January 8, 2025: "Aesthetics of the Shah," Darkness, "Listening to Christmas Music on January 8"

Okay, the poems in the first section of The Dead and the Living by Sharon Olds are pretty political.  Olds never shies away from difficult or controversial subject matter.  Stick with me.  There is always something beautiful in what Olds writes, even if that beauty is dark or tinged with violence.

Sharon Olds writes again about a terrible beauty . . .

Aesthetics of the Shah

by: Sharon Olds

(The poster, up all over town, shows

dissidents about to be executed in Iran.)

The first thing you notice

is the skill

used on the ropes, the narrow close-grained

hemp against that black cloth

the bodes are wrapped in.  You can see the fine

twist-lines of the twine, dark and

elegant, the intervals exact,

and the delicate loops securing the bagged

bodies to the planks like cradle boards.

The heads are uncovered, just the eyes

bound with rag.  Underneath

the mustaches like blood.  There is not a

white hair on the whole row,

not a strand.  They are young men and

still alive, swaddled to the neck in this

black bunting, the ropes lovely as

spider-lines against wet stone.

It snowed pretty much all day.  From the window of my office at the library, I watched white pile on white pile on white.  Every once in a while, a plow would rumble by, kicking up a blinding cloud of (you guessed it) white.

I have been avoiding news reports these last few days, unless they are about President Carter's memorial services.  Just can't deal with talk of annexing Canada, invading Panama, or buying Greenland.  Hatred and stupidity are simply not beautiful, period.  However, President Carter's work and life inspires me.  He reminds me what a person with a beautiful soul and intellect can accomplish in this broken world.

When I walk with my puppy at night now, I notice fewer and fewer Christmas trees glowing in windows.  Most houses have returned to huddled, snowy darkness instead.  That rather depresses me.  Tonight, I only saw the glow of TV screens in people's windows, painting everything a weird shade of blue.  

I don't understand this rush come January to jettison all the beauty of the Christmas season.  Darkness will come soon enough.  Why not hold on to the warmth and joy a little while longer?  In most Christian denominations, the Christmas season doesn't officially end until Epiphany, which falls on January 6.  For Catholics, the season doesn't end until the Feast of the Baptism, which is celebrated the Sunday following Epiphany.  

My Christmas decorations will be around for a while longer.  They make me happy at night when I turn off the TV and living room lights and sit on the couch, staring at the tree.  Darkness is right outside my window, pressing its nose against the pane, but there's also a bright moon and stars pressing through the clouds, as well.  Light is never far away.

Saint Marty wrote a poem today about music, possibility, and hope, if you can believe it.  It is based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Close your eyes and listen to music that has no words.  While you listen, what images come to mind?  Allow your mind to go to all areas of the world, into your memories, and into all areas of time.  Do certain instruments bring back childhood memories?  Do certain sounds come with emotions--happy or sad, fear or confidence?  Open your eyes and make a list of everything you saw.  Use at least five of those images in a poem.  If you are having trouble beginning, borrow the line, "I am skimming the edges . . ." from Kelli Russell Agodon's poem, "Yakima Ferry at Sunset."

Listening to Christmas Music on January 8

by: Martin Achatz

This morning I can actually see

red/green/gold lights, trees,

mangers and wreaths disappearing

like blue whales migrating

from one deep place in the Pacific

to another deep place, their flukes, 

humps of their backs packed

into storage boxes in the briny attic.

Soon, everyone will pull on

the winter jackets of their lives,

forget all the brightness

of the last few weeks, resume

their ordinary days, like the one

where my dad died in a hospital bed, 

Mom holding his hand, telling him

he was a good husband, a single tear

clinging to his cheek like an unshaved

whisker.  I don't know what song

they first danced to at their wedding,

but I like to think it was Doris Day,

maybe "Whatever Will Be Will Be,"

or "Secret Love," the violins filling

their young bodies with longing,

my mother whisper-singing into

his ear.  Neither knew how many

Christmases they would share together,

and perhaps they didn't care, swept 

up as they were in their closeness

to each other in that tinseled

moment as they swayed, held

on, slowly inching, inching 

slowly toward a future where 

I waited impatiently for them.

December 31: "We Shake with Joy," Joys and Sorrows, Happy New Year

One last Mary Oliver poem . . . 

We Shake with Joy

by:  Mary Oliver

We shake with joy, we shake with grief.

What a time they have, these two

housed as they are in the same body.

As the year of Mary Oliver draws to a close tonight, I thought it would be appropriate to end with probably one of her most well-known poems.  It holds so much wisdom and perfectly suits this meditation on New Year's Eve, when everyone looks back on the joys and sorrows of the past 365 days and looks to the future.  .

Let's start with grief.  My loyal disciples may recall that I struggled many months at the beginning of 2023 with darkness.  It wasn't until the beginning of summer that a little light started breaking through the cracks.  I think it was due to an accumulation of emotions from the past few years of loss after loss after loss.  For quite a while, I simply went through the motions of my days, my eyes buried in the ground in front of me.  Because looking up required a certain amount of hope on my part, and hope was in such short supply that it was practically nonexistent.  

Eventually, as the days grew longer,  I began to feel something completely foreign and wondrous:  happiness.  Instead of looking down, I raised my head to the heavens and felt sunlight on my face.  Slowly, slowly, the darkness receded, and I began to find small moments of grace each and every day.  Sure, I still experienced sadness,  It's impossible to be a human being on this broken planet without feeling isolated and angry and alone and sad every once in a while.  Yet, I was able to find laughter and enjoyment again--with friends and family and the simple blessings of every day.  Sunrises.  Poetry.  Chocolate.  Music.  Teaching.

Which brings me to joy:  I have so much for which to be thankful in this past year.  Healthy and happy family.  Work that I enjoy a great deal with people I enjoy a great deal.  Being named 2023 Writer of the Year at the City of Marquette Art Awards.  A new, reliable car.  My daughter graduating from college and moving on with the next phase of her life--medical school on the horizon.  A son who is finding his way in the world.  And friends, friends, friends who've lifted me up, given me so much love and support.

Mary Oliver is right.  Joy and grief can and must coexist.  You can't have one without the other.  They define each other, the way shadow defines light.  If you love deeply, you will mourn deeply.  If you dance, eventually, you will weep.  No getting around it.  Oliver embraces the entire messy universe, celebrates each firefly and teardrop.  

If you are in a dark place right now, know that light is coming.  If you are clothed in light right now, throw your arms out and blossom into something beautiful.

Saint Marty wishes you all a Happy New Year!

November 18: "Pink Moon--The Pond," Change of Seasons, Christmas Tree

Mary Oliver's soul is freed . . .

Pink Moon--The Pond

by:  Mary Oliver

You think it will never happen again.

Then, one night in April,

the tribes wake trilling.

You walk down to the shore.

Your coming stills them,

but little by little the silence lifts

until song is everywhere

and your soul rises from your bones

and strikes out over the water.

It is a crazy thing to do--

for no one can live like that,

floating around in the darkness

over the gauzy water.

Left on the shore your bones

keep shouting come back!

But your soul won't listen;

in the distance it is unfolding

like a pair of wings, it is sparking

like hot wires.  So,

like a good friend,

you decide to follow.

You step off the shore

and plummet to your knees--

you slog forward to your thighs 

and sink to your cheekbones--

and now you are caught

by the cold chains of the water--

you are vanishing while around you

the frogs continue to sing, driving

their music upward through your own throat,

not even noticing

you are something else.

And that's when it happens--

you see everything

through their eyes,

their joy, their necessity,

you wear their webbed fingers;

your throat swells.

And that's when you know

you will live whether you will or not,

one way or another,

because everything is everything else,

one long muscle.

It's no more mysterious than that.

So you relax, you don't fight it anymore,

the darkness coming down

called water,

called spring,

called the green leaf, called

a woman's body

as it turns into mud and leaves,

as it beats in its cage of water,

as it turns like a lonely spindle

in the moonlight, as it says

yes.

I have experienced what Oliver is writing about.  That moment, after a long season of ice and snow and cold, when you step outside and hear the tribes trilling.  For Oliver, it happens in April.  For me, smack dab in the center of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, that moment usually comes sometime in May.  The very air is transformed into song by the choirs of frogs, and I know that everything is becoming everything else.  And my soul crawls out of the bones of my body and becomes the air and music and frogs and water and stars.  

This happens at the cusps of every season--winter into spring into summer into autumn into winter again.  There is that one moment when your soul knows that everything is becoming everything else.  It's happening right now.  In the mornings, the grass flashes with frost.  I took my puppy for a walk this morning, and the puddles on the sides of the street were white with rime.  Night comes earlier and earlier, and the heavens are like crystal--fragile, sparkling with moon and starlight.  

Usually, long before this begins to happen, I'm already preparing for the moment.  In fact, you might say that I prepare for this moment all year.  It's not uncommon for me to be listening to Christmas music in August (or May or June or July).  Many a year, I've decorated my house for yuletide before I've even carved the pumpkins.  And, if you stop by my home for a visit in March, you may be greeted by the soft glow of electric sex from the leg lamp in my living room.  Yes, I'm that annoying neighbor who has a Christmas tree still glowing on his front porch on Easter Sunday.

This year, however, the light has come late.  I could say I've been too busy or too tired.  That I haven't had a single moment to celebrate the shift of seasons.  However, that would be a lie.

The truth is this:  darkness has more power over my existence than light right now.  As the days become shorter and shorter, I haven't reached for the light switch.  Instead, I've been wallowing in the night like some feral nocturnal pig.  There's a line from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol:  "Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it."  

I don't necessarily like the black mood that has descended on me, but I also find it difficult in my current state of mind to go through the usual holiday rituals.  Thus, until today, the boxes of decorations in my garage and attic have remained unopened as other houses up and down my street have been transformed into Clark Griswold fantasies.  

That changed today.  While my wife was at work and my son at a friend's house, I went about the work of decking my halls:  hauling out Rubbermaid totes of lights and garlands and ornaments and manger and trees.  I streamed one of my favorite holiday films, The Man Who Invented Christmas, and I assembled and lit our tree.  My wife and daughter finished the job tonight.

As I type the last few sentences of this post, my living room is simmering with light.  An angel is watching over me from the top of the tree, and I can feel my soul stirring a little in my bones.  Turning over like a bear from hibernation toward the scent of spring.

And Saint Marty says yes.  

October 21: "Sleeping in the Forest," Blinders, Hatred and Cruetly

Mary Oliver spends a night in the woods . . .

Sleeping in the Forest

by:  Mary Oliver

I thought the earth

remembered me, she

took me back so tenderly, arranging

her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds.  I slept

as never before, a stone

on the riverbed, nothing

between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated

light as moths among the branches

of the perfect trees.  All night

I heard the small kingdoms breathing

around me, the insects, and the birds

who do their work in the darkness.  All night

I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling

with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.

Oliver is surrounded by the small kingdoms of the wild--insect and bird--breathing their dark work.  She says she rises and falls all night, as if floating in a midnight pond or lake, facing a luminous doom, disappearing over and over into the goodness of the universe.

It's not an easy thing to lose yourself, to give up the insectile or elephantine struggles of every day.  Humans have a habit of wearing blinders, to blot out all else but what is in front of their eyes, and, of course, what is in front of their eyes is only what they choose to see.

In the last couple weeks, the Middle East has been torn apart by conflict and violence.  I've been aware, in a superficial way, of the ongoing hostilities, just like I'm aware in a superficial way of the ongoing violence in the Ukraine.  (Notice, I'm not using the word "war," but perhaps that's just me wearing my blinders.)  I guess I'm just like every other person--unless I'm directly affected by the violence taking place in the world, I don't pay as close attention as I do, say, to prices at the gas pump.

I'm not willfully ignoring the situation in Israel.  Simply put, I haven't had the opportunity to sit down and try to understand what's going on.  Thus, I haven't been actively worrying about the possibility of an all-out nuclear holocaust.  I truly don't get hatred, no matter what motivates it.  (This coming from a white male who has benefitted from white male privilege his whole life.)  

I have witnessed cruelty up close and personal.  I grew up with a sister who had Down syndrome and was the target of bullying most of her school career.  Ignorance and intolerance were classmates of my sister, never missing an opportunity to take advantage of her defenselessness.  

My sister loved singing, and she was in the high school chorus.  She didn't sing well, but she sang with more heart and passion than all the rest of the students in the chorus combined.  When she sang, she moved her shoulders, danced.  She couldn't help it.  Well, just before one performances, another member of the chorus told my sister to just mouth the words and not use her voice.  "You're making us sound bad," the girl said.  My sister stood on the stage that night, not moving or singing, looking like her puppy had just been killed by a car.

That's what I'm talking about--how human beings can be so cruel and hateful to each other.  I just don't get it.  

When countries go to war, innocent people die.  That's fact.  I'm not sure any cause or disagreement is worth that price.  And when someone is deliberately cruel and intolerant, innocent people suffer.  Nothing warrants that kind of heartbreak, either.

Don't wear blinders.  Look far.  Notice.  Open your mouth and speak up for the innocent and weak.  Be a vessel of peace instead of a conduit of hatred.

Saint Marty wants to make the world golden instead of filling it with darkness.

August 21: Measurement of the Whale's Skeleton, a Dream, Silence and Sleep

In the first place, I wish to lay before you a particular, plain statement, touching the living bulk of this leviathan, whose skeleton we are briefly to exhibit. Such a statement may prove useful here.

According to a careful calculation I have made, and which I partly base upon Captain Scoresby's estimate, of seventy tons for the largest sized Greenland whale of sixty feet in length; according to my careful calculation, I say, a Sperm Whale of the largest magnitude, between eighty-five and ninety feet in length, and something less than forty feet in its fullest circumference, such a whale will weigh at least ninety tons; so that, reckoning thirteen men to a ton, he would considerably outweigh the combined population of a whole village of one thousand one hundred inhabitants.

Think you not then that brains, like yoked cattle, should be put to this leviathan, to make him at all budge to any landsman's imagination?

Having already in various ways put before you his skull, spout-hole, jaw, teeth, tail, forehead, fins, and divers other parts, I shall now simply point out what is most interesting in the general bulk of his unobstructed bones. But as the colossal skull embraces so very large a proportion of the entire extent of the skeleton; as it is by far the most complicated part; and as nothing is to be repeated concerning it in this chapter, you must not fail to carry it in your mind, or under your arm, as we proceed, otherwise you will not gain a complete notion of the general structure we are about to view.

In length, the Sperm Whale's skeleton at Tranque measured seventy-two feet: so that when fully invested and extended in life, he must have been ninety feet long; for in the whale, the skeleton loses about one fifth in length compared with the living body. Of this seventy-two feet, his skull and jaw comprised some twenty feet, leaving some fifty feet of plain backbone. Attached to this back-bone, for something less than a third of its length, was the mighty circular basket of ribs which once enclosed his vitals.

To me this vast ivory-ribbed chest, with the long, unrelieved spine, extending far away from it in a straight line, not a little resembled the hull of a great ship new-laid upon the stocks, when only some twenty of her naked bow-ribs are inserted, and the keel is otherwise, for the time, but a long, disconnected timber.

The ribs were ten on a side. The first, to begin from the neck, was nearly six feet long; the second, third, and fourth were each successively longer, till you came to the climax of the fifth, or one of the middle ribs, which measured eight feet and some inches. From that part, the remaining ribs diminished, till the tenth and last only spanned five feet and some inches. In general thickness, they all bore a seemly correspondence to their length. The middle ribs were the most arched. In some of the Arsacides they are used for beams whereon to lay footpath bridges over small streams.

In considering these ribs, I could not but be struck anew with the circumstance, so variously repeated in this book, that the skeleton of the whale is by no means the mould of his invested form. The largest of the Tranque ribs, one of the middle ones, occupied that part of the fish which, in life, is greatest in depth. Now, the greatest depth of the invested body of this particular whale must have been at least sixteen feet; whereas, the corresponding rib measured but little more than eight feet. So that this rib only conveyed half of the true notion of the living magnitude of that part. Besides, for some way, where I now saw but a naked spine, all that had been once wrapped round with tons of added bulk in flesh, muscle, blood, and bowels. Still more, for the ample fins, I here saw but a few disordered joints; and in place of the weighty and majestic, but boneless flukes, an utter blank!

How vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid untravelled man to try to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merely pouring over his dead attenuated skeleton, stretched in this peaceful wood. No. Only in the heart of quickest perils; only when within the eddyings of his angry flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea, can the fully invested whale be truly and livingly found out.
But the spine. For that, the best way we can consider it is, with a crane, to pile its bones high up on end. No speedy enterprise. But now it's done, it looks much like Pompey's Pillar.

There are forty and odd vertebrae in all, which in the skeleton are not locked together. They mostly lie like the great knobbed blocks on a Gothic spire, forming solid courses of heavy masonry. The largest, a middle one, is in width something less than three feet, and in depth more than four. The smallest, where the spine tapers away into the tail, is only two inches in width, and looks something like a white billiard-ball. I was told that there were still smaller ones, but they had been lost by some little cannibal urchins, the priest's children, who had stolen them to play marbles with. Thus we see how that the spine of even the hugest of living things tapers off at last into simple child's play.

Another chapter regarding the skeleton of the sperm whale.  Its size and girth and weight.  As I said yesterday, Melville seems more interested in his digressions than his narrative.  In this way, he is a very postmodern writer, seems intent on circumventing our expectations as readers.  The story of Ahab and his mad quest for the White Whale is secondary to the meditations on all things whale, including skulls and spines.

In this way, Melville is also like a poet, I think.  When I sit down to work on a new poem, I find myself chasing rabbits down holes.  A poem that I thought was about losing car keys becomes an ode to loss and grief.  It's the way the mind works.  Or, at least, it's the way my mind works.  We don't think in words and sentences and paragraphs.  We think in image, which is the way we dream.

Last night (or this morning), I had a dream about the Cocker Spaniel I used to have as a pet.  His name was Nick, and he was crazy.  Not well-behaved at all.  He stole pizza from plates.  Chewed up shoes.  Barked and snarled at visitors.  He didn't play well with others.

In my dream, Nick was sitting on my lap, gnawing on a baby shoe.  It was small and white in his mouth.  Every once in a while, he would growl, as if he thought I was going try to take the shoe away from him.  I sat there, watching him slowly dissect the shoe with his teeth.  Tongue and sole and laces coming apart as I watched.  Eventually, it was just small pieces or leather and rubber and string.

Then, Nick jumped down from my lap and began walking away from me, toward a door.  I think it was the front door of my house, but I'm not sure.  It took him a long time to reach the door.  A really long time.  Like months.  He just kept walking and walking.

The door began to open, slowly, as Nick got closer to it.  And there was all kinds of light.  It was so bright that it turned Nick into shadow.  A dog-shaped piece of black construction paper.  Two dimensional, like the silhouettes you make in grade school art class.  And Nick kept walking into the light, getting smaller and smaller.  Eventually, he was just a speck of darkness, haloed in sun.

I couldn't get out of my chair to follow Nick.  I could only sit and watch him get swallowed up by whatever that light was.

I'm trying not to get all Freudian with this dream.  I'm simply accepting the images for what they were.  I haven't thought of Nick in years.  Maybe it was a dream about loss in some way, which I seem to be focused on quite a bit.

I've been struggling all day with melancholy.  Woke up with it, like a hangover.  It's been with me all day long.  Even now.  It's making it difficult for me to think clearly.  Can't seem to shake it.  Maybe it will be gone when I wake up tomorrow morning.  Maybe not.  I've had spells like this before.  Sometimes they last just a day.  Sometimes weeks.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for silence and sleep, because it means a new day is coming.

January 4: Stale Licorice, Feeling Sorry for Myself, Jospeh Brodsky, "1 January 1965"

I'm sitting in my office at the university right now, gnawing on a stick of old, stale licorice.  I don't know why I'm eating it.  It was in my desk cabinet, a package of Twizzlers opened before Christmas and forgotten.  Tough as beef jerky.

I've been feeling fairly sorry for myself this evening.  No particular reason.  It's just this gloomy haze that's settled on me.  I have a few more hours before my daughter will be done with dance.  The university campus is still pretty barren.  Classes don't start for another couple weeks.  I've heard a few people walking down the hallway.  But I can see darkness sitting at the bottom of my office door now.

Another bite of the licorice.

I have a New Year poem again tonight.  It's by Joseph Brodsky, from his collection Nativity Poems.  Disclaimer:  it isn't very uplifting until the very end.

Saint Marty is going to throw out the rest of the licorice now, before he cracks a tooth on it.

1 January 1965

by:  Joseph Brodsky

The Wise Men will unlearn your name.

Above your head no star will flame.

One weary sound will be the same—

the hoarse roar of the gale.

The shadows fall from your tired eyes

as your lone bedside candle dies,

for here the calendar breeds nights

till stores of candles fail.

What prompts this melancholy key?

A long familiar melody.

It sounds again. So let it be.

Let it sound from this night.

Let it sound in my hour of  death—

as gratefulness of eyes and lips

for that which sometimes makes us lift

our gaze to the far sky.

You glare in silence at the wall.

Your stocking gapes: no gifts at all.

It's clear that you are now too old

to trust in good Saint Nick;

that it's too late for miracles.

—But suddenly, lifting your eyes

to heaven's light, you realize:

your life is a sheer gift.

October 15: Room for Hope, Maxine Kumin, "Women and Horses"

There's always room for hope.  I have to remind myself of that fact from time to time.  If hope didn't exist, I doubt the human race would still exist.  Think about all the terrible things that have happened over the centuries.  The Black Plague.  Two World Wars.  The Holocaust.  Earthquakes.  Famines.  Tsunamis.  If hope wasn't around to come in and sweep away the despair, we would all be living on the brink of extinction, waiting for the next catastrophe to come along.

Yet, most people don't do that.  We choose, instead, to believe in goodness and love.  I choose that, anyway.  Yes, I get bogged down sometimes.  I let that darkness overtake me for a little while.  But, eventually, I turn toward the light.  That's what I'm trying to do tonight.  I've been bogged down, and I need to find my way back to hope.

That's what Maxine Kumin's poem is about tonight:  turning away from the dark past, embracing all things young, beautiful, and alive.

That's what Saint Marty needs tonight.  A little dose of beauty.

Women and Horses

by:  Maxine Kumin

After Auschwitz, to write a poem is barbaric.
                                                                 —Theodor Adorno

After Auschwitz: after ten of my father's kin--
the ones who stayed--starved, then were gassed in the camps.
After Vietnam, after Korea, Kuwait, Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan.
After the Towers. This late in the life of our haplessly orbiting world
let us celebrate whatever scraps the muse, that naked child,
can pluck from the still smoldering dumps.

If there's a lyre around, strike it! A body, stand back, give it air!
Let us have sparrows laying their eggs in bluebird boxes.
Let us have bluebirds insouciantly nesting elsewhere.
Lend us navel-bared teens, eyebrow- and nose-ringed prodigies
crumbling breakfast bagels over dog-eared and jelly-smeared texts.
Allow the able-bodied among us to have steamy sex.

Let there be fat old ladies in flowery tent dresses at bridge tables.
Howling babies in dirty diapers and babies serenely at rest.
War and detente will go on, detente and renewed tearings asunder,
we can never break free from the dark and degrading past.
Let us see life again, nevertheless, in the words of Isaac Babel
as a meadow over which women and horses wander.

Maxine and a horse

August 18: Darkness, Poet of the Week, Mary Oliver, "The Uses of Sorrow"

OK, so I wrote about dreams in my previous post.

I'm not feeling very dreamy this evening.  I'm feeling a little dark.  This week's Poet of the Week, Mary Oliver, knows a few things about darkness.  Sometimes, it's difficult to see the sun through the clouds.  But clouds are important, too.

Tonight's poem is short, but it captures my thoughts perfectly.

Mary Oliver sometimes makes Saint Marty think he should give up writing.

The Uses of Sorrow

by:  Mary Oliver

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

There can't be light without darkness

March 6: Light, Low Upon My Brow, Happiness



Anybody got a snuffer?

 "What!" exclaimed the Ghost, "would you so soon put out, with worldly hands, the light I give?  Is it not enough that you are one of those whose passions made this cap, and force me through whole trains of years to wear it low upon my brow!"

The Ghost of Christmas Past is a little put out with Scrooge here.  Scrooge has asked the Ghost to put on his cap.  There is a bright light issuing from the Spirit's head, and Scrooge has a "special desire to see the Spirit in his cap..."  Of course, the light has something to do with the light of Christmas, and the Ghost chides Scrooge for his request to dampen the light.

I kind of understand where Scrooge is coming from.  Yesterday morning, I was in a great mood, looking forward to a busy, productive day.  This morning, I just wanted to crawl back into bed and pull the pillow over my head, and it had nothing to do with feeling tired.  The energy and happiness I experienced yesterday just aren't there for me today.  If the Ghost of Christmas Present showed up at my front desk right now, I'd probably ask him to put on the cap, too, or at least wear it low upon his brow.  (I'm generally a person who keeps windows closed and curtains drawn.  I'm not a vampire.  I just don't like being that open and free with myself all the time, literally and figuratively.  Believe it or not, I don't blog about every detail of my life.)

Don't tell me all I need is a positive attitude.  I've heard all the lectures.  I've even taught a Sunday School class using a book titled something like Attitude Is Your Paintbrush or Attitude Makes You Paint Better or Brush Up You Bad Attitude.  It was all about choosing to be happy and positive.  It was a stretch for me.

My former former coworker comes back to work today.  There's a potluck.  I made brownies.  It's going to be over forty degrees by this afternoon.  My wife has a new job.  Things are looking up.  Really up.  Although the first thing my former former coworker is going to do when she shows up is open the blinds to the office.  She's likes sunshine.  In fact, my Ghost of Christmas Past would probably look a lot like her.

Saint Marty needs to find a good cap for his Ghost of Christmas Past.

January 17: Cold, Snow, Darkness

Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that the people ran about with flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct them on their way.  The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge out of a gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there.

Yes, this passage from the beginning of A Christmas Carol pretty much describes the morning.  The wind is blowing; snow is swooping in from Lake Superior; and the darkness is thick as cement.  I'm supposed to go for a walk with a coworker before work, and I'm not too sure about slogging through this weather.  I need the exercise, but it's going to be like Admiral Byrd reaching the South Pole.  Cold.  Snow. Darkness.

Chuck dreaming of a white Christmas

We've had a fairly mild winter in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  The stretch of bad weather this past week or so is the first we've had in a very long time.  According to everything I've read about weather in Charles Dickens' time, Dickens pretty much invented the white London Christmas.  In fact, Dickens single-handedly created much of the modern image of the holiday:  Christmas trees, goose and turkey, snow, ghost stories by a roaring fireplace, and snow everywhere.

January is a long, cold month for residents of the U.P.  It almost feels like one extended winter solstice.  I come to work in the dark.  I drive home in the dark.  However, I have noticed, in the last week or so, that the sky is not completely devoid of light on my 5 p.m. drive.  That warms my heart.

I'm not complaining about the weather this morning.  I live in the middle of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, surrounded by lakes.  I expect lake effect snow and wind and darkness this time of year.

Saint Marty just wishes he had a glass of hot chocolate, a roaring fire, and some chestnuts to roast (not to eat, just to roast).

May 10: Power Outage, New Poem, 27 Days

This morning, terrible thunderstorms rolled through the Upper Peninsula.  As I was getting ready to take my shower, the lights flickered once or twice and then went out.  I was plunged into complete darkness.  There are no windows in my bathroom, so it was the kind of darkness experienced in coal mines in Kentucky.  I couldn't see my hand in front of my face.  And the power stayed out for the rest of the shower.

As I drove to work, I drove through two cities that were completely black.  At work, I found this storm took out the power to almost 80% of the U.P.  That's a lot of dark showers.  And because of the power outage, schools were closed all over the place.  My daughter got the day off.

That was the inspiration for today's poem.  There's so much possibility in darkness.  So much can exist in it.  There's a reason that the Book of Genesis starts out in darkness.  It's a place of imagination and creation.  It's where life comes from.  And art.  Music.  Poetry.  All of that stuff comes, essentially, from the primordial darkness of Genesis.

Pretty deep, huh?  Well, there are 27 days left until SH arrives.  I'm trying to give it up to my Higher Power.  My Higher Power keeps giving it back to me in different guises.

Saint Marty's Higher Power is a pain in the ass sometimes.

Showering During the Blackout

This morning, early, as I stepped
Under the spray of shower head,
Hot needles of water scratching
My bald scalp and wide shoulders,
The electricity went out, plunged me
Into darkness complete as the first day
Of creation, before God spoke anything
Into being.  I stood in that windowless
Bathroom, contemplated possibility.
In this moment of prehistory,
I was Adam before Eve, before Eden,
Before mammal and fish and bird,
Before continent and sea, land and sky,
Sun and moon.  I was an idea in God's
Infinite mind, made in His image.
I hoped He looked like a young
Cary Grant or an old Richard Gere,
Killer smile and beautiful hair.
I hoped He had a body muscular,
Toned as an Olympic swimmer,
Hairless, sleek, and graceful.
I hoped He had blue eyes
Because I've always wanted
Blue eyes, a light denim color,
Comfortable as my favorite jeans.
I hoped His teeth were straight, white,
The marble of Michelangelo's David.
As I toweled my body in the dark,
Before a mirror I couldn't see,
I reveled, danced like Baryshnikov,
Prayed the light would never return,
So I could stay beautiful, strong, perfect.
I will never eat another apple, I promised
God in the blackness. Never.

Don't I look good?

June 28: Saint Vincentia Gerosa

I haven't written for quite a while about Nasty Bitch (NB). When last I blogged about her, she was still up to her old antics of being just plain mean to my wife. She was also dealing with some serious mental illness issues, which she was ignoring/denying. It was not a good situation.

Well, don't think that NB's prolonged absence from this blog indicates any shift in her mental health or general disposition. She is still pretty miserable and goes out of her way to make other people miserable. NB still treats my wife like she's a combination of Lizzie Borden and Eva Braun, and, as far as I can tell, has still not received the treatment she needs to make her situation any better. In short, nothing's changed.

In her, anyway.

I add that qualification to my previous statement because, obviously, something has shifted. NB is still behaving the same way, but I am not consumed by her petty comments, ignorant cruelty, and old-fashioned bitchiness. She has not changed one iota since I began praying for her at the start of Lent this past year.

So, eliminating NB from the list of possible suspects for causing the change in my relationship with her, that leaves only one possible conclusion: me, in the kitchen, with the lead pipe.

Yes, I am the person who has changed in some way. That's quite the statement, considering I like change about as much as I like eating blood sausage. In short, not very much. Picture Gordon Ramsay from Hell's Kitchen screaming, "It tastes like dogshit!" That's pretty much the way I feel about change.

Yet, here I stand naked before you in cyberspace (there's an image for you), a changed person. It obviously wasn't a sudden shift, or I would have bridled against it almost immediately. One of the best ways to insure that I don't do something is to tell me that I have to do it. Think of how many times your mother or father or grandparent or teacher sat you down and told you to finish your peas or apologize to your sibling or read chapter 11 in Introduction to Modern Philosophy and Political Theory. Even if you want to do it--were, in fact, planning to do it--there's the stubborn five-year-old in you that clamps your lips shut, crosses your arms across your chest, and refuses to do anything at all.

However, I have to admit: I'm a changed person. NB does the same things to piss me off; I just don't get pissed off any more, for the most part. This may seem like a small victory in the grand scheme of the universe, but, for me, it's akin to Barack Obama being elected president of the United States. It's huge. I don't know how it happened, when it happened, or why it happened. But it happened.

I now think of how sad and miserable NB is all the time. She could be better. She has the power to choose to be better. She chooses sickness. That's the crappiest thing about mental illness. The person who can help the most is the person who's sick.

I feel angry and sad and frightened sometimes, but I'm able to move beyond these emotions. I can enjoy my son's happy screams. I can get excited when my daughter goes for a run with me. I can say a prayer for some happiness and feel like somebody up above is listening. It's called hope.

NB is like a scratched LP. The needle just sits in the groove, playing the same two musical notes over and over. I don't think NB ever experiences hope in any form, and if I were in that situation, I'd be a pretty miserable person to be around, too.

Vincentia Gerosa knew about hope. Her whole life, in fact, was an exercise in hope. As a girl, she was orphaned, but she spent her youth and adulthood caring for the poor in her native Lovere, Italy. Hope. With Bartholmea Capitanio, she established the Sisters of Charity of Lovere. This religious order cared for the destitute, ill, and young. Hope. Vincentia Gerosa tried to shine light in darkness, instill hope in hopelessness.

I'm not saying I'll never get angry with NB again. I will. I know it. I'm human, and because I'm human, I'm broken. But, unlike NB, I choose to hope.

Do me a favor tonight. Say a prayer for NB. For anyone with mental illness. A prayer for change. For light. For happiness.

For hope.