March 18, 2025: “Indictment of Senior Officers,” Boring, "Nothing Happened Today"

There are some days where I struggle to find anything to write about in my blog posts.  I literally sit and stare at my blank laptop screen, trying to conjure up any kind of interesting idea or anecdote.  I don’t always succeed

Hence, I sometimes don’t post for a few days and search for anything of note to discuss.  Recently, it’s been Agent Orange and his band of Merry Pranksters who’ve distracted me.  It always seems like people in power (however stupid or morally bankrupt those people are) inflict abuse on the less fortunate.

Sharon Olds writes about the abuse of power . . . 

Indictment of Senior Officers

by: Sharon Olds

In the hallway above the pit of the stairwell
my sister and I would meet at night,
eyes and hair dark, bodies
like twins in the dark. We did not talk of
the two who had brought us there, like generals,
for their own reasons. We sat, buddies in cold
war, her living body the proof of
my living body, our backs to the mild
shell hole of the stairs, down which
we would have to go, knowing nothing
but what we had learned there,

                                                    so that now
when I think of my sister, the holes of the needles
in her hips and in the creases of her elbows,
and the marks from the doctor husband’s beatings,
and the scars of the operations, I feel the
rage of a soldier standing over the body of
someone sent to the front lines
without training
or a weapon.

It's a pretty dark poem, written by Olds right as the United States was recovering from Watergate and the Vietnam War.  The President of the United States had been forced to resign, and the AIDS epidemic was in the wings, waiting to show its fatal face.

I don't remember much of those days.  I was fairly young and too wrapped up with my own dramas.  Puberty does that to you.  My memories are simply flashes, like a slide show running so fast the images all blur together.  I survived the Reagan years.  The first presidential candidate I voted for was Michael Dukakis.  My first kiss was so unremarkable that I've forgotten the name of the owner of the lips.  

You see what I mean.  Memory is a slippery thing, always swimming downstream on the way to an ocean or sea.  So I'm not sure how accurate my childhood recollections are.  I can barely remember what I had for dinner last night, let alone the name of my kindergarten teacher or first grade crush.

I do remember the guy who used to beat me up on a frequent basis in second grade.  (I eventually beat the shit out of him, and he left me alone after that.)  And I remember my second grade teacher who took pleasure in humiliating me in front of my classmates.  I could tell you about the person who used to take pleasure in holding me underwater in freshman swim class, and I know the days my brother and two sisters died.

I guess trauma and cruelty stick with me more than simple, daily pleasures.  I think that's what Olds' poem is getting at.  Pain (physical, emotional, and spiritual) leaves scars that don't heal.  Maybe that's why a boring day, like today, when nothing too damaging occurred to me (on a personal level--I'm not talking the horror show in Washington, D. C.), doesn't really take up too much space in my brain.  

I guess you could call my current state being and nothingness.  (Look it up.  It's an allusion.)

Saint Marty wrote a poem for today about absolutely nothing, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet . . . 

In a memorable Seinfeld episode, it’s proclaimed that Seinfeld is “a show about nothing.”. Of course, everything is about something, so for this expertise, write a poem about nothing—a poem where nothing fantastic happens.  Make sure to focus on the particulars of this regular day where nothing out of the usual happens.  Focusing on the specific details will help to ensure that your poem connects with its audience.

Nothing Happened Today

by:  Martin Achatz

I ate two hardboiled eggs and kumquats

for breakfast  The kumquats made my ears

ring and jaw ache from the sour.  I answered

an email from one of my students whose car

ran out of gas on the way to school for the third

time this semester, plus he's had two bouts

of food poisoning.  Salad for lunch--spinach, 

flax seeds, boiled chicken, shredded cheddar.

Watched the sky change from blue to gray

to black to gray, as if it couldn't make up

its mind.  A writer friend stopped by 

my office to give me a copy of her new

book--poems about growing up during

Adolf Hitler's rise to power.  She weeps

every night watching the news now.

I read a Mary Oliver poem, and a Sharon

Olds and a Joy Harjo because they were

beautiful.  Ate Chinese, drank beer for 

dinner with some old friends, decided

not to have a second beer since

I had to drive home and it was getting

dark.  Took my Australian shepherd

for a walk, let her bark at passing

cars and a squirrel tightroping

across a power line.  Changed into

my pajamas, sat down with my journal,

took out my fountain pen, write at the top

of a blank page "Nothing Happened Today."

February 3, 2024: "Late Speech with My Brother," Abuse, "Poetry Lesson"

Abuse is a generational thing, as you probably know.  It gets passed down like an old, shabby coat from person to person--father to son to grandson, for example.  Each person puts it on and feels the dark pull of its threads.  You can't donate it to Goodwill or St. Vincent de Paul.

Sharon Olds wants to talk to her brother . . . 

Late Speech with My Brother

by: Sharon Olds

I can see you now so vividly,

fine head titled back,

bold Teutonic jaw stiff, the

bristle along it glistens and your blue

eyes glitter like glass.  I have always

feared you would take your life, I have seen you

taking your life for thirty-five years,

taking it cell by cell.  I can see you

throw away your body as easily

as you thrust your whole thumb that time

into the moving machinery, so

gracefully, as if you understood

the union of science and the human.  I can see you

sending your body to hell as they sent us to

bed without supper, you're as big as them now

and as proud, you would die before you would break and say

Please, don't.  Please, don't

do their work for them,

don't produce a stopped life like some

work of art, the bottle fallen

away from your open hand.  It is not

too late, your life is ahead of you,

behind you is your thirty-five years of

death--I have seen a man of eighty

drop his parents' hands and just walk the other way.

I think Sharon Olds is trying to break the cycle of abuse and trauma in her family.  She lives in fear of her brother committing suicide because of their childhood experiences.  So, she begs her brother to walk away from his "thirty-five years of / death . . ."

It's hard to let go of the kind of trauma Olds' father inflicted on his wife and children.  In my life, people have hurt me.  Close people whom I loved.  Because of that pain, I have a difficult time with trust.  I don't take compliments well and constantly feel unworthy of love or affection.

Yes, I have been in therapy for years.  Every couple weeks, I unpack my issues.  There's a LOT of them.  I have been able to let go of some things.  Other things are not as easy.  They stick with me as if they are part of my DNA.  Maybe they are.

If you're waiting for me to go into more detail, I'm not going to.  That's between myself and my therapist.  What I will tell you is this:  I don't hang around mean people anymore, whether they're family members or friends.  Life is too short.  I prefer to surround myself with love and joy.  It's a choice that saves me quite a bit of heartache.

Tonight, Saint Marty wrote a poem about a person who loved him, unconditionally.  It was based on this prompt from The Daily Poet:

On this date in 1690, the Massachusetts Bay Company issued the first paper money.  Write a poem that involves the exchange of currency for goods.  To get you started, consider these facts:  President Andrew Johnson purchased the Louisiana Territory for three cents an acre.  The local Indians gave Peter Minuit the island of Manhattan in exchange for some hatchets, cloth, and beads with an approximate worth of sixty guilders (the equivalent of 1 1/2 pounds of silver).  Feel free to use any of these facts or consider any strange things you have spent money on and write about that.

Poetry Lesson

by: Martin Achatz

My mother, housewife with knobbed

knuckles and pepper hair, taught me

lots of things--how to fold socks,

make mashed potatoes, pray

the rosary, find blueberries, locate

Venus and Mars in a star-drunk sky,

read a book as if it was a friend

I hadn't seen in fifteen years.

When I bought a collection of Anne

Sexton poems for a college class, I studied

its words and lines the way Mom showed

me, trying to see the face on the page,

its freckles, wrinkles, errant nose hairs.

I wanted to make friends with Anne, offer 

her a hand if she fell, peanut butter 

sandwich when her body growled,

But I couldn't.  The book remained

a weird exchange student from

the Tadpole Galaxy, tongue sticky

with flies and mosquitoes.

Finally, I brought the book

to Mom, read her a poem

about Sexton pulling a girdle

down, squeezing her post-pregnancy

belly and thighs "thick as young pigs" 

into the garment, like a snake

wriggling back into its shed casing of skin.

Mom listened the way she always

did, as if I was giving her directions

to get into heaven or defuse

a ticking bomb, and her body began

to tremble, shoulders quake.  She pressed

a hand against her lips, and I was 

sure she was going to throw up.

Instead, her mouth opened, an air raid

siren rolling from between her lips.

Laughter.  Tears-rolling-down-her-cheeks

laughter that swelled and swelled until,

when I uttered the poem's last 

word, she collapsed back into her chair,

a marathoner at the end of mile 26.

I stared into her shining face, knew

she and Anne had just become best friends,

would share coffee together the following

morning, talk about how their bodies

used to glow like carved moonlight

under their husband's searching hands.

June 29: Concentrate on the Good Ones, Book Club, Praise Be

"So--" said Billy gropingly, "I suppose that the idea of preventing war on Earth is stupid, too."

"Of course."

"But you do have a peaceful planet here."

"Today we do.  On other days we have wars as horrible as any you've ever seen or read about.  There isn't anything we can do about them, so we simply don't look at them.  We ignore them.  We spend eternity looking at pleasant moments--like today at the zoo.  Isn't this a nice moment?"

"Yes." 

"That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough.  Ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones."

"Um," said Billy Pilgrim.

Shorty after he went to sleep that night, Billy traveled in time to another moment which was quite nice, his wedding night with the former Valencia Merble.  He had been out of the veterans' hospital for six months.  He was all well.  He had graduated from the Ilium School of Optometry--third in his class of forty-seven.

Now he was in bed with Valencia in a delightful studio apartment which was built on the end of a wharf on Cape Ann, Massachusetts.  Across the water were the lights of Gloucester.  Billy was on top of Valencia, making love to her.  One result of this act would be the birth of Robert Pilgrim, who would become a problem in high school, but who would then straighten out as a member of the famous Green Berets.

Valencia wasn't a time-traveler, but she did have a lively imagination.  While Billy was making love to her, she imagined that she was a famous woman in history.  She was being Queen Elizabeth the First of England, and Billy was supposedly Christopher Columbus.

Did Columbus and Queen Elizabeth the First ever meet?  I'm not sure, but that's beside the point.  The Tralfamadorian solution to things like war and genocide is simply not to focus on them.  Instead, they focus on good things, like days at the zoo or, in Billy's case, the conception of his first child with his new bride, Valencia.  Good moments, that will make everything alright.

I'm not sure I agree with this advice.  However, I do believe that dwelling on some past tragedy is not very healthy.  I have a had a lot of bad things happen in my life, as has everybody reading this post, I'm sure.  If I went around all day thinking about the death of my sister or my wife's mental illness or the election of Donald Trump, I wouldn't be able to function.  I would curl up on my bed, under the covers, in a fetal position, and just not live. 

Ignoring traumas from the past isn't a good practice, either.  That creates issues like depression, PTSD, and other forms of mental illness.  No, bad things must be dealt with, through talk therapy and group therapy and medical therapy and chocolate.  That's the only way to overcome bad shit.  I'm speaking from experience.

Tonight, however, I am going to have a good moment, one that Tralfamadorians would probably return to in times of war.  My book club is meeting tonight at my house.  This month's book is Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.  When I'm done typing my posts, I'm going to cut up some cheese for a little tray.  Then, I'll set the tables with dishes and cups, because Book Club is really just an excuse to eat.

It will be a lovely moment with lovely people whom I love.  Is there enough love in that sentence?  It will be a good night, filled with laughter and conversation. No war.  No end of the universe.  Just cheese and crackers and brownie trifle.  As the characters in The Handmaid's Tale say, "Praise be."

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for good friends.

January 31: Saint John Bosco

John Bosco is the patron saint of editors.  I can find no reason in his biography why he holds this title.  I was expecting him to have started a famous Catholic newspaper or edited the work of some great theologian.  At the very least, I expected him to be a writer of some renown.  He wasn't.  Born in 1815 in Turin, Italy, John was the son of sheep herders.  In fact, he spent much of his childhood tending livestock in the fields.  When he was about to enter the seminary, his mother told him, "If at any time you come to doubt your vocation, I beseech you, lay it aside at once.  I would rather have a poor peasant for my son than a negligent priest."

Since I'm writing this blog post about him, John Bosco obviously did NOT become a poor peasant or a negligent priest.  He founded two religious orders--the Salesian Society of St. Francis de Sales and the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians--both dedicated to the "care of young boys and girls."  Plus, it only took him 46 years to be elevated to the status of sainthood.  Considering the fact that some people wait hundreds of years for that distinction, John Bosco's canonization was like a hundred yard dash.

I really like the advice of John Bosco's mother.  Basically, it boils down to this:  if you can't do something right, don't do it at all.  Of course, it probably sounded a lot prettier in Italian.  I agree with her.  I hate doing any task in a half-ass manner.  If I'm involved with any project, if my name is going to be associated with it, I want it to be done well.

I could stop writing there.  After all, John Bosco is the patron saint of editors, so I'm sure he would appreciate the brevity and concision.  There is wisdom in what I have already written for young and old alike.  But, of course, I'm not going to leave it there.  It's too easy.  Too pat.

So, let me tell you a little story about my years in a PhD program at a prominent Michigan university.  I was taking a graduate-level fiction workshop.  I already had a Master's degree in fiction writing, so I felt pretty confident about my abilities.  I submitted a story to be workshopped.  On the night my piece was to be critiqued, the professor did what she normally did:  sat back, scratched her snaky mane of black curls, and said, "So what do you guys think?"  It wasn't an actual invitation for anyone in the class to speak.  This was our opportunity to wait for her to pronounce judgement, like Nero in the Colosseum.  After a minute of uncomfortable silence and shuffling papers, she opened her pinched mouth and said something along the lines of, "This story belongs in a high school class, not my graduate level fiction master seminar."  I'm sure what she said was more tactful than that, but the result was the same.  She had drawn first blood.  What ensued was an hour-long feeding frenzy.  When graduate student writers sense weakness, they turn on each other like teenage boys at a dodge ball game.  They do this either to deflect attention from their own inadequacies, or to draw attention to their ability to agree with the professor's opinion the most.  At the end of my hour of glory, I felt raw, exposed, eviscerated.  When the class took a break, I packed up my books and left.

I didn't retire to the fields of Turin to tend sheep, but I wasn't able to write fiction again for almost three years.  To this day, when I show off a story I've written, I have the impulse to immediately apologize for it.  A few months ago, when I was cleaning out a desk drawer, I found a copy of my infamous story from that painful night.  I have to admit, it wasn't the best thing I've ever written, but it wasn't that bad, either.

What I learned from that experience is that, as a teacher, I have the power to build up or completely crush my student's confidence and self-esteem.  I try to keep in mind the hurt I felt that night when I now enter the classroom as an instructor.  I don't want to inflict the same trauma on any of the boys and girls in my charge.  John Bosco would appreciate that, I think.

And my professor?  That bitch won the National Book Award for fiction.  Go figure.