it looks like she’s been zippered into her body.  She’s going to be alright, thank God.  However, this past week has been really difficult for me, mood wise.  Let’s just say that even Hawkeye couldn’t save my emotional life.

I’m going to be okay.  I tell myself that every morning.  Remind myself of it frequently during the day.  Repeat it as I’m drifting off to sleep.  It’s my mantra at the moment.  I’ll keep chanting it in my head until my puppy is healed, my plumbing problems are fixed, and you-know-who is no longer occupying the Oval Office.  At the moment, those things seem impossible.

But Saint Marty knows, as the song goes, the sun will come out tomorrow.  In the meantime, here’s a poem Saint Marty wrote about impossible things that are true . . . 

The Impossibility of Honey

by: Martin Achatz

Saturn is gas, would float in a bathtub

lead snows on Venus’s mountaintops

Jupiter’s red pupil is a 300-year-old storm

winter lasts 42 pitch-black years on Uranus

the Sun dances in Mercury’s skies—rising, stopping, reversing

one volcano on Mars could swallow Arizona

Neptune was discovered through math:  x + y = planet

ice mountains float across Pluto’s surface

and bees fly 750 miles on Earth to create 

          a single teaspoon of sweetness

August 19: "Absence," Chunky Monkey, "Strawberry Picking"

It has been a strangely emotional couple days for me.

I woke on Sunday feeling a little . . . sad.  I guess that's the best word I can come up with.  I'm not saying that I'm sitting on the couch crying with a quart of Chunky Monkey and a spoon.  No, nothing quite so dramatic.  Just a general malaise.  A weight sitting on my shoulders.

Today, I did what I usually do when I feel a blue mood descending on me.  I kept myself busy.  I worked on my October events for the library.  Put together my syllabi for the fall semester at the university, which begins next Monday.  Helped move some things around the library (we're in the middle of a little reorganization).  In the evening, I hosted a great concert by one of my favorite local bands (two of its members are the sons of one of my best friends).

All of that kept my mind and heart busy.  Now, sitting at home, everyone else asleep, I know the blue mood is sitting on the couch beside me as I type these words.  It's like a presence and absence at the same time.

Billy Collins on being present and absent . . . 

Absence

by: Billy Collins

This morning as low clouds
skidded over the spires of the city

I found next to a bench
in the park an ivory chess piece –

the white knight as it turned out –
and in the pigeon-ruffling wind

I wondered where all the others were,
lined up somewhere

on their red and black squares,
many of them feeling uneasy

about the saltshaker
that was taking his place,

and all of them secretly longing
for the moment

when the white horse
would reappear out of nowhere

and advance toward the board
with his distinctive motion,

stepping forward, then sideways
before advancing again –

the same move I was making him do
over and over in the sunny field of my palm.

I realized about midway through today that it was the anniversary of my sister's death.  Nine years ago.  I also realized that in another day it will also be the anniversary of my friend Helen's death.  Two years ago.  It's strange how the body and heart realize things like this before the brain catches up.  Basically, I'm carrying around two chess pieces in my hand, the black and white queens.  They're both here and not here.

Don't worry.  I'm fine.  I got to spend a few hours with my friend, Jody, at the concert.  Some other good friends were there, as well.  The music was loud and joyful.  People were laughing and clapping and bobbing their heads, moving their hips.  

I think, when you are keenly aware of absence in your life, it makes you appreciate presence even more.  That was me tonight, giving thanks for all the people who were with me--important pieces on the chess board of my life.  My wife.  My son.  My friend Jody.  My friend Ronnie and his son.  And so many more.  

Life is short, folks.  If I'm lucky, I'm not going to find myself in checkmate for a very long time.  But it's important for me to remember those who I've lost.  Those chess pieces that are missing, who can't simply be replaced by salt shakers.

Marty is a lucky, lucky saint.

A poem for my sister . . . 

Strawberry Picking

by: Martin Achatz

for Sally

You took me strawberry picking
once, drove out to a farm
where we paid to squat in green
beds laced with tongues of red.
I could feel my ears and neck
tighten under the punishing
sun as we filled Morning Glory
ice cream buckets with our
harvest, each berry looking to me
like some vital body part,
an organ or muscle necessary
for life. You sat on your haunches,
fingers staining red, as if you
were some battlefield surgeon
patching up the fallen with only
your hands. Every now and then,
you would lift a berry to your lips,
eat it in a hummingbird moment,
smiling the smile of the freshly
healed at Lourdes, where miracles
are common as empty wheelchairs
or dandelions in a July field.

The days since you’ve been gone,
I see strawberries everywhere,
in a welt of blood on my lip
after shaving, a stop sign,
a friend’s dyed hair,
my son’s sunburned shoulders,
oxygen in the gills of a perch.
Last night, I stood outside, under
ribbons of borealis, watched
them glide between the stars
like garter snakes in a midnight
Eden. The Bible says that, in the cool
of the day, Adam and Eve heard
God taking a stroll through
the garden. There were probably
peacocks nesting in the pines,
a stream talking with moss and stone,
the scurry of mole and spider
in the ferns.

That’s what I believe you heard
in your last moments of breath.
You heard peafowl screams,
brook trout leaps. Grasshopper wing
and corn silk. And you heard
his divine toes in the grass, walking
along. When he came to you,
he couldn’t resist. He reached down,
plucked you from the stem. You were
ripe. Sweet. Ready. He put you
in his Morning Glory bucket, continued
on into the dew and sunlight

October 18: Over and Gone, First Snow, Maxine Kumin, "How It Is," New Cartoon

"Summer is over and gone," repeated the crickets.  "How many nights till frost?" said the crickets.  "Good-bye, summer, good-bye, good-bye!"

Yes, in the fall, when the weather turns cold, the crickets seem to cry in the dark.  It's a sad sound, an elegy for hot summer nights.  The morning air is crisp, like a drink of cold water.  The afternoons are golden; the evenings, full of the promise of winter.  In two little sentences, E B. White captures the shift from hot to cold, from hot sand to orange leaves, from August sun to harvest moon.

This morning, the first snow fell in my little corner of the Upper Peninsula.  I looked outside, and the world was a chaos of white.  The snow didn't accumulate.  In fact, it almost looked like it was melting before it even hit the ground.  It was a warning, a reminder of the long months to come.

Winter used to be my favorite season of the year.  I loved the shortened days and the long, black nights.  I loved the chimney smoke funneling into the sky and the bleary Christmas lights in the sweaty windows.  And I loved being at home, drinking hot chocolate, reading huge novels while Christmas music played.  (Christmas still is my favorite holiday, but not because of the snow and cold.)

As an adult who has to battle his way to work in snowstorms, who has to shovel all that white crap, who has to pay astronomical heating bills, I can no longer call myself a fan of winter.  My idea of a perfect winter has drastically changed.  I would like an extended autumn.  One that lasts until Christmas Eve.  Then, on December 24, a light dusting of snow can fall.  Just enough to give everything that Martha Stewart touch.  Not enough to require a snow shovel.  The day after Christmas, the snow can melt.  For the rest of winter, I would accept temperatures in the forty- to fifty-degree range.  Enough to require a heavier jacket.  Then, around the middle of March, spring arrives.  Perfect.

Of course, that's not how the world works in the Upper Peninsula.  I am a realist, not an optimist.  I know what I'm in for in the coming months.  If last winter is any indication of what's to come, it's going to suck tremendously.  However, it's one of the trade offs of living in this beautiful, hard place.  We are hardy folk who choose to dwell in this little, shark-shaped piece of land surrounded by water.

My daughter complained today about the fact that she will probably have to wear a winter jacket when trick-or-treating this year.  She knows that's part of the bargain of a Yooper Halloween.  Maxine Kumin has a great poem about the acceptance of difficult experiences.  Of course, Kumin's not speaking of frozen days or killer blizzards.  Her poem is about absence.  Loss.  Loneliness so profound it sits in the room with you like a sleeping cat.

The year 2014 has not been fun for me or my family.  Professional upheaval.  Loss of income and jobs.  The death of my brother.  I will be honest.  Come December 31, I will be happy to have 2014 in my rear view mirror.  That doesn't mean that 2015 will be any easier.  It may be worse for all I know, but I'm still hoping for something better.

That's just how it is with Saint Marty right now.  The crickets are singing.  Change is coming.

How It Is

by:  Maxine Kumin

Shall I say how it is in your clothes?

A month after your death I wear your blue jacket.   

The dog at the center of my life recognizes   

you’ve come to visit, he’s ecstatic.

In the left pocket, a hole.

In the right, a parking ticket

delivered up last August on Bay State Road.   

In my heart, a scatter like milkweed,

a flinging from the pods of the soul.

My skin presses your old outline.

It is hot and dry inside.

I think of the last day of your life,

old friend, how I would unwind it, paste   

it together in a different collage,

back from the death car idling in the garage,   

back up the stairs, your praying hands unlaced,   

reassembling the bits of bread and tuna fish   

into a ceremony of sandwich,

running the home movie backward to a space   

we could be easy in, a kitchen place

with vodka and ice, our words like living meat.

Dear friend, you have excited crowds

with your example. They swell

like wine bags, straining at your seams.   

I will be years gathering up our words,   

fishing out letters, snapshots, stains,

leaning my ribs against this durable cloth

to put on the dumb blue blazer of your death.

Confessions of Saint Marty