July 30: Self-Consciousness, Troll Doll, Back Seat

It is ironic that the one thing all religions recognize as separating us from our creator – our very self-consciousness—is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures.

Dillard's right.  Human beings like to spend a great deal of their time being self-conscious, worrying about themselves and their needs.  I'm guilty of that all the time, in case you haven't noticed.  Dillard's saying that we're all so focused on our own worries that we ignore God's work in our lives.  And the needs of others.  Personal worries and wants tend to divide all of us from what's really important.

So, I'm going to get a little political for a moment.  (I know--that's not really shocking.)  But, after watching two weeks of political conventions and inflated rhetoric from Republicans and Democrats, I have to say that I'm a little tired of divisiveness.  I think there are issues almost everybody in the country can agree upon.  School shootings need to stop.  Violence against minorities needs to stop.  The majority of law enforcement officers are good, decent people trying to protect the citizens of the United States.  ISIS is a terrifying organization and a threat to world peace.  Health care isn't a privilege; it's a right.  Kids need to be able to get a good college education without ending up with debt that rivals the debt of a small Eastern European country.  Donald Trump looks like a troll doll.  These are all things we can agree upon.

These things unite us.  I want my kids to be safe.  I want police officers to be safe.  I want everyone to be safe--white, African American, gay, straight, transgender, Republican, Democrat, Christian, Muslim.  When I have a health problem, I want to be able to receive treatment that's not going to bankrupt me.  I'm a hard worker.  I have three jobs.  I want to be able to make enough money to pay my bills and provide for my family adequately.  And I want my kids to have a future that isn't saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in student loans.  Stop and ask anybody on Main Street in the United States, and I would bet that everyone would want these things, as well.

Here's the thing:  until we all stop pointing fingers and laying blame, the world is going to be full of hunger, war, terrorism, and poverty.  And God will continue to take a back seat.  When God takes a back seat, I'm not sure I want to be in the car.

That's just the way Saint Marty sees it.

A good laugh--that connects all of us

January 22: Curse of the City, Fearless, Terry Godbey, "Descent"

Self-consciousness is the curse of the city and all that sophistication implies.  It is the glimpse of oneself in a storefront window, the unbidden awareness of reactions on the faces of other people--the novelist's world, not the poet's.  I've lived there.  I remember what the city has to offer:  human companionship, major-league baseball, and a clatter of quickening stimulus like a rush from strong drugs that leaves you drained.  I remember how you bide your time in the city, and think, if you stop to think, "next year . . . I'll start living; next year . . . I'll start my life."  Innocence is a better world.

I love that Annie Dillard says that self-consciousness is a glimpse of "the novelist's world, not the poet's."  The novelist, with a wider canvas and more space and time, lives in a fictional city, surrounded by faces and storefront windows.  More opportunity for reflections.  The poet, however, lives in a cave on top of a mountain.  In a tent on the edge of a volcano.  In a cabin on the banks of Tinker Creek.  Singular.  Alone.  Innocent.

I think I spend way too much time worrying about people's opinions of me.  In the medical office where I work, I feel scrutinized.  Constantly.  How many phone calls I answer.  How many patients I register.  How much money I collect.  How many registration forms I scan.  How much time I spend answering, registering, collecting, and scanning.  At the university, I get observed by a full-time professor every fall; evaluated by students at the end of every semester; ranked by another group of full-timers every winter.  Someone is looking over my shoulder all day, every day.

I think that's why I write poetry.  The un-self-consciousness of it.  I don't have to think about other people.  It's just me and a pen and my journal.  That doesn't mean that audience never crosses my mind.  Of course, I want to publish.  However, I do not live in a poetic city.  I live in a poetic monastery.  A poetic Fortress of Solitude.  It's a smaller, more insulated place.  Poets are fearless.  No subject is too scary or dangerous or outrageous.

It is Friday.  I have a whole weekend of not worrying about work or teaching.  Nobody staring me down.  No cross-examinations.  Tomorrow morning, I will simply get up, go to McDonald's with my wife and son and sister, and do exactly what I want.  I will blog.  Read.  Maybe work on a new poem or draw a cartoon.

Saint Marty is living large and free and fearless for the next three days.

Terry Godbey is pretty damn fearless, too...

Descent

by:  Terry Godbey

          . . . imagine the eyes staring back
               ---Newsweek article on Andrea Yeats
                         July 2, 2001

Was it like gazing into an aquarium,
looking into their eyes,
tendrils of hair still swaying,
as the bubbles stopped,
their legs quit kicking.
Nothing could stop her
as she drowned her five children
one by one, last night's boats
and ducks bobbing nearby,
after sending her husband
off to work with a kiss.
Did she tell the boys she was doing it
for their own good, that worn phrase
from every mother's lexicon,
or was she silent,
though they surely weren't?
As she wrestled
the 7-year-old into the tub
next to his baby sister,
he must have screamed Mommy, no!
but the woman who read him stories
and kissed his skinned knees
was as irretrievable
as his little brothers, lined up on the bed
like dolls.  He must have seen
that her eyes, floating above him,
were already dead.

Somebody's always watching....