September 4: Loaves of Black Bread, Labor Day, Coming to a Close

When the three fools found the communal kitchen, whose main job was to make lunch for workers in the slaughterhouse, everybody had gone home but one woman who had been waiting for them impatiently.  She was a war widow.  So it goes.  She had her hat and coat on.  She wanted to go home, too, even though there wasn't anybody there.  Her white gloves were laid out side by side on the zinc counter top.

She had two big cans of soup for the Americans.  It was simmering over low fires on the gas range.  She had stacks of loaves of black bread, too.

She asked Gluck if he wasn't awfully young to be in the army.  He said he was.

She asked Billy Pilgrim what he was supposed to be.  Billy said he didn't know.  he was just trying to keep warm.  

"All the real soldiers are dead," she said.  It was true.  So it goes.

There's something ominous about this passage.  Billy and Edgar and Gluck are the last to show up for dinner.  The communal kitchen is deserted.  All that's left is a war widow, some soup, and loaves of black bread.  Soon, Edgar will be dead.  The bombs will start falling in a matter of days.  Things are drawing to a close on the German front.

I have the same feeling this Labor Day Monday.  It has been slow and quiet.  I got up around 8:30 this morning, and I've been working ever since.  Lesson planning.  Grading. E-mailing.  Now, blogging.  I will be having one final summer dinner with my family this evening.  Then, early bedtimes for my kids.  School for them tomorrow.

I always feel this kind of pall on Labor Day.  Much is coming to a close.  Summer and all its attendant freedoms will be memories by tomorrow night.  For myself, this week is going to be incredibly busy. Aside from work work and school work and teaching work, I've got a couple poetry workshops (tomorrow afternoon and Thursday evening) and a poetry open mic (tomorrow night).  That's why I've been so busy today.  Trying to get my shit together for the entire week to preserve what little sanity I still possess.

Welcome to autumn.

Saint Marty is thankful this evening for all the check marks on his to-do list.

April 7: Speckles, Newness in the World, Happiness

Anything can happen; any pattern of speckles may appear in a world ceaselessly bawling with newness.  I see red blood stream in shimmering dots inside a goldfish's tail; I see the stout, extensible lip of a dragonfly nymph that can pierce and clasp a goldfish; and I see the clotted snarls of bright algae that snare and starve the nymph.  I see engorged, motionless ants regurgitate pap to a colony of pawing workers, and I see sharks limned in light twist in a raised and emerald wave.

Yes, Dillard is pointing out the newness of the world.  The possibilities that exist in goldfish and dragonfly and ant and shark.  As she says, anything can happen.  Blood moons.  August snowstorms.  Double rainbows.  Each day brings the possibility of the miraculous.

I am writing about miracles again.  It is almost 11 p.m., and the snow has started falling.  By tomorrow morning, there is supposed to be a fresh seven inches on the ground.  That means that I will be rising at around 4:30 in the morning to shovel.  If things play out the way I expect, my children will not be going to school tomorrow.

Across the Upper Peninsula, girls and boys are going to bed tonight filled with hope.  On the news tonight, the entire map was a blob of purple weather advisories . . . 

------------------------------

Yes, I started this post on Tuesday night.  Since that time, my kids have had two snow days.  No school.  Being cooped up in the house.  My son nearly killed my daughter today.  Twice.  They need to get back to school.  However, there is yet another bout of cold and snow descending upon us.  Another nine inches by Saturday morning.  I am literally running out of places to push the snow.

I am not a happy Saint Marty tonight.  Since Monday, I have been rising at 4:30 a.m. to shovel.  This morning, there was a three-foot wall of snow to move.  It took almost two hours.  I don't think my kids are going to get a miracle tomorrow morning.

There will be school.  There will be work.  And there will be snow.  A lot of it.

And Saint Marty will shovel.  A lot.

Saint Marty needs a little happiness . . .