September 11: "The Names," Love, "Godspeed"

I remember the morning.  Watching the news reports from the Twin Towers.  Seeing the second plane plow into the second Tower.  The Pentagon.  Shanksville.  And I remember going into a classroom at the university that afternoon, staring into the faces of young people who knew that their world had just changed forever.  

When I got home that evening, I picked up my nine-month-old daughter and hugged her.  Hard.

Billy Collins' poem for the victims of 9/11 . . . 

The Names

by: Billy Collins

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.
A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,
And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,
I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,
Then Baxter and Calabro,
Davis and Eberling, names falling into place
As droplets fell through the dark.
Names printed on the ceiling of the night.
Names slipping around a watery bend.
Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.

In the morning, I walked out barefoot
Among thousands of flowers
Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,
And each had a name --
Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal
Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.

Names written in the air
And stitched into the cloth of the day.
A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.
Monogram on a torn shirt,
I see you spelled out on storefront windows
And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.
I say the syllables as I turn a corner --
Kelly and Lee,
Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor.

When I peer into the woods,
I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden
As in a puzzle concocted for children.
Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,
Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,
Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.

Names written in the pale sky.
Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.
Names silent in stone
Or cried out behind a door.
Names blown over the earth and out to sea.

In the evening -- weakening light, the last swallows.
A boy on a lake lifts his oars.
A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,
And the names are outlined on the rose clouds --
Vanacore and Wallace,
(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)
Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.

Names etched on the head of a pin.
One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.
A blue name needled into the skin.
Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,
The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.
Alphabet of names in a green field.
Names in the small tracks of birds.
Names lifted from a hat
Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.
Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.
So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.

I'm not going talk any more about my memories of 9/11.  Everyone of a certain age has memories like mine about that terrible day.  Memories full of shock, anger, and grief.  

Tonight, I hold onto the love I feel for the people in my life.  If there was one thing that I learned that September day 23 years ago, it's this:  never to take for granted my family and friends.  At the end of my life, it's not going to matter how much money I have, how many books I've written, or how famous I am.  What is going to matter is how much I've loved and how much I was loved.  

That's Saint Marty's wish for you all this evening--love.

Godspeed

by: Martin Achatz

I write these words over two weeks
past the time I last spoke with you,
when you called me from your bed,
said in a voice so weak it sounded
like dandelion seeds in August,
“Always,” letting me know this would be
our last time together, that you were
done with this stupid blue marble
floating in this ever-expanding
universe, wanted to spread your arms
and soar. I write these words two
days after we all gathered to say
goodbye, Godspeed, thanks
in the rain, where table napkins
with daisies on them melted
into a puddle of beached jellyfish.
And I write these words twenty-
one years and one day after
the planes hit the Towers
and people dialed their husbands,
wives, sisters, brothers, children,
lovers, friends to say one more time
“I love you” and “I will always
be there.” Yesterday, I saw
the picture of a man who leapt
from a window in Tower One,
him diving down, arms glued
to his legs. I hope that he felt
like an eagle or kite or seraphim
as he sailed and spun. Hope
that the wind in his face reminded
him of that day as a kid
when his dad pushed him
on the playground
swing so high he thought
he would keep rising, rising
at the speed of God.

May 25: "Mornings at Blackwater," Pissed, Suffering Puppy

Mary Oliver drinks from Blackwater Pond . . .

Mornings at Blackwater

by:  Mary Oliver

For years, every morning, I drank

from Blackwater Pond.

It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,

the feet of ducks.

And always it assuaged me

from the dry bowl of the very far past.

What I want to say is

that the past is the past,

and the present is what your life is,

and you are capable 

of choosing what that will be,

darling citizen.

So come to the pond, 

or the river of your imagination,

or the harbor of your longing,

and put your lips to the world.

And live

your life.

This poem is Oliver's call to action.  It's all about living in the present moment and choosing what that present moment will be.  There is no sitting back and letting life simply happen around you.  It's about taking deep, deep drinks of whatever pond or river will quench your longing and need.

First, before I write anything more, I am going to apologize.  This post is going to be angry.  Actually, it's not going to be just angry.  It's going to be pissed.  So, if you are having a bad day, I would suggest skipping today's epistle from Saint Marty and streaming something wholesome and uplifting on Disney+.

As longtime disciples of this blog know, a few months ago, my little puppy, Juno, was attacked by a 90-pound dog.  The dog that attacked Juno was supposed to be a support animal, although it turns out that she never went through the training to be certified.  As a result of that attack, Juno had torn muscles and ligaments in her neck, abdomen, back, leg; a slight pneumothorax; and a dislocated hip.  She underwent two hours of surgery the day of the attack.

Juno has been recovering these last couple months, and today she had a second surgery to try to fix her dislocated hip, which has never healed properly.  She's been pretty much hopping around of three legs since she was able to walk again.  The vet who operated on her today did what is called an FHO procedure, which entails the removal of the femoral head and neck of the femur in order to eliminate bone-on-bone contact.  Pretty much, Juno will never regain full mobility of her hip and is going to require physical therapy to buildup the muscle in the injured leg.

I'm pissed because my puppy (I call her a puppy because she's three-years-old and only weighs 17 pounds) has been suffering, and will continue to suffer, for many months to come.  I'm pissed because the owner of the other dog hasn't offered to pay any of the medical bills so far and hasn't even inquired about Juno's health.  I'm pissed because the owners of the business where the attack occurred have offered to pay half the medical expenses and, thus far, haven't provided any money.  I'm pissed because, ever since the attack (which I was in the middle of, trying to save Juno's life), I've been experiencing moments of severe anxiety that stop me in my tracks.  I literally have to stand in place and take deep breaths to control my racing heart and breaths.  

I am pissed.  That is the cup of pond water from which I'm drinking currently.  I'm done struggling to pay bills that I shouldn't have to pay.  It's the summer, and the paychecks from the university have stopped.  The vet and medical costs are topping out at around $5000 so far, and that doesn't include the physical therapy Juno is going to need.  I want someone to stand up and take responsibility for this shitty situation.

Now, I somehow have to come up with a kernel of wisdom or crumb of happiness that will make what I'm saying today uplifting.  Anger is an emotion that I don't usually indulge.  I always try to be understanding and compassionate.  Everyone struggles, and I try not to contribute to these struggles.  At the moment, however, I find myself unable to shake the red dragon that's been breathing down my neck all day long.  My palms are permanently scarred.  A fingernail on my right hand is still black.  My puppy is probably looking a months of recovery.  Panic stalks me every day.  

Just before I sat down to write this post, I sat by Juno for about 15 minutes, petting her ears in just the right spot to make her relax.  Before she fell asleep, she opened her mouth and licked my hand a little with her tired tongue.

This tiny moment of grace brought to you by an angry saint this evening.

September 29-30: My New Religion, Communism, Strike a Match

Merton discusses capitalism . . .

It is true that the materialistic society, the so-called culture that has evolved under the tender mercies of capitalism, has produced what seems to be the ultimate limit of this worldliness. And nowhere, except perhaps in the analogous society of pagan Rome, has there ever been such a flowering of cheap and petty and disgusting lusts and vanities as in the world of capitalism, where there is no evil that is not fostered and encouraged for the sake of making money. We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest. 

Being the son of an artist, I was born the sworn enemy of everything that could obviously be called “bourgeois,” and now I only had to dress up that aversion in economic terms and extend it to cover more ground than it had covered before—namely, to include anything that could be classified as semi-fascist, like D. H. Lawrence and many of the artists who thought they were rebels without really being so—and I had my new religion all ready for immediate use.

Warning:  I may sound like a socialist/communist in this post.

Merton has an intense distrust of capitalism.  He pins all the ills of the world on the excesses of a capitalistic society.  (I'm not too far behind him in this idea.)  Of course, Merton hasn't found religion yet.  Instead, he attaches himself to any belief besides the belief in God.  It just so happens that his belief du jour is communism.

I think all young people go through periods where they try on different coats to see which one fits them best.  I know I did.  For quite a few years in college, I thought I was a computer programmer.  Then, I studied fiction writing and was convinced that I was Flannery O'Connor reincarnated (a notion that O'Connor would have found particularly repulsive or hysterically funny--probably both).  Then, I took a poetry class at the urging of one of my mentors at the university.  I was hooked.  I wanted to be Galway Kinnell and e. e. cummings and Sharon Olds and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Of course, having been a student of poetry now for over 25-plus years now, I know that I am NOT and will NEVER BE Kinnell or Hopkins.  Sometimes, the best I can do is Helen Steiner Rice of Hallmark card fame.  And that's okay.  I have to learn to accept things as they are.  Nothing I do can change the outcome of certain situations, no matter how hard I hope, pray, or work.

Tonight, I accepted some hard truths.  These truths made me angry and sad and confused, all at the same time, anger being the dominant emotion.  I'm still angry, but now sadness is taking over.  I expect, near midnight, I will lapse into confusion and fall asleep in that mixed state.

It has been a very long year already.  I expect that the next three months will be more of the same.  Anger.  Sadness.  Confusion.  My life isn't going the way I thought it would.  In fact, it feels as if my life is going in the exact opposite direction I want it to go.  And nothing I do or say can fix it.  I simply have to watch it happen.

You see, a person I care about deeply has doused her life in gasoline and is about to strike a match.  She is turning her back on every person and thing that used to mean something to her.  I know that in the future, one or two or six or thirteen months from now, she's going to be filled with a whole lot of regret.  By that time, it may be too late.  Her kids will have lost faith in her love, and her spouse will be unwilling to be hurt again.

I have to accept all of that.  Not easy for me to do.  But my friend is hell bent of self-destruction.  Nothing will change her mind.  Believe me, I've tried.  She's too far gone, and she sees nothing wrong in her current trajectory.  Until she ends up alone on Christmas Eve or Day.  A good possibility.  Or until she gets sick, really sick, because of the choices she's making.  Another good possibility.

Hard truths.  Difficult to accept.  But I have to.  I will continue to pray for this person.  Hope for this person.  Love this person.  That's all I can do through this dark night of the soul.

It's what God expects Saint Marty to do.

August 30: Misery and Corruption, Prayer Thing, Puppy's Belly

Merton is possibly visited by the ghost of his father . . .

Where else did I like to go? St. Pudenziana, St. Praxed’s, above all St. Mary Major and the Lateran, although as soon as the atmosphere got heavy with baroque melodrama I would get frightened, and the peace and the obscure, tenuous sense of devotion I had acquired would leave me. 

So far, however, there had been no deep movement of my will, nothing that amounted to a conversion, nothing to shake the iron tyranny of moral corruption that held my whole nature in fetters. But that also was to come. It came in a strange way, suddenly, a way that I will not attempt to explain. 

I was in my room. It was night. The light was on. Suddenly it seemed to me that Father, who had now been dead more than a year, was there with me. The sense of his presence was as vivid and as real and as startling as if he had touched my arm or spoken to me. The whole thing passed in a flash, but in that flash, instantly, I was overwhelmed with a sudden and profound insight into the misery and corruption of my own soul, and I was pierced deeply with a light that made me realize something of the condition I was in, and I was filled with horror at what I saw, and my whole being rose up in revolt against what was within me, and my soul desired escape and liberation and freedom from all this with an intensity and an urgency unlike anything I had ever known before. And now I think for the first time in my whole life I really began to pray—praying not with my lips and with my intellect and my imagination, but praying out of the very roots of my life and of my being, and praying to the God I had never known, to reach down towards me out of His darkness and to help me to get free of the thousand terrible things that held my will in their slavery. 

There were a lot of tears connected with this, and they did me good, and all the while, although I had lost that first vivid, agonizing-sense of the presence of my father in the room, I had him in my mind, and I was talking to him as well as to God, as though he were a sort of intermediary. I do not mean this in any way that might be interpreted that I thought he was among the saints. I did not really know what that might mean then, and now that I do know I would hesitate to say that I thought he was in Heaven. Judging by my memory of the experience I should say it was “as if” he had been sent to me out of Purgatory. For after all, there is no reason why the souls in Purgatory should not help those on earth by their prayers and influence, just like those in Heaven: although usually they need our help more than we need theirs. But in this case, assuming my guess has some truth in it, things were the other way ’round. 

However, this is not a thing on which I would place any great stress. And I do not offer any definite explanation of it. How do I know it was not merely my own imagination, or something that could be traced to a purely natural, psychological cause—I mean the part about my father? It is impossible to say. I do not offer any explanation. And I have always had a great antipathy for everything that smells of necromancy—table-turning and communications with the dead—and I would never deliberately try to enter in to any such thing. But whether it was imagination or nerves or whatever else it may have been, I can say truly that I did feel, most vividly, as if my father were present there, and the consequences that I have described followed from this, as though he had communicated to me without words an interior light from God, about the condition of my own soul—although I wasn’t even sure I had a soul. 

The one thing that seems to me morally certain is that this was really a grace, and a great grace. If I had only followed it through, my life might have been very different and much less miserable for the years that were to come.

Merton doesn't believe in ghosts--or, as he says it, "everything that smells of necromancy."  However, he feels his father's presence in his hotel room, strongly, as if Owen Merton has reached out and touched his arm.  This presence causes Merton to do something he's never really done.  Pray.  Really pray.  Not just a rote recitation of memorized words.  No.  He begs to be released of all his chains, metaphoric and physical.  Merton is in spiritual pain, and he is asking for release. 

I've had similar moments in my life.  Not the ghost thing.  The prayer thing.  Times when I've gotten down on my knees in the middle of the night and begged for release.  Usually, these moments come after I've exhausted myself with fruitless effort.  Bargaining--If you do this for me, God, I'll dedicate the rest of my life to you.  Anger--Fuck you, God, if you don't help me out.  Begging--Please, God, I'm at the end of my rope here.  Help me out.  Exhaustion--I surrender, God.  I can't do this anymore.  You take care of it.  And surrender--I give up.  You win, God.  I'll do whatever you want.

Usually, when I surrender, that's when God steps in.

This afternoon, after I got back from a shopping with my wife and son, I didn't want to do anything.  I just wanted to take a shower, lie down on the couch, and stay there for about two months.  I haven't been sleeping all that well recently.  Late nights.  Early mornings.  Worrying about things over which I have no control.  Yet, I try to control them.  Because that's what humans do.  Play God.

Instead of surrendering to the sofa, however, I felt a nudge to take my puppy for a walk.  I don't know why.  I had tons of computer work to do for school.  I needed to prepare for my upcoming work week.   Laundry to fold.  Lunches to pack.  But I grabbed the leash, and out the door I went. 

My puppy was pulling me along, barking at cars going by, sniffing everything.  Distracted, I was mentally going over my to-do list for when I got home after the walk.  I wasn't paying attention to anything around me, until my puppy pulled me toward an elderly gentleman who was standing in his driveway, watching us walk by.

I slowed down and allowed my puppy to approach the man.  He bent down and started petting her, scratching her back. cupping her ears, saying, "Oh, you're a pretty girl.  Yes, you are."  My puppy rolled over on her back, exposing her belly, and the man laughed and started rubbing her belly.  "Oh, my, yes.  You are a good girl," he said.

The old man looked up at me, smiled, "She sure is friendly."

I nodded, said, "She loves everybody."

He nodded, smiled again, and said, "I just lost my girl."  I saw tears well up in his eyes.  "Had to put her down last week," he said.  He scratched my puppy's belly.  "She was in a lot of pain, you know," he said.

All of my struggles sort of melted out of my head, and I knew then why God had sent me on this walk.

"I'm so sorry," I said.

The man nodded, sniffed a little.  "She was a good girl, just like this one," he said.  My puppy jumped on his legs and licked his face.  "Oh, thank you," he said to her.  "I love you, too."

I stood there, let the man pet her as long as he liked.

Finally, he stood up and looked at me.  "Thank you," he said.

I nodded.  "Any time," I said.  "I'm really sorry for your loss."

He nodded, looked over at his house, and then back down at my puppy.  "She sure is a pretty girl," he said, nodding at her.

I pressed my lips together and tugged my puppy's chain.  She started bounding up the street.

I allowed God to lead me this afternoon.  Surrendered.  And He taught me a pretty good lesson.  One that humbled me greatly.  He allowed my puppy to bring comfort to a grieving man.  It was a miraculous thing.

And Saint Marty is thankful he was a witness to it.

March 10, 11, 12: God Save the King, Anger, Coronavirus

Merton gets in an argument . . .

In the hotel at Lucerne, John Paul and I nearly came to blows (Bonnemaman being on John Paul's side) over the question as to whether the English had stolen the tune of God Save the King from My Country 'Tis of Thee or whether the Americans had cribbed My Country 'Tis of Thee from God Sae the King.  By this time, since I was on Father's British passport, I considered myself English.

This little passage from The Seven Storey Mountain simply proves two things to me: 1)  people get angry and argue over the stupidest things, and 2) anger only makes people do and say things that they later regret.  I am at a point in my life where I have no energy for either argument or anger.  I simply won't accept them any more.  (Or I will TRY not to accept them.)

Since my last post, much has happened in the world, including a declaration of a worldwide pandemic of the coronavirus by the World Health Organization and the shutting down of practically all the universities in the state of Michigan (and around the country).  Yes, that's right folks.  I am now, and at least for the next three weeks, an online, distance-learning professor.  There's no arguing about that.  It's just simply happening.

Another thing there's no arguing about:  the coronavirus is causing a kind of mass hysteria in the United States.  Companies are price-gouging hand sanitizer and toilet paper (of all things!).  There's not a roll of TP to be found at our local Walmart right now.  Ditto, bottles of Purell and the like.  Go on Amazon, and most TP brands are currently out-of-stock.  Ditto, Purell. 

First, the coronavirus has nothing to do with gastrointestinal issues.  It's a respiratory infection.  Kleenex should be the paper product that is out-of-stock.  Second, the fact that large corporations are taking advantage of people at a time of heightened fears is disgraceful, but not surprising.  Big business will always take advantage of customers, given the opportunity.  Cant's argue with that.

Now, don't get me wrong.  Coronavirus is not something to be taken lightly.  It's serious business.  It was right to cancel all the major sporting events--basketball (NBA and NCAA), baseball (MLB), hockey (NHL), and the like.  Right now, the powers-the-be are attempting to control the spread of the virus, and thus reduce the threat of an uncontrolled outbreak.  That's smart.  Can't argue with that. 

However, in the cardiology office where I work, I spoke to patients today who were cancelling life-saving procedures because of the threat of coronavirus.  That makes no sense.  Heart problems can sort of kill people a lot faster than the coronavirus.  It feels as though people think we're going to go through another Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, which infected 500 million people worldwide and killed an estimated 20 to 50 million people.  Let me point out something that people seem to be missing:  IT WAS IN 1918!!  Medicine has sort of made a few advancements since then.

So, there's a lot of hysterical people out there, frightened out of their minds.  Fact.  There's nothing that anybody can do to calm people's anxieties.  That will come with time.  Fact.  It's not the end of the world.  It's a badly handled health crisis that will, eventually, be controlled.

Here's Saint Marty's wisdom for now: 

1. Calm the fuck down.
2. Wash your hands.  A lot.
3. If you are sick, stay home.
4. If you are really sick, go to the doctor.
5. Don't get angry.
6. Don't accept anger from anyone.
7. Don't argue with stupid people (it only raises your blood pressure).
8. Don't be a stupid person.

October 19: Electric Death, Anger, Mr. Rogers

A dreadful silence fell across the conference table as the commander of the Vl'hurgs, resplendent in his black jeweled battle shorts, gazed levelly at the G'Gugvuntt leader squatting opposite him in a cloud of green sweet-smelling steam, and, with a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers poised to unleash electric death at his single word of command, challenged the vile creature to take back what it had said about his mother.

Anger is never the answer in any situation.  The G'Gugvuntt and Vl'hurgs don't learn this lesson.  Their little misunderstanding kicks off a thousand-year intergalactic war.  In the end, nobody really understands why they've been fighting in the first place.  That's the way anger goes.

Last night, I wrote my blog post in anger, which is never a great idea.  When I woke up this morning, I was still angry, and I stormed around my house, silently stewing in my own juices of discontent.  I was setting myself up for an entire weekend of miserable fury, which would then spill over into next week.  Basically, I was the G'Gugvuntt leader, holding on to my feelings of insult and betrayal, ready to kick off a thousand-year grudge.

As I sat down to write this morning's post, I paged through my copy of Hitchhiker's and let my finger find my topic of the day randomly.  It landed on the above paragraph.  I read it.  Then, I reread it and laughed.  In his exaggeration, Douglas Adams is holding up a mirror to the ridiculousness of the human condition--we can turn a molehill of hurt into a mountain of acrimony.  (In Donald Trump's case, he's turned his molehill of egotistical slight against President Obama into a mountain of political stupidity that will cause the deaths of thousands of Kurds in Turkey.  That's the subject for another post.)  But you see where I coming from, don't you?  Acting out of anger never results in good things.  Ever.

So, today I have to regroup and figure out how to solve some problems.  I need to release my anger.  If I'm holding this anger in fisted hands, not letting go,  refusing to relax my fingers, then, when God comes along and offers me help, I'm not going to be able to reach out and take it from Him.  Because my hands are full of hurt and resentment. 

This is not an earth-shattering revelation.  In fact, it's something I was taught by Mr. Rogers when I was very young.  Yet, I need to keep relearning it.  I think this is about the 1,234,569th time for me.  Do I have a reason to feel angry?  I think so.  However, will that anger help anything?  No.  Absolutely not.  Mr. Rogers taught me that I have a right to feel all my emotions--happiness, anger, sadness, jealousy.  Emotions are real things, and ignoring them can be harmful. 

Therefore, today, I acknowledge my anger.  I allow myself to feel it.  Then, I let it go and move on.

As always, Saint Marty is a work in progress.

August 8: Any of My Secrets, Joy and Sadness, Lovely Messes

Zaphod and Ford and Trillian are still trying to unravel the mysteries of Zaphod's brain . . .

The scene around them was currently plunged into gloom.  Dark mists swirled round them and elephantine shapes lurked indistinctly in the shadows.  The air was occasionally rent with the sounds of illusory beings murdering other illusory beings.  Presumably enough people must have liked this sort of thing to make it a paying proposition.

"Ford," said Zaphod quietly.

"Yeah?"

"Just before Yooden died he came to see me."

"What? You never told me."

"No."

"What did he say?  What did he come to see you about?"

"He told me about the Heart of Gold.  It was his idea that I should steal it."

"His idea?"

"Yeah," said Zaphod, "and the only possible way of stealing it was to be at the launching ceremony."

Ford gaped at him in astonishment for a moment, and then roared with laughter.

"Are you telling me," he said,  "that you set yourself up to become President of the Galaxy just to steal that ship?"

"That's it," said Zaphod with the sort of grin that would get most people locked away in a room with soft walls.

"But why?" said Ford.  "What's so important about having it?"

"Dunno," said Zaphod.  "I think if I'd consciously known what was so important about it and what I would need it for it would have showed up on the brain screening tests and I would never have passed.  I think Yooden told me a lot of things that are still locked away."

"So you think you went and mucked about inside your own brain as a result of Yooden talking to you?"

"He was a hell of a talker."

"Yeah, but Zaphod, old mate, you want to look after yourself you know."

Zaphod shrugged.

"I mean, don't you have any inkling of the reasons for all this?" asked Ford.

Zaphod thought hard about this and doubts seemed to cross his mind.

"No," he said at last, "I don't seem to be letting myself into any of my secrets.  Still," he added on further reflection, "I can understand that.  I wouldn't trust myself further than I could spit a rat."

A moment later, the last planet in the catalog vanished from beneath them and the solid world resolved itself again.  

They were sitting in a plush waiting room full of glass-top tables and design awards.  

A tall Magrathean man was standing in front of them.

"The mice will see you now," he said.

Zaphod knows he can't be trusted.  That's why he performed surgery on his brain, so that he could hide memories from himself and others.  It's a way of protecting himself from himself, if that makes any sense.  A way to erase things from his mind that may be dangerous.

Memories are sometimes gifts; other times, they're curses.  There are absolutely some things in my life I would prefer to forget--failures and disappointments, moments of profound despair.  Those memories only provide pain to me when they flash through my brain.  They include things like the deaths of my sister and brother, my wife's struggles with mental illness and addiction. 

Of course, there are also moments that, if I could, I would relive again and again.  These include kneeling in the snow on Christmas Eve to propose to my wife; the day we married, and all the people who were there to celebrate with us; and the births of both of my children.  These are memories I call upon on my dark days, when joy is in short supply.

Don't start hunting for your bottle of Prozac.  I'm not about to lapse into a post of suicidal depression.  My point is actually fairly simple.  You can't have the good without the bad.  How would you know joy if you don't know sorrow.  That is one of the great struggles of life.  Life can't exist without death.  Love can't exist without heartbreak.  Rest can't exist without work.

On my way to Mackinaw City this week, my kids watched the film Inside Out.  I was driving, so I mostly listened to it.  There comes a moment near the end of the movie where the main character--Joy--realizes that she can't exist without her friend, Sadness.  Think about it.  Whenever you've cried over something--a lost job or a failed school exam or whatever--you immediately afterward experience a sense of calm.  You've walked through a dark forest, and you've reached the other side.  At least, that's the way I think of it. 

My life--everyone's lives--has been a series of encounters with both Joy and Sadness and their friends--Anger, Disgust, Worry, and Fear.  That's the way things work.  If we're not feeling all of these things, then we aren't really experiencing the whole gift of the universe that God gave us.  One experience calls up a whole multitude of emotions.

Try it out.  Step outside tonight, look up into the sky at the moon and stars.  You may feel joy and loneliness together.  Or sadness and awe.  Maybe a little fear.  That's what it means to be human.  We are just a bundle of contradictions.  Sometimes messy contradictions.  Happiness is messy sometimes.  Sadness, too.  Love, in particular, can be really messy.

But I wouldn't give up any of these emotions, whether they're joy or sadness or anger or disgust or loneliness.  The day you stop feeling is the day you stop living.  if you're really lucky, you have someone who's willing to join you on that journey.  Someone who will be there to laugh with you.  Someone who will pick up the pieces when you're falling apart.  Someone who will share in the messes of life.

Saint Marty has made some really lovely messes these past few days in Mackinaw City.

February 9: He Might Scream, Kubler-Ross, Self-Preservation

Here is President Zaphod Beeblebrox making his grand entrance on the planet Damogran . . .

He twisted the wheel sharply, the boat skidded round in a wild scything skid beneath the cliff face and dropped to rest lightly on the rocking waves.

Within seconds he ran out onto the deck and waved and grinned at over three billion people.  The three billion people weren't actually there, but they watched his every gesture through the eyes of a small robot tri-D camera which hovered obsequiously in the air nearby.  The antics of the President always made amazingly popular tri-D:  that's what they were for.

He grinned again.  Three billion and six people didn't know it, but today would be a bigger antic than anyone had bargained for.  

The robot camera homed in for a close-up on the more popular of his two heads and he waved again.  He was roughly humanoid in appearance except for the extra head and third arm.  His fair tousled hair stuck out in random directions, his blue eyes glinted with something completely unidentifiable, and his chins were almost always unshaven.

A twenty-foot high transparent globe floated next to his boat, rolling and bobbing, glistening in the brilliant sun.  Inside it floated a wide semicircular sofa upholstered in glorious red leather:  the more the globe bobbed and rolled, the more the sofa stayed perfectly still, steady as an upholstered rock.  Again, all done for effect as much as anything.

Zaphod stepped through the wall of the globe and relaxed on the sofa.  He spread his two arms along the back and with the third brushed some dust off his knee.  His heads looked about, smiling; he put his feet up.  At any moment, he thought, he might scream.

Saturday morning.  I'm at McDonald's with my wife, sitting on a sofa, having breakfast with my wife, trying not to scream, like Zaphod.  I realize that angry blog posts are not fun to read.  In fact, they are tiring.  I don't like reading them (unless they happen to be about Donald Trump, and then I will read them, comment on them, and share them with friends).  So, for this post, I promise to set aside my angry eyes, as Mrs. Potato Head says in Toy Story,  Anger is not going to solve the situation that I'm in right now, anyway.

Of course, if I am going through the Kubler-Ross stages of grief, I know what I'm in for in the weeks to come:

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

So, I think I've been in denial for several months, thinking that the other shoe wasn't going to drop.  (Deep down, I knew this was coming, however.  I just didn't expect it to happen as suddenly as it did.)  Now, I'm in anger.  So, if I follow the Kubler-Ross list, I just have to check off bargaining, depression, and acceptance.  Then I'll be back to the old Saint Marty.

I need this weekend time, away from my jobs and teaching.  Time to process.  Come to terms.  See this whole situation as an opportunity, not a death.  I have a feeling it's going to take a while for me to get to that place.  Most of the other people who work at the surgery center don't have as close a connection as I do.  (Some do.  Some of them were my sister's best friends.  They were at her hospital bed when they told her she had a life-limiting illness.  They came and visited her when she was home and on hospice.  They know.)  However, for the rest, it's just a place to punch a time clock.  

Humans are just like any other creatures on this planet, in a way.  It's all about self-preservation.  This weekend, most of my coworkers are in self-preservation mode.  Scrambling to figure out how they're going to find new jobs.  I get that.  I started that process myself yesterday at the cardiology office where I work on Fridays.  People have health insurance to keep, bills to pay, family to support.  Self-preservation.

For me (and a few others of my coworkers), it's more personal.  On Monday, I have to walk through the doors of that surgery center and tend to its death, because I work there (for now) and that's what is expected.  I can't change what's going to happen.

Now, this blog post is sounding a little more like bargaining, maybe even acceptance with a little depression mixed in.  Grief is such a mysterious thing.  I have a sense that I'll be pinballing between steps one through five for some time.

Please vote for Saint Marty (Marty Achatz) for 2019/2020 Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula at the link below.  Last day!  Polls close at 11:59 p.m. tonight:

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February 8: Amazingly Good at His Job, F-Bombs, A Mask

Back to the reception committee on the planet Damogran . . .

It consisted in large part of the engineers and researchers who had built the Heart of Gold--mostly humanoid, but here and there were a few reptiloid atomineers, two or three green sylphlike maximegalacticians, an octopoid physucturalist or two and Hooloovoo (a Hooloovoo is a superinteligent shade of the color blue).  All except the Hooloovoo were resplendent in their multicolored ceremonial lab coats:  the Hooloovoo had been temporarily refracted into a free-standing prism for the occasion.

There was a mood of immense excitement thrilling through all of them.  Together and between them they had gone to and beyond the furthest limits of physical laws, restructured the fundamental fabric of matter, strained, twisted and broken the laws of possibility and impossibility, but still the greatest excitement of all seemed to be to meet a man with an orange sash round his neck.  (An orange sash was what the President of the Galaxy traditionally wore.)  It might not even have made much difference to them if they'd known exactly how much power the President of the Galaxy actually wielded:  none at all.  Only six people in the Galaxy knew that the job of the Galactic President was not to wield power but to attract attention away from it.

Zaphod Beeblebrox was amazingly good at his job.

The crowd gasped, dazzled by sun and seamanship, as the presidential speedboat zipped round the headland into the bay.  It flashed and shone as it came skating over the sea in wide skidding turns.

In fact, it didn't need to touch the water at all, because it was supported on a hazy cushion of ionized atoms, but just for effect it was fitted with thin finblades which could be lowered into the water.  They slashed sheets of water hissing into the air, curved deep gashes in the sea which swayed crazily and sank back foaming in the boat's wake as it careered across the bay.

Zaphod loved effect:  it was what he was best at. 

Yes, some people thrive on attention.  Crave it, even.  Zaphod certainly does.  That's his job:  to distract.  He wields no actual power as President of the Galaxy.  Instead, he zooms around in boats and dazzles onlookers.  That's what everyone expects.  A show.

In a strange way, I think I'm a lot like Zaphod.  I put on a good show, in the classroom, at work.  I fool people into thinking that I'm always positive and happy and funny.  It can be exhausting, especially at the end of a week where being happy and positive has been difficult.  Sitting here, at my kitchen table, pounding away on this keyboard, I'm feeling . . . tired.

I know that, come Monday, people are going to expect me to rally my spirits, move on with the task at hand:  closing the place where I've worked for over 20 years.  I have to admit that I've been dropping a lot of f-bombs today, as in "I f---ing hate this place" and "F--- the whole healthcare system in this country" and "I just don't plain f---ing care anymore."  That's just an f-sampling.  If I were to make a full f-list, it would be quite long and extensive.

I guess I feel as though I've labored at a job for close to half my life, and it's going to be erased in the space of three weeks.  The powers-that-be don't get that.  It's just a liquidation, an entry in a computer that will be deleted to them.  They don't have to see the people they're affecting.  Don't have to look into their eyes and tell them they don't matter.  It's easy for CEOs and CFOs and CMOs (basically all the ass-Os that exist) to make life-changing decisions and then go home to their beautiful lives and cars and dinners and vacations and tax exemptions.

I know the stages of grief.  I know that I'm stuck in anger right now.  Drove to the cemetery after working today, sat in my car, looked at the snow piled on top of my sister's stone, and cried for quite a while.  The few long-time readers of this blog know I have a problem when change is thrust upon me.  It takes me a while to process it.  A long while.

Tonight, my wife and I are going out to dinner.  I plan to have a few drinks. (maybe more than a few).  Had a hard time keeping on my happy/positive mask at work today.  When I got home, I set that mask aside, along with my patience, calm, and sense of humor.

Saint Marty is not a pleasant person to be around at the moment.



Please vote for Saint Marty (Marty Achatz) for 2019/2020 Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula at the link below:

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April 4: War Would End, Wisconsin Dells, Getting Away

During the night, some of the locomotives began to tootle to one another, and then to move.  The locomotive and the last car of each train were marked with a striped banner of orange and black, indicating that the train was not fair game for airplanes--that it was carrying prisoners of war.

The war was nearly over.  The locomotives began to move east in late December.  The war would end in May.  German prisons everywhere were absolutely full, and there was no longer any food for the prisoners to eat, and no longer any fuel to keep them warm.  And yet--here came more prisoners.

Billy is captured by the Germans near the end of World War II.  He will only be in prison a few months.  In a way, Billy is lucky.  There is a sense of finality in these two paragraphs, as if the battles are already over and everybody is just waiting for a truce to be declared.

For the last couple of days, I've been pretty angry about something that happened on Sunday.  It has sort of consumed me, made me supremely tired.  Monday morning I woke up feeling exhausted.  This morning, I woke up feeling exhausted.  I am tired of being tired.  So, today, I am calling a truce.  I am not going to dwell on Sunday's events today.  I am going to try to rest, regain some sense of balance.

This weekend, I am going on a trip to the Wisconsin Dells.  My daughter has a dance competition at the Kalahari Resort.  That means a few days of water slides and amusement park rides and virtual reality games.  And a lot of driving.  When I get home on Sunday night, I have a feeling I'm going to be much more tired than when I left.

I am looking forward to getting away, though.  I'm not going to be able to leave last Sunday completely behind, but I am going to try.  As I said, it's time for a truce with my anger.  I'm sure, when I get back on Sunday, l will find all my negative energy where I left it.

For today, however, Saint Marty is thankful for the upcoming cessation of the hostilities of his mind.

March 11: Miracle of His Skin, God's Love Number Twenty-Two, Letting Go

After telling Ives his story, Ramirez hung around the apartment, and when Annie came home from running some errands, they had dinner.  To his surprise it was enjoyable to be with his friends, and particularly so in this instance, because even through his pain he could see that Ives seemed much happier since their return from England in early October.  Ives seemed less troubled, though he had moments of melancholy.  Still, he had the air of a man who had found something he had been looking for.  And to a certain extent Ives had, but because of Carmen's illness, he'd never gotten around to telling Ramirez about it.  One night, after dinner, he and Ramirez walked over to Central Park with his dogs, Rex and Alice, and Ives explained the miracle of his skin.

As I've said before in this blog, Ives is a modern-day Job.  Right down to suffering from afflictions of the skin.  After the murder of his son, Ives breaks out in sores on his arms, legs, chest, and back.  This condition plagues him for years, until he travels to England with his wife and experiences a kind of holy dream involving his son.  He returns happier, lighter, and cured of his skin ailment.  Ives begins the process of letting go, forgiving.

Letting go is difficult for anyone, especially if it's a worry or anger that's been festering for a long time.  It becomes easier, more comfortable, to live in fear or fury than to make a change.  I am speaking from experience.  I'm a person who lives comfortably with countless worries and doubts.  Off the top of my head, I worry about money, job security, teaching, money, mental illness, sexual addiction...Did I mention money?

Now, as a Christian, I should pray, offer my fears up to God, and let go.  Trust.  That's a lot easier said than done.  However, there's not a whole lot I can do about most of the fears I just listed.  I suppose I could sell my body for money, but that would probably only get me a can of Diet Mountain Dew once a week.  No, pretty much all of my anxieties fall out of my realm of control, and that pisses me off on a daily basis.

So, today, like Ives, I'm going to try to let go, just to see how it works for me.  I'm going to give up worrying about my teaching assignments for the fall semester.  With the death of my friend, who was the English Department head, everything regarding my future at the university is in flux.  I can't control anything in this situation.  Therefore, I'm writing this post, taking a deep breath, and letting go.  It's up to God now.

That's God's love number twenty-two for Saint Marty:  a night free of worry.

Sometimes, letting go isn't a good thing...

December 2: Searching for Grace, Joy Harjo, "Grace"

Searching for grace is difficult.  Because grace isn't something that can be found.  Grace is something that just happens.  Unexpectedly.  And it can take any form.  A cup of water on a scorching July afternoon.  A neighbor shoveling you out from a snow storm.  A song on the radio.  Or just a moment of quiet in the middle of a busy day.

I often labor under the belief that grace is something that can be earned.  It isn't.  Grace is something that's given freely.  Call it what you want.  God's love.  The Holy Spirit.  The Muse.  It's simply a gift.

Tonight, I'm not feeling grace too much.  I'm tired, anxious, sad.  Ready to go home after a long, long day.  I have another hour to kill in my office before I can do that.  Once I'm done with this post, I'm going to work on my Christmas poem.  I'm not feeling particularly inspired.  But I have to get started on it.  Poetry is about grace and inspiration, but poetry is also about hard work.  If you read a poem that seems absolutely effortless, I can guarantee you that poem is the result of a lot of sweat, tears, and perhaps anger.

The poem below is about grace in its many forms.  It feels effortless and beautiful.

But Saint Marty knows better than that.

Grace

by:  Joy Harjo

for Darlene Wind and James Welch

I think of Wind and her wild ways the year we had nothing to lose and lost it anyway in the cursed country of the fox. We still talk about that winter, how the cold froze imaginary buffalo on the stuffed horizon of snowbanks. The haunting voices of the starved and mutilated broke fences, crashed our thermostat dreams, and we couldn’t stand it one more time.So once again we lost a winter in stubborn memory, walked through cheap apartment walls, skated through fields of ghosts into a town that never wanted us, in the epic search for grace.

Like Coyote, like Rabbit, we could not contain our terror and clowned our way through a season of false midnights. We had to swallow that town with laughter, so it would go down easy as honey. And one morning as the sun struggled to break ice, and our dreams had found us with coffee and pancakes in a truck stop along Highway 80, we found grace.

I could say grace was a woman with time on her hands, or a white buffalo escaped from memory. But in that dingy light it was a promise of balance. We once again understood the talk of animals, and spring was lean and hungry with the hope of children and corn.

I would like to say, with grace, we picked ourselves up and walked into the spring thaw. We didn’t; the next season was worse. You went home to Leech Lake to work with the tribe and I went south. And, Wind, I am still crazy. I know there is something larger than the memory of a dispossessed people. We have seen it.

Not the Grace I'm talking about...

September 21: Compulsion, Profit, Poetry

"Spirit," said Scrooge submissively, "conduct me where you will.  I went forth last night on compulsion, and I learnt a lesson which is working now.  To-night, if you have aught to teach me, let me profit by it."

This version of Scrooge is quite humbled.  He's addressing the Ghost of Christmas Present and is obviously a very chastened man.  He has had the opportunity to view the mistakes he made in the past, and now he is ready to learn a few lessons from the next Christmas spirit.  Scrooge is no dummy.  He is trying to save himself from Marley's fate, and he knows the key to his salvation are these yuletide phantoms.

We all have made mistakes in our past, just like Scrooge.  I have made so many mistakes that I could start a separate blog completely devoted to them.  But my screw-ups are not the main issue.  The main issue is what I do in response to my screw-ups.  In response to his past, Scrooge became angry and bitter and mean.  While I can be all of those things, I prefer to learn from the mistakes I've made.  That's how you grow as a person.

Last night, I made a mistake.  I was tired and hungry when I got home.  My eleven-year-old daughter, who is in a state of constant adolescent hormonal imbalance, sat down on the couch to watch TV and do homework.  My daughter started struggling with her math problems.  I suggested she turn off the TV so she could concentrate better.  That was all it took to send my daughter into a fit of angry tears.

Now, you may have read the above paragraph and thought, "Saint Marty, you didn't do anything wrong."  I would agree with you, if the story ended as above.  However, after my daughter launched into her tantrum of weeping, I lost my temper and started saying things like, "You don't need to cry.  If you want the TV on, I don't care.  I was just trying to help you out.  You can sit up until midnight watching TV for all I care."  It escalated from there, until my daughter ended the episode by asking, "Why are you being so mean to me?"

I was a bad father last night.  I should have recognized my daughter's frustration.  I didn't.  I gave into my baser instincts--anger, sarcasm, and dismissal.  That unholy trinity has gotten in so much trouble in the past, I should have known better.  I need to learn from my mistakes, especially when it comes to my daughter.  Last night, she needed love, understanding, and compassion from me.  I think I was just afraid she was going to ask for my help with her math homework.

Saint Marty has learned his lesson.  Math and America's Funniest Home Videos don't mix.

If only it were this simple

August 31: Remove Me, Haunt Me No Longer, Anger

"Remove me!" Scrooge exclaimed.  "I cannot bear it!"

He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon him with a face, in which in some strange way there were the fragments of all the faces it had shown him, wrestled with it.

"Leave me!  Take me back.  Haunt me no longer!"

Scrooge is quite upset with the Ghost of Christmas Past by this point in the novel.  The Ghost ends his time with Scrooge by showing him some very painful scenes from his past.  Scrooge reacts with violence toward the Ghost, having experienced enough guilt and remorse for the time being.  He wants the Spirit to simply go away.  Scrooge is pissed.

I am quite angry today.  It's not really a focused anger.  I look at or think about something/somebody, and I get really mad.  I'm also pretty tired, so that doesn't improve my humor.  Thank goodness I don't have to work with a lot of people this morning.  Human interaction is not going to be one of my strong suits.  I might as well embrace the fact that, like Scrooge, I want people to go away.  Period.  Leave me alone,  Haunt me another time.

Working in a business office isn't really conducive to isolation.  The other person I'm working with this morning gets under my skin a lot.  The way she talks.  The way she interacts with patients.  The way she makes makes noises with her fork when she eats breakfast.  I just want to dig her heart out with a dull spoon.  Metaphorically, of course.  But, I just grit my teeth and bear it.

If my state of mind this morning is any indication of the way the rest of my day is going to proceed, perhaps I should find an empty room and practice some primal scream therapy.  Or take a nap.

Saint Marty is hanging on, but not by much.

Don't touch my desserts!

June 16: Very Merry and Very Happy, No Doubt, Letting Go

"I'll drink his health for your sake and the Day's," said Mr.s Cratchit, "not for his.  Long life to him!  A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!  He'll be very merry and very happy, I have no doubt!"

Mrs. Cratchit has a grudge against Scrooge.  For good reason.  Scrooge makes Bob's life absolutely miserable, and, by extension, her family's life, as well.  Scrooge doesn't pay Bob a living wage, and therefore keeps the Cratchit household in poverty.  Her children wear hand-me-downs, and their Christmas dinner is paltry, barely enough to feed everyone.  That's why Mrs. Cratchit hates Scrooge.  Scrooge perpetuates her misery.

Of course, Bob, being practically a saint (like me), tries to point out the error of his wife's attitude.  It doesn't do any good to hold grudges against anybody.  All that Mrs. Cratchit's anger accomplishes is to cast a shadow on the Cratchit family Christmas.  It makes her unhappy.

Yesterday, when I got home from grocery shopping, my son was on his Hot Wheel in front of our house.  I was still pretty angry about the broken TV, and I had every intention of letting him know it.  I stepped out of my car, and my son immediately started saying, "Sorry I broke the TV.  Sorry I broke the TV.  I sorry I broke the TV.  Sorry.  Sorry I broke the TV.  I sorry.  Daddy, I sorry I broke the TV.  Sorry.  Sorry."

It immediately disappated my anger and made me realize how ridiculous I was being.  My anger was useless.  It was only making me miserable, nobody else.  There's a reason Jesus says to love your enemies.  First, it makes you a better person.  Second, it takes the power away from your enemies.  They no longer control your life.  The third, unspoken bonus of loving your enemies is that it may just piss them off and make them feel really shitty.  I know my son's apology made me feel about as big as a flea.  It brought me back down to earth from Planet Anger.

That's the wisdom I wish to impart today.  If you hold on to anger instead of letting go, you simply look like an asshole.

It took Saint Marty a lifetime to learn that lesson.

Confessions of Saint Marty

February 7: Saint Moses

It's so easy to get angry and remain angry.  I inherited the ability to hold grudges for years, as evidenced by my last two blogs about Professor Ihateyourshittywriting.  That experience occurred over ten years ago, and I still go around telling people not to read her books because she was an asshole to me 15 or so years ago.  But I come across this trait naturally.  My father is the most stubborn man I've ever met.  He's, I believe, 83-years-old, and I don't think he's recovered from FDR being re-elected three times.  (My dad's a Republican in the let's-rid-the-world-of-the-red-menace-Ronald-Reagan kind of way.)  So, you see, I'm a bottle-fed grudge holder.

I'm not proud of this aspect of my personality.  It's un-Christian and unhealthy.  But I'm really good and funny at it, which makes me sort of a warmer, more charming version of someone like Bill O'Reilly (less the bigoted, small-minded, sphincter-headed, Republican opinions).  I've learned to accept my shortcoming and even turn it to my advantage in my blog posts.  I was watching a talk given by Ron Reagan Jr. on TV this weekend.  He was discussing how people who absolutely hated his father's politics would meet his father for a few minutes and come away saying, "Yeah, I don't agree with his policies, but he's a helluva nice guy."  I hope that's the way I come off.

You might be wondering where I'm headed with this little ramble.  Well, when I taught my Sunday School class yesterday, I had the people in it write about a time "when you gave in/surrendered to something you've been fighting a long time."  In my journal response, I found myself writing about a feud I've been having with a relative for years.  Let's call him Robert, because I harbor a dislike for the actor Robert Pattinson (mostly because he's young, good-looking, and over-rated).  My Robert is just as stubborn, mean, petty, and spiteful as I can be.  As I said, it runs in the family.  However, he is not half as witty or winning as me.  Therefore, he's just plain angry and ugly at times. Even thinking about my altercations with him right now causes my heart to pound a little faster and harder. As I wrote about him for Sunday School, I realized how much effort I expend at being angry at him, how tired and frustrated it makes me feel. It's like watching an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and realizing that the "before" condition of the house is better than the current condition of your own home. It just sucks the energy and happiness right out of you.

Moses, today's feast saint, is known for being a peacemaker.  He was a hermit who lived "in the region between Syria and Egypt" in the fourth century.  Because of his reputation for holiness, Moses was eventually persuaded to become bishop of the region, and he spent the rest of his life securing peace between the Romans and the Saracens ("nomad tribes of the Syro-Arabian desert").  Considering the current unrest in the Middle East and Egypt, the world could still use the healing powers of Moses.

And so could I.  It's so easy, however, to hang on to old hurts and habits.  I've gotten so used to disliking and dismissing Robert that to change my ways is tantamount to turning the Titanic.  Even though the iceberg's dead ahead, it takes a good mile of sea to alter course.  This is what I wrote in my journal for Sunday School:  "I'm just going to have to learn to love and accept Robert the way he is.  I know that's what Jesus does with me.  Therefore, I accept Robert, and all of his petty, childish, mean, competitive, cruel ways."

I guess Saint Moses would even want me to forgive him for Twilight and New Moon.

February 23: Saint Milburga

Anger is not an emotion I ever feel comfortable expressing. I prefer to deal with anger the normal way: I swallow it like six-alarm chili and let it eat away at my stomach lining. I know I inherited this trait from my mother who retreats into her shell like a hermit crab when confronted with a situation that sparks confrontation or some form of vitriol. For the most part, this tactic works for her. When she presses her lips together and withdraws into her cone of silence, I get the feeling I've just watched the torture and mutilation of a miniature schnauzer puppy. Guilt is her most effective weapon. My dad, on the other hand, is much simpler to read: if his voice rises a few decibels, face turns red, and words like "god dammit" and "son of a bitch" come from his mouth, he's pissed.

In some ways, I think my father's method is a little healthier, although he has a tendency to hold grudges longer than the Hatfields and McCoys. On the other hand, my mother simply acts as if no disagreement or argument has occurred after the fact. If I didn't know better, I'd swear she suffers some kind of narcoleptic spell when tempers flare, wakes up when order returns, and looks around like Rip Van Winkle, bewildered that everyone appears ready to cough up a hedgehog.

If you're wondering why I'm giving you this lesson in the archeology of familial anger, it's because I lost my temper today. Actually, saying I lost my temper is like describing the burning of the Hindenburg as static electricity. My bout of fury was the equivalent of a California wildfire, the kind that leaves behind acres of ash, smoke, and the skeletons of houses. Even as I was in the middle of my tirade, screaming like a rabid chimpanzee, I thought to myself, "Have you lost your fucking mind?"

I don't really remember all I said. I know I used some colorful verbiage and that my heart felt like it was crawling up my throat to do a flamenco dance in my temples. For a few moments, I had an out-of-body vision of myself: spit flying from my mouth, face flushing the shade of a boiled lobster, hands shaking like I was in detox. I swear at one moment I began speaking in tongues.

Let me say that my explosion was a long time in coming. It was the result of quite a few months of overlooking and ignoring and avoiding. I'm not going into details or naming names. This blog is not the forum for that, no matter how tempting that prospect is. (I'm not a big fan of revenge, but I do like justice. And if that justice resembles revenge, all the better.) However, when you start calling people on the carpet, you take the risk of sounding like a kindergartner, at best, and like an asshole, at worst.

So, let me clear up any confusion or questions for my readers right now: I was an asshole. And I was an asshole in front of a sizable group of people. That doesn't mean I didn't have good reason to be angry. That means I came off looking like Joaquin Phoenix on a bad David Letterman day: a little weird, a little scary, just this side of violent, but much better groomed. I'm not proud of the way I behaved. I'm not proud of the manner in which I expressed myself, although I should get a few extra credit points for creative use of the word "fuck." In the aftermath of the episode, I felt like a citizen of Hiroshima, walking around the city after the bomb, surveying the devastation, and saying, "Wha' happened?"

(On a side note, this encounter is so unlike me that most of the people present sat in dumbfounded silence. This may be because they didn't want to become collateral damage, but, for the most part, I think it was just plain shock. It would be like my father meeting John Wayne's secret gay lover. I saw it written on all their faces: "Who is this guy and why is he waving his gloves around like he wants to challenge someone to a duel?")

So, as I sat down to write this post, I was drawn to Saint Milburga, an eighth century princess who gave up her castle, Cinderella gowns, and tiaras to become a nun. She founded a convent, gave sight to the blind, and, in the last years of her life, came down with a "painful and wasting disease," according to my book. Of course, Milburga never complained about her illness. (Complaining, for me, is an art form I cultivate. It requires two parts smart ass to one part truth, with a dash of irony. I will never make the roll call of saints, unless God needs a patron of sarcasm.) But these facts aren't what drew me to this holy women. There I was, wallowing in the Pit of Despair, and I read Milburga's dying words: "Blessed are the peacemakers."

It's bad enough thinking you're an asshole without having a saint's last words verify it. So, I guess I've learned, the hard way, that anger, while a valid emotion, needs to be trained and focused, like a bonsai tree. It can be used as a catalyst for good and change and beauty. Jesus was a peacemaker, but he blew his top a few times. He whipped the money lenders and merchants in the temple, and he got a little testy with Peter.

But I'm pretty sure he didn't tell anyone to "fuck off."