May 14: Much Faith, Almost Full, Tilting Toward Summer

The boy believes in Santiago . . . 

"Santiago," the boy said to him as they climbed the bank from where the skiff was hauled up. "I could go with you again. We've made some money."

The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him.

"No," the old man said. "You're with a lucky boat. Stay with them."

"But remember how you went eighty-seven days without fish and then we caught big ones every day for three weeks."

"I remember," the old man said. "I know you did not leave me because you doubted."

"It was papa made me leave. I am a boy and I must obey him."

"I know," the old man said. "It is quite normal."

"He hasn't much faith."

"No," the old man said. "But we have. Haven't we?"

"Yes," the boy said. "Can I offer you a beer on the Terrace and then we'll take the stuff home."

If you can't tell, I've gone back to the beginning of The Old Man and the Sea, the night before Santiago heads out by himself for his encounter with the big fish.  The boy is there, helping the old man.  They talk about keeping faith, even in the face of almost three months of bad luck.  

That's a pretty tall order.  It's difficult to remain hopeful when it seems like the world has turned against you.  I'm in Calumet, Michigan, at the moment.  Tomorrow night, I'm performing in a radio variety show.  Reading some poems.  Acting in some skits.  Sometimes, I sing  songs.  It's a nice break from the stress of these last couple weeks.

Looking out the window of my hotel room just now, I can see the moon.  It's full.  Or almost full.  It's one of those moons that is just about as round and bright as can be.  Tomorrow night, there's going to be a full lunar eclipse.  A blood moon.  By the time the eclipse begins, I'll be done performing and back at the hotel, probably soaking in the hot tub.

The world, at the moment, is tilting toward summer.  These last couple days, the temperatures have been hitting close to 90 degrees.  For mid-May in the U. P., that's pretty unusual.  Everything is turning green, and, when I step out my front door at night, I can hear the peepers screaming down by Lake Bacon a few blocks away.  Yes, even the frogs can sense the shift.

At the start of every summer, I make big plans.  Lists of books I'm going to read.  Writing projects I'm going to complete.  Places I'm going to visit.  This year isn't any different.  I have plans.  However, I'm not going to detail those plans here.  If I do that, I'm setting myself up for failure.  

Instead, I'll just revel tonight in the possibilities of summer this evening.  The long days.  Moony nights.  That end-of-schoolyear fever.  Something ending.  Something beginning.  I remember that anticipation.  Like standing in line in 1977 to see Star Wars: A New Hope for the first time.

That's enough for Saint Marty tonight.

August 3: First Day of Vacation, "Ives" Dip, Sharon Olds, "Psalm," Adventures of Stickman

Welcome to the first official day of my vacation.  As with most of my vacations, I have big plans.  This morning, my daughter and I spent two hours cleaning our attic.  Eventually, she wants to have a bedroom up there, so it didn't take much pressure to get her help.  She knows that the sooner we empty that graveyard of old toys and books and clothes and Christmas decorations, the sooner we can start planning her fortress of solitude.

This afternoon, my wife has scheduled a session at the gym with a trainer.  Not really excited about it.  Once I get there and start moving, I'll be fine.  I just don't like the preliminaries--getting weighed, talking about diet, feeling ashamed.  You know, normal gym stuff.  There's way too many hard bodies around that place.  I think it's supposed to be motivating to see a person in really great physical shape.  It doesn't really motivate me.  It makes me want to put on another layer of clothing and find the nearest Dairy Queen.

And this evening, I'm going to finish reading Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe.  It's for my book club, which meets this Thursday evening.  I have less than a hundred pages left, so it shouldn't take too long.

I will be doing a little traveling tomorrow.  I'm spending the day and night in Munising, a little town about 60 miles away.  We're staying at a hotel with a water slide, and then, on Wednesday, we're going on a glass-bottom boat shipwreck tour, weather permitting.  Last week, the temperatures were in the eighties and nineties every day.  This morning it wasn't even sixty degrees at noon.  Depressing.

Sister update:  Things are not going well at the University of Michigan hospital.  Her blood counts are still low.  The tumor in her brain has grown incredibly large.  The doctor said that the MRI of her brain looked normal at the beginning of June.  The one that was done at the beginning of July looked as if some kind of alien had taken over her head.  My sister hasn't spoken or responded to anybody in the last couple of days.  I'm thinking that the goal, at the moment, is to get her well enough to come closer to home.  Then hospice care.

My question for Ives dip Monday is this:

Will my sister be able to come home soon?

And the answer from Ives is:

They waited in the dark together, neither saying for several moments what each thought:  that when the elevator was falling, they might have been killed.

Well, that's not very encouraging,  The only thing in that little passage that gives any hope is the "might" in the statement "they might have been killed."  There's a little hope in that "might" that something else could happen.  Something positive.  Something hopeful.

I have decided, because it's my vacation, to extend Sharon Olds' reign as Poet of the Week for seven more days.  Her book The Father is still speaking to me on a very deep level.

Today is also the debut of my new comic strip, Adventures of Stickman, which will be featured Monday through Friday until I run out of ideas.

Saint Marty needs to get ready for his training session now.  That means he needs to eat a Cosmic Brownie.

Psalm

by:  Sharon Olds

A lot of the time I just sat and held his foot.
The minister came, putting on his violet
stole, looping it over his head
as he walked in, an athlete binding
his wrist without thinking while approaching his event,
he read a Psalm, no longer going
close to my father and reading it next
to his ear, as he had when my father could still
turn his obedient unbeseeching
eyes toward a voice.  You could see he was
beyond all that, The Lord himself is thy keeper,
the Lord is thy defense upon thy right hand, etc., etc.,
So that the sun shall not burn thee by day,
neither the moon by night.  But my father would
stick his elbow out the window of his car, he
welcomed that L of fire on his elbow,
kiss of the god of long-distance drivers.
And he did not fear the heat of the moon, he would
go to the edge of the pool any night
with a cigar, turning it, watching its fibrous
woven fire.  Who knows what he was thinking,
or if he thought,
but he felt at ease with the moon and the sun
and his favorite table at each of his favorite
restaurants.  So don't tell me
he need not fear, as if, now,
death would protect him, The Lord shall preserve
thy going out, and thy coming in,
from this time forth forevermore,
Amen, Goddamnit.  I sat down
and held his foot again, cold
foot of the nearly dead--his feet that had
walked with the weight of me slung on his shoulder,
I breathed small breaths on them, and between each
puff I said my own psalm,
There is no good in this, there is
no good in this.  And yet I had never
held his feet before, we had hardly
touched since the nights he had walked the floor at my arrival.

Adventures of STICKMAN

July 24: Finding Words, Book Bag, Scraps

Then the oldest sheep spoke up.  "I agree that there should be something new written in the web if Wilbur's life is to be saved.  And if Charlotte needs help in finding words, I think she can get it from our friend Templeton.  The rat visits the dump regularly and has access to old magazines.  He can tear out bits of advertisements and bring them up here to the barn cellar, so that Charlotte can have something to copy."

The oldest sheep does convince the rat to go on a word hunt for Charlotte.  Templeton comes back with several choices, including CRUNCHY and PRE-SHRUNK and RADIANT.   The first two words are rejected pretty quickly, but Charlotte uses Templeton's third offering, which he found on a package of soap flakes.

Recently, I've felt a little like Templeton.  I've been gathering words without doing a whole lot with them.  Thursdays, I'm supposed to discuss a book I've been carrying around in my book bag.  I haven't been following through on this promise recently because I haven't been reading a whole lot.

In my book bag right now, I have an old Time magazine with a big article on summer book releases.  (I haven't read the article.)  I have my writing and drawing journals.  I have Fannie Flagg's new novel, which I have to finish by next Thursday for my book club.  (I'm about 50 pages into it.)  I have a poetry collection by Billy Collins.  (I will use this book for my second post this evening.)  And I have my grade book from the university.  Even Templeton wouldn't find a whole lot of interest in that collection of miscellany.

So, you see, that's why I haven't been writing any book reviews.  I haven't had the time.  At most, I've read a paragraph here, a page or two there.  Scraps, basically.  I have a week of vacation coming up and a list of things I want to read during those seven days.  That list includes at least one novel and a book written by a friend of mine.  Big plans.

I'll probably end up still reading scraps, anyway.  I'll want to spend time with my wife and kids.  My wife will probably force me to do something out of my comfort zone, like get in the car and drive three hours to go to a zoo that has tigers and horseflies.  Swimming.  I will certainly take my kids swimming.  My son has been begging to go to an actual beach.  He has no idea that last winter's deep freeze can still be felt in the lakes.  Lake Superior didn't completely thaw until June.  The waters are glacial.

I will have to be satisfied with scraps, but larger scraps.  Whole poems.  Entire chapters.  Maybe even a couple late-night binges where I gobble up a hundred or so pages.

Saint Marty can't wait.

She is in my book bag

June 6: Big Plans, Bigger Plans, Thwarted

I had big plans for today.  I was going to start a new poem based on Allen Ginsberg's Howl.  Didn't happen.  I was going to finish rereading Life of Pi.  Didn't happen.  I have bigger plans for tonight.  I'm going to pick up tickets for my daughter's dance recitals this weekend.  I'm going to go for a run with my son, pushing him in the stroller.  I'm going to clean the crap off the top of my dresser (there's a lot).

With the way my earlier plans panned out, I'm not expecting to actually accomplish a whole lot else today.  I will pick up the recital tickets.  I may go for a run with my son.  I'm thinking the dresser thing probably isn't going to happen.  The word for the day, kids, is "thwarted."  Can you say that with me?

Yes, it's pretty typical of me to have huge ambitions at the beginning of a day and then slowly chisel away, delete, rearrange, and reprioritize until my ambitions consist of (1) wake up; (2) try not to piss too many people off; and (3) go to bed.  I figure that, if I pick up those dance tickets, I'm ahead of the game.

Saint Marty isn't being lazy.  Just realistic.

It's good to have ambitions