January 26: Working Hard, , Daydream, "Ives" Dip

I have been working pretty hard all day long.  Eight hours in the medical office.  Then, I took my son to religion class.  I spent a couple hours at church, listening to a video about confession and penance.  At least, that's what I think it was about.  I was sort of reading and preparing for teaching while the video was playing.  (I know, I know.  I'm going to hell.)  After I got home and got my son in bed, I took out my laptop and did additional schoolwork for a couple of hours.  It is now 10:10 p.m., and my eyes are burning.

I got a lot done today.  I have a whole lot more to do tomorrow, but I'm in pretty good shape at the moment.  I have to admit that I did daydream a little bit tonight about having a full-time teaching job.  One where I could go to the university, sit in my office for a few hours, and get all my crap done during the day so that I could actually relax a little bit.  At the moment, relaxation for me is when I fall asleep around midnight.

It's a daydream in which I indulge frequently.  To have a somewhat normal life with normal hours.  I have never had that.  Ever.  Since I entered the work force, I have always held down, at the minimum, two jobs.  At times, that number has climbed to four.  Currently, I have a full-time job (the medical office) and a part-time job (the university).  And I'm exhausted.

I'm not complaining.  I have learned a long time ago that complaining doesn't do any good.  It just makes me more miserable, and it doesn't really make for compelling reading on this blog.  I'm not the first poet to hold down a day job.  Wallace Stevens sold insurance.  William Carlos Williams was a doctor.  (That's why most of Williams' poems are so short.  He wrote them on the back of prescription pads.)

My question tonight for my Ives Dip is pretty straightfoward:

Am I ever going to get a full-time teaching job at the university?

And the answer from Oscar Hiljuelos is:

Slowly [Ives] began to earn more money, to dress better, and finally to settle into a series of relaxing affectations that defined the creative people in his field.

More money.  Better clothes.  Relaxing affectations.  Looks like Saint Marty's going to finally get his dream job.  Or he's going to write pornography for a living.

Sometimes, I don't even find myself interesting

June 11: Archy the Cockroach, Ambitions, Insignificant

...[Archy the cockroach] embodied both Elwyn's ambitions as a writer and his sense of being small and insignificant, as well as his need to hide from people...

The young E. B. White loved the character of Archy the cockroach created by newspaper columnist Don Marquis.  Archy was a poet reincarnated as a cockroach, and White truly identified with Archy's poetic endeavors and low self-esteem.  The future author of Charlotte's Web struggled with the urge to be read and his almost pathological shyness.

I'm not a shy person, but I do struggle with ambition.  I tend to suffer from bouts of extreme jealousy.  Nobody is safe.  Favorite authors.  Friends.  Colleagues.  In my life, I have lots of writer friends.  Some of them are fantastic and deserve all the attention they receive.  Others are mediocre and still receive lots of attention.  Most of them have full-time professor gigs at the university.  You can see where this discussion is headed.

I'm tired of being the only poet cockroach that doesn't teach full-time.  I'm tired of being insignificant.  Yet, at the moment, I'm stuck.  I have sometimes had this daydream that I was Robert Frost in a former life.  That would mean that I'm Frost's punishment.  His cockroach.

Saint Marty doesn't find that very comforting.

This guy's probably got tenure

June 11: English, Books, Prayer of the Week

...They said they were schoolteachers and that they'd just come from Chicago and that they were going to start teaching at some convent on 168th Street or 186th Street or one of those streets way the hell uptown.  The one next to me, with the iron glasses, said she taught English and her friend taught history and American government.  Then I started wondering like a bastard what the one sitting next to me, that taught English, thought about, being a nun and all, when she read certain books for English.  Books not necessarily with a lot of sexy stuff in them, but books with lovers and all in them...

Holden meets these two nuns in a diner, and he strikes up a conversation with them.  He learns they are schoolteachers, obviously.  The one who teaches English starts asking him questions about books and plays he's studied.  Of course, being a teenage boy, he mind drifts toward sex.  Holden's mind almost always drifts toward sex.  He wonders how a nun who teaches literature deals with the "sexy" material.

It really doesn't matter if you're a nun or Brad Pitt.  If you're an English teacher, students feel uncomfortable discussing things of a sexual nature in a classroom.  I've been teaching college-level English students for over twenty years, and I can say, without a doubt, that, even though sex is on all their minds, they don't want to talk about it.  It's like the elephant in the room that everybody's ignoring.  That's one of the challenges of teaching young adults.

I love teaching.  I love the hormonal intricacies of young minds.  I love making students see things they've never seen before.  I taught a class a year or so ago called Good Books.  I chose books that all focused on mental illness.  We read about bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and the history of the medical treatment of mental illness in the United States.  It was a great class.  In fact, I would rank it as the best class I've ever taught.  I could actually see the changes in my students' attitudes and thinking.  It was exciting.

I would love to teach full-time at the university.  It's my dream job.  I've been doing it part-time for most of my adult working life.  I don't do it because it pays so well (it doesn't).  I don't do it for the glory (there isn't any).  I do it because I can make a difference in the world.  That may sound corny, but it's what I truly believe.  I can open minds and change people's ideas.  There's nothing better than that.

So, my prayer of the week is about teaching.

Dear God,

Yeah, I know.  You're getting tired of hearing from me.  But You did say that You'd always listen if I wanted to talk.

Well, You know I how I feel about teaching.  You know it's what I've wanted to do full-time for as along as I can remember.  I'm just asking if You could help me out a little bit here.  I'd like some job opportunity to open up at the university.  You don't have to kill one of the poets a week before classes start in the fall.  I don't want anything catastrophic to befall anyone.  I would just appreciate a few little miracles.

Here's what I need:  some publications, some awards in writing contests, and a full-time teaching assignment.  On the scale of miracles, those are pretty small, when You think about it.  The Israelites needed You to part the Red Sea and write some commandments down on stones.  All I'm asking for is an itty, bitty little job at a university.

Thanks for hearing me out.  I know You've got my back, no matter what, so I'll try not to worry (even if my job at the hospital gets eliminated).  You are the God of enough.  You've always given me and my family enough to get by.  I trust You.  Like I have any choice.

Your child,

Saint Marty

It's all about trust