October 3, 2026: “The Cold Outside,” Absence, “The Impossibility of Honey”

Greetings, faithful disciples.

In my last post, I gave you a catalogue of trials and tribulations, from a broken sewer line to a strong bout of clinical depression.  I’ve always believed that the Book of Job in the Bible was allegorical.  I mean, who would believe so much shit could be heaped on the head of such a decent, honest human being?  And with God’s approval?  Today, I would file Job’s story under nonfiction versus religious studies or philosophy.  In short, because of my experiences these last few months, I understand Job’s struggles a LOT more.  

I’m not looking for sympathy.  Everyone deals with sadness and calamities in their lives.  That’s part of being a human being.  The world is a broken place, with broken people calling the shots.  My little laundry list of struggles is pretty inconsequential compared to Super El Niños and genocides and famines.  In fact, most people would look at my life and think, “What the hell do you have to be upset about?”  And those people would be correct.

That doesn’t negate the power of prolonged depression.  Rationally, I know I’m a really lucky person—roof over my head, food in the fridge, warm clothes, and jobs that pay all the bills (for the most part).  Overwhelming sadness, however, is not rational.  It comes from a place of worry, fear, and anxiety.  

Marie Howe writes about looming dread . . . 

The Cold Outside

by: Marie Howe

Soon I will die, he said—that was during the heat wave that summer:

the orange lilies bending toward the house beside the driveway,

the heater in his car broken on blasting.

And the green shade flapped against the window screen,

as if what was out there inhaled and exhaled,

sliding away from the window, banging lightly against the sill,

sucked flat against the screen,

then peeling off and blowing out again.

Today the cold outside is bright and brittle,

heaps of hard snow between the sidewalk and the street,

and look, someone has shoveled a narrow path in front of the bakery,

so that, walking, a person has to step aside

and let another person through,

or pass through as the other person steps aside.

Soon I will die, he said, and then

what everyone has been afraid of for so long will have finally happened,

and then everyone can rest.

This is not an easy poem.  It’s a hard poem, filled with hard reality.  I’ve seen enough of my loved ones fade away and die to know both the pain and relief of loss.  My brother died suddenly, only after suffering for years with the effects of a stroke.  My sister, Sally, struggled for over two years, and my sister, Rose, was in and out of the hospital several times in the last year of her life.  Both of my parents ended up in nursing homes near the end of their lives.

Emily Dickinson wrote that Death “kindly stops” to pick up passengers, because, in the face of immense, daily anguish, mortality IS kind.  Terrifying (if you don’t believe in an afterlife), but kind.  I think Death did kindly stop for my mom, dad, sisters, and brother.  And don’t forget that the other passenger in Dickinson’s fatal carriage ride, besides Dickinson herself, is Immortality.  That’s the reason I find Dickinson’s vision of the Grim Reaper almost hopeful.  It’s not an end.  It’s a journey.

Of course, that knowledge doesn’t make the absence of someone you love any easier.  Loss is loss, and it comes with a whole trainload of grief.  As a way to combat my recent depression, I’ve been streaming episodes of the sitcom M*A*S*H.  It’s a TV show I have clear memories of watching with my entire family, every week.  Sure, my father was sort of MAGA-ish before MAGA was even a thing.  And yes, I didn’t always understand the episodes dealing with the insanities of war when I was younger.  But Hawkeye and BJ and Klinger and Colonel Potter and Hot Lips and the rest of the 4077th showed up every week, without fail.  

I often get stuck on movies and TV shows, watching them over and over and over to the dismay of my wife and son.  I reread books from my youth, as well.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve visited Holden Caulfield or Wilbur and Charlotte or Willy Wonka.  It’s comforting to know how the story ends, even if that ending is incredibly sad.  (Charlotte’s death destroys me every time.)  No surprises.

That’s very comforting for a person dealing with overwhelming fear and anxiety and sadness.  It’s like a security blanket.  Sure Holden has a breakdown at the end of The Catcher in the Rye, but he’s getting help and will eventually be reunited with his beloved little sister Phoebe.  Yes, the Korean War ends and Hawkeye returns to Crabapple Cove, but he survived.  If I know the fates of all these characters I love, I don’t have to worry about the future (which, for me, is a constant source of Sturm und Drang).  

Last Sunday, my puppy was attacked again by a German shepherd.  The attack resulted in some serious wounds that required surgery.  There is a row of staples running down my puppy’s back; it looks like she’s been zippered into her body.  She’s going to be alright, thank God.  However, this past week has been really difficult for me, mood wise.  Let’s just say that even Hawkeye couldn’t save my emotional life.

I’m going to be okay.  I tell myself that every morning.  Remind myself of it frequently during the day.  Repeat it as I’m drifting off to sleep.  It’s my mantra at the moment.  I’ll keep chanting it in my head until my puppy is healed, my plumbing problems are fixed, and you-know-who is no longer occupying the Oval Office.  At the moment, those things seem impossible.

But Saint Marty knows, as the song goes, the sun will come out tomorrow.  In the meantime, here’s a poem Saint Marty wrote about impossible things that are true . . . 

The Impossibility of Honey

by: Martin Achatz

Saturn is gas, would float in a bathtub

lead snows on Venus’s mountaintops

Jupiter’s red pupil is a 300-year-old storm

winter lasts 42 pitch-black years on Uranus

the Sun dances in Mercury’s skies—rising, stopping, reversing

one volcano on Mars could swallow Arizona

Neptune was discovered through math:  x + y = planet

ice mountains float across Pluto’s surface

and bees fly 750 miles on Earth to create 

          a single teaspoon of sweetness

March 5: I Was Happy, Smell of Bacon, Worry

 Merton doesn't realize that he's really happy . . . 

I was still without any formal spiritual direction, but I went frequently to confession, especially at St. Francis’ Church, where the Friars were more inclined to give me advice than secular priests had been. And it was in one of the confessionals at St. Francis’ that a good priest one day told me, very insistently: 

“Go to Communion every day, every day.” 

By that time, I had already become a daily communicant, but his words comforted and strengthened me, and his emphasis made me glad. And indeed I had reason to be, for it was those daily Communions that were transforming my life almost visibly, from day to day. 

I did not realize any of this on those beautiful mornings: I scarcely was aware that I was so happy. It took someone else to draw my attention to it. 

I was coming down Seventh Avenue one morning. It must have been in December or January. I had just come from the little church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and from Communion, and was going to get some breakfast at a lunch wagon near Loew’s Sheridan Theater. I don’t know what I was thinking of, but as I walked along I nearly bumped into Mark who was on his way to the subway, going to Columbia for his morning classes. 

“Where are you going?” he said. The question surprised me, as there did not seem to be any reason to ask where I was going, and all I could answer was: “To breakfast.” 

Later on, Mark referred again to the meeting and said: 

“What made you look so happy, on the street, there?” 

So that was what had impressed him, and that was why he had asked me where I was going. It was not where I was going that made me happy, but where I was coming from. Yet, as I say, this surprised me too, because I had not really paid any attention to the fact that I was happy—which indeed I was. 

Can I tell you that happiness is snow that comes in the middle of the night, coating everything, the way medicine paints a sore throat into numbness?  You wake up in the morning, and the world, once ugly with mud or dead leaves or bare black branches, is Ansel Adams stunning.  You wander through your backyard, not even recognizing it as your backyard.  It has become the most beautiful place you have ever been.

Happiness always arrives in that surprising way, like a cousin that travels all night and appears at your door at 7 a.m., asking for coffee and a bed.  You don't even realize you've missed the cousin until his face is staring at you across the kitchen table.  And then you find yourself smiling, laughing even, when you haven't smiled or laughed in a very long time.

That's what Merton experiences here--the kind of happiness that sneaks in the back door and is making you breakfast when you didn't even realize you were hungry.  And, for the rest of the day, you walk around with the smell of bacon sitting in your nose, feeling full, satisfied.  You don't even realize how happy you are, because you are simply too busy being happy.

I think most people walk around focusing on what's wrong in their lives.  I know I do.  For me, today was all about a person who's been making choices that are painful to witness and be a part of.  These thoughts have consumed me for a good portion of my waking hours, like a wine hangover.  No matter what remedy I've tried, I couldn't shake the lingering headache of the situation.

Here's the other truth I know:  most of us worry about things we have absolutely no control over.  Worry about unemployment or illness or weather or your sister's Alzheimer's or Donald Trump's bad hair.  I have zero control over any of these things.  No matter what I say or do, the person I spoke about in the above paragraph will continue to make bad choices.  Until she decides not to.  It has absolutely nothing to do with me.  Yet, I allow those bad decisions to control my happiness.  

Jeanne Calment, purportedly the oldest living person in modern times (she died at age 123), had something to say about worry.  Calment lived from 1875 to 1997 in Arles, France, and allegedly met Vincent van Gogh.  She said about the famous painter, "I met him at the end of his life . . . At the very end.  He was ugly.  He was blighted by alcohol."  Calment became known for her blunt talk and wisdom.  She outlived every person in her immediate family.  At the end of her life, she had become an international celebrity.  Here is what Calment said about worry:

"If you can't do anything about it, don't worry about it."

This philosophy seemed to have served Calment well.  She smoked from the time she was 21 until age 117, when she quit because she could no longer see well enough to light her cigarette.  She ate a pound of chocolate a week.  Hers was not a life of denial and frugality.  More like excess and indulgence.  Worry was not a factor.  She experienced great loss--her daughter died of pleurisy at the age of 36, her grandson was killed in a car accident.  Yet, she remained indefatigably happy, right up to her dying day.

I think we can all pick a card from Calment's deck.  Worry over things you can't change is pointless and harmful.  Tonight, I can say that it is also exhausting.  So, tomorrow, I choose to be happy, regardless of what happens during the day.  Because life is short.  Even if I live to be 123, I've already spent a good portion of my days chasing after a version of happiness that just might be impossible.

So, happiness tomorrow.  And chocolate.

Saint Marty can get behind those two miracles. 

February 16: Hrung Disaster, Worry, Leap of Faith

A little backstory on Ford Prefect . . .

Somewhere in a small dark cabin buried deep in the intestines of Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz's flagship, a small match flared nervously.  The owner of the match was not a Vogon, but he knew all about them and was right to be nervous.  His name was Ford Prefect.*

* Ford Prefect's original name is only pronounceable in an obscure Betelgeusian dialect, now virtually extinct since the Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster of Gal./Sid./Year 03758 which wiped out all the old Praxibetel communities on Betelgeuse Seven.  Ford's father was the only man on the entire planet to survive the Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster, by an extraordinary coincidence that he was never able to satisfactorily explain.  The whole episode is shrouded in deep mystery:  in fact no one ever knew what a Hrung was nor why it had chosen to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven particularly.  Ford's father, magnanimously waving aside the clouds of suspicion that had inevitably settled around him, came to live on Betelgeuse Five, where he bot fathered and uncled Ford; in memory of his now dead race he christened him in the ancient Praxibetel tongue.

Because Ford never learned to say his original name, his father eventually died of shame, which is still a terminal disease in some parts of the Galaxy.  The other kids at school nicknamed him Ix, which in the language of Betelgeuse Five translates as "boy who is not able satisfactorily to explain what a Hrung is, nor why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven."

That's a pretty depressing little history of a character in a novel that's supposed to be a sci-fi farce/comedy.  Granted, the details have a certain amount of the ridiculous in them, especially the translation of his Betelgeuse Five name.  It would sort of be like me being christened with a name that means "boy who will grow up into a man who worries too much about work and money and family and the color of the mole on his leg."

Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time knows my penchant for worry.  It's one of my hobbies, along with blogging, writing poetry, and listening to Christmas music at inappropriate times of the year.  (In my defense, there really is no time of the year when Christmas music is inappropriate.  It's the people around me that think Christmas music doesn't belong in May or June or July or August.)  Worry, on the other hand, is never really out-of-season.

Now, as a practicing Christian, I know that worry (and its source--fear) really is the enemy of faith.  There's that whole thing about trusting that God will give us everything that we need.  I mean, Jesus says at one point in the Bible, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?  Look at the birds of the air:  They do not sow or reap or gather into bard--and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?  Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?"

Yet, I indulge in worry every day.  Today's main worry:  money.  Of course, that is one of my constant worries.  As often happens, the day that my paycheck arrives (which was yesterday), it was already gone for the week.  And there are still bills to pay.  Groceries to buy.  Gas to put in the car so my wife and I can get to work.  Don't know how all that's going to happen, but I have to put it all in God's hands.  That's all I can do.

I think, maybe, in the 21st century, it's a little more difficult to do than when the disciples were walking around with Jesus Christ.  In those days, it wasn't unusual to see lepers getting cured and dead people climbing out of their tombs.  If a stranger knocked on your door at night, he might be your cousin Levi or he might be an angel travelling through Galilee on the way to Jerusalem to dispense some divine justice.  Signs of God's presence and generosity were a little easier to spot.

These days, you have to look a little harder, understand a little more deeply, to see signs of God's providence and generosity.  I don't expect, in the next day or so, for some distant relative whom I've never met to die and leave me a multi-million dollar inheritance.  Won't happen.  What I have to do is take leaps of faith.  This week, my leap of faith is that we will somehow make it to the next paycheck, which comes at the end of next week.

Faith and trust--those aren't top on my list of hobbies right now.  Worry still holds the top spot.

Saint Marty is a work in progress, as always.

March 19: Worry, Classic Saint Marty, "Cenotaph"

Doubt is not the opposite of faith.  Fear is.  Worry is a byproduct of fear.  I majored in worry in college.  In fact, I have a couple of advanced degrees in worry.  My main worry at the moment is scraping together enough money to get the brakes on my wife's car fixed.  It's a big worry.

Worry can ruin your day.  It can make your nights sleepless.  It can rob you of joy.  I had a pretty joyless evening yesterday because of worry.  I'm doing better today.

Four years ago, my worries were fairly limited.  In two months' time, my brother would be dead.  In a little over a year, my sister would be dead.  At the time I wrote this post, however, my biggest worry was finding a new job and going on a weekend trip.

Sort of puts things into perspective.  You can have a great job, beautiful house, fantastic car, and all the money in the world, but if you don't do anything good with all those blessings, God isn't going to be too impressed.  The richest person in the world makes the richest corpse in the world.

I think I prefer to live a George Bailey existence.  I may not have a lot of money or the best house or a great car.  However, I hope that, when I'm gone, the world will be a better place because I was here.

March 19, 2014:  Under the Stars, Unafraid, Letting Go

...Elwyn crept through the dark and aromatic marsh, past croaking frogs and unexplained scurries, to the boulders, beyond which distant lights shone on the water.  There this short and slight boy, who would run blocks to avoid a bully but who felt safe in the natural world where no other people were around, would shed his clothes and slip into the black water.  Quietly, so as not to attract attention, he swam in the darkness, floating under the stars, unafraid.

There's a great deal of beauty in the above passage from the E. B. White biography The Story of Charlotte's Web.  White, as a boy, was small and scrawny.  A target at school for all kinds of negative attention.  Yet, he had an escape.  A place where he could shed the troubles of the world and just be happy and worry-free.


When I first read this description of White skinny-dipping in the night, I envied the sheer freedom of it.  Letting go of life's problems is not easy for me.  They float above me, like the stars above Elwyn as he swims in the darkness.  When I climb into bed at the end of a day, they follow me, make it difficult for me to fall asleep.

I'm going on a trip to Wisconsin this weekend.  My daughter has a dance competition.  It's going to be a quick little sojourn.  We leave Friday morning, and she competes that night at 10 p.m.   Saturday is free.  We'll probably swim in the hotel pool.  Shop (without buying anything--we don't have the cash).  Maybe go out to eat (we may splurge and buy KFC).  Then we come home on Sunday and dive right back into life.

I'm looking forward to the trip, but it certainly will not be without its share of stress.  We will not be skinny dipping or stargazing.  It's not that kind of hotel.  However, it will be a different kind of stress.  Not I'm-losing-my-job stress.  More do-I-take-this-off-ramp stress.

I don't think I will ever find a place where I can let go of worries.  When I'm in a new place, I simply find new worries.  Or I pack the old worries in my suitcase with my toothbrush.  But I do have moments of bliss.  Reading my son a story at night.  Listening to a Roger Miller song.  Sitting next to my wife at night, not talking, just being together.

That's Saint Marty's idea of floating under carefree stars.  Unafraid.  Happy.

Just take Exit I Don't Give a Shit...

A poem I wrote a few years ago, mourning the loss of my daughter's childhood . . . 

Cenotaph

 by:  Martin Achatz

My daughter wants to call me “dad”

Instead of “daddy,” slips it into talk

The way I first used “fuck” as a teen,

As if the word is purge in her mouth,

Putrefaction of the pig-tail girl who sat

On my lap, rested her cheek against

My chest, listened to my heart ebb,

Flow with need for her young needs.

Her legs, tan and scabbed from summer,

Stretch like a catafalque beneath her,

As tall now as her three-year-old

Self, a vigil of womanhood,

Watched over, waked by a father

Unwilling to let algor mortis take hold,

Infant blood replaced by antimony salts,

Blush into lividity, the pale of time.

I know there’s nothing to do, no

Spiritual banquets to recite, bolstering

The levees against puberty, the cortege

Of her body into the bruising world of adults.

I see the badge on her bedroom door,

Pink, soft petals, so much like the palms

Of her baby hands, delicate as breath,

A ribbon with gold letters:  “Beloved Child.”

In this almost teen, this in-between

Creature, I mourn for myself, sit

Beneath the canopy, admire her

Monument, all limb and blossom,

Full of promise, the pull for boys, body,

Sweat, want.  I stand in this columbarium,

Think I hear my daughter’s cry, a small,

Urgent sound for milk, for bottle,

For my solid, stupid arms.

July 22: No Disasters, Losing a Child, Siv Cedering, "Figure Eights"

Prepared for the worst and having heard even more stories--everyone he knew seemed to have a story about a baby falling out of a window--Ives was truly amazed that no disasters had struck.

Ives is a worrier.  All his life, Ives worries about the birth parents he never met.  When he becomes a father, he shifts his concerns to his kids.  As a baby, his son has a heart murmur.  Ives spends countless nights next to Robert's crib, watching him breathe, waiting for disaster to strike.  Of course, disaster eventually does pay a visit to the Ives family.  Robert is killed just before graduating from high school, and Ives' worries shift again.  It takes him decades to recover from the grief of losing his son.

As a father myself, I understand Ives' worries.  Right now, my daughter is at Bible camp.  She's surrounded by responsible adults, pretty much supervising her every waking moment.  Yet, I worry about her.  Last night, my son decided to go searching for his 14-year-old cousin in the woods.  For several panicked minutes, my wife had no idea where he was.  Worrying is part of the parental job description.  And the ultimate fear is losing a child.

My parents have already faced this fear with my brother's death last year.  Tonight, we celebrated my father's birthday with apple pie, his favorite.  When my sister said "make a wish and blow out the candle," I know what my father wished:  he wished for my sister's recovery from lymphoma.

I worry all the time about my kids.  I worry for their safety.  Their health.  Their happiness.  Their success.  I try to make my kids' lives better than mine.  Of course, I can't buy them a five-bedroom house with three bathrooms and a swimming pool.  I can't get my daughter the newest iPhone.  I can't get my son the motorized four-wheeler he wants so he can ride around the neighborhood.  But I think my daughter and son are, for the most part, happy.

Childhood is so short.  One day, a kid is learning to ice skate at the local rink.  The next day, she's packing her stuff in a car and moving into an apartment with friends, finally free from the worries of her father and mother.  That's a normal part of life.  It's also terrifying, for parents at least.

I know I can't protect my kids from all things bad.  They will have car accidents.  They will have their hearts broken.  They will get fired from jobs.  They may quit college.  I just hope that they can avoid major problems, like teenage pregnancy and drug/alcohol addiction and Republicans. 

Saint Marty has one big worry right now:  should he have Pringles or ravioli for a snack?

Figure Eights

by:  Siv Cedering

My back toward the circle, I skate,
shift my weight, turn toward the center.

The skill is in the balance, the ability
to choose an edge, and let it cut

its smooth line.  The moon is trapped
in the ice.  My body flows

across it.  The evening's cold.  The space
limited.  There is not much room

for hesitation.  But I have learned a lot
about grace, in my thirty-third year.

I lean the cutting edge:  two circles
interlock, number eight drawn

by a child, a mathematician's
infinity.

I've made a decision--one last worry

March 11: Miracle of His Skin, God's Love Number Twenty-Two, Letting Go

After telling Ives his story, Ramirez hung around the apartment, and when Annie came home from running some errands, they had dinner.  To his surprise it was enjoyable to be with his friends, and particularly so in this instance, because even through his pain he could see that Ives seemed much happier since their return from England in early October.  Ives seemed less troubled, though he had moments of melancholy.  Still, he had the air of a man who had found something he had been looking for.  And to a certain extent Ives had, but because of Carmen's illness, he'd never gotten around to telling Ramirez about it.  One night, after dinner, he and Ramirez walked over to Central Park with his dogs, Rex and Alice, and Ives explained the miracle of his skin.

As I've said before in this blog, Ives is a modern-day Job.  Right down to suffering from afflictions of the skin.  After the murder of his son, Ives breaks out in sores on his arms, legs, chest, and back.  This condition plagues him for years, until he travels to England with his wife and experiences a kind of holy dream involving his son.  He returns happier, lighter, and cured of his skin ailment.  Ives begins the process of letting go, forgiving.

Letting go is difficult for anyone, especially if it's a worry or anger that's been festering for a long time.  It becomes easier, more comfortable, to live in fear or fury than to make a change.  I am speaking from experience.  I'm a person who lives comfortably with countless worries and doubts.  Off the top of my head, I worry about money, job security, teaching, money, mental illness, sexual addiction...Did I mention money?

Now, as a Christian, I should pray, offer my fears up to God, and let go.  Trust.  That's a lot easier said than done.  However, there's not a whole lot I can do about most of the fears I just listed.  I suppose I could sell my body for money, but that would probably only get me a can of Diet Mountain Dew once a week.  No, pretty much all of my anxieties fall out of my realm of control, and that pisses me off on a daily basis.

So, today, like Ives, I'm going to try to let go, just to see how it works for me.  I'm going to give up worrying about my teaching assignments for the fall semester.  With the death of my friend, who was the English Department head, everything regarding my future at the university is in flux.  I can't control anything in this situation.  Therefore, I'm writing this post, taking a deep breath, and letting go.  It's up to God now.

That's God's love number twenty-two for Saint Marty:  a night free of worry.

Sometimes, letting go isn't a good thing...

October 27: Caring God, Worry, "Web" Dip

I'm sitting in church right now, listening to a deacon speak about the sacrament of baptism.  We've talked about water and grace.  The church's stained glass windows are dark now.  The sun has set, and shadows are sitting in the pews at the back of the sanctuary.  I can smell the wax of the votives melting under the flickering flames.

The deacon just used the term "caring God," as in "our God is a caring God."  A God who dispenses mercy and love.  There used to be a belief that, if a person wasn't baptized, that person would never know salvation.  That belief would exclude all non-Christians from heaven.  Jews.  Muslims.  Buddhists.  All going south for eternity.

That's not part of the Catholic faith any more.  The catechism teaches that people who lead good lives--Godly lives--will be saved.  The deacon just said, "We are bound by the sacraments.  God isn't."  So, if you're a good person and an atheist (or gay or Rastafarian or a member of the Tea Party), you are still a cherished child of God.

I find a lot of comfort in that tonight.  I worry so much.  I worry about my son.  About paying the mortgage.  The mid-term elections.  My daughter having a boyfriend.  My wife's bipolar disorder.  My car's transmission.  Basically, from morning 'til night, I worry.  I need a caring God.

My biggest worry tonight:

Will I get my midterm exams graded by Wednesday?

And the answer from the world wide Web:

"Hurray!" cried everybody.

"Thank you very much," said Charlotte...

Saint Marty will take that as a "you betcha."  That's Yooper for "yes."

 

God even cares about her

March 19: Under the Stars, Unafraid, Letting Go

...Elwyn crept through the dark and aromatic marsh, past croaking frogs and unexplained scurries, to the boulders, beyond which distant lights shone on the water.  There this short and slight boy, who would run blocks to avoid a bully but who felt safe in the natural world where no other people were around, would shed his clothes and slip into the black water.  Quietly, so as not to attract attention, he swam in the darkness, floating under the stars, unafraid.

There's a great deal of beauty in the above passage from the E. B. White biography The Story of Charlotte's Web.  White, as a boy, was small and scrawny.  A target at school for all kinds of negative attention.  Yet, he had an escape.  A place where he could shed the troubles of the world and just be happy and worry-free.


When I first read this description of White skinny-dipping in the night, I envied the sheer freedom of it.  Letting go of life's problems is not easy for me.  They float above me, like the stars above Elwyn as he swims in the darkness.  When I climb into bed at the end of a day, they follow me, make it difficult for me to fall asleep.

I'm going on a trip to Wisconsin this weekend.  My daughter has a dance competition.  It's going to be a quick little sojourn.  We leave Friday morning, and she competes that night at 10 p.m.   Saturday is free.  We'll probably swim in the hotel pool.  Shop (without buying anything--we don't have the cash).  Maybe go out to eat (we may splurge and buy KFC).  Then we come home on Sunday and dive right back into life.

I'm looking forward to the trip, but it certainly will not be without its share of stress.  We will not be skinny dipping or stargazing.  It's not that kind of hotel.  However, it will be a different kind of stress.  Not I'm-losing-my-job stress.  More do-I-take-this-off-ramp stress.

I don't think I will ever find a place where I can let go of worries.  When I'm in a new place, I simply find new worries.  Or I pack the old worries in my suitcase with my toothbrush.  But I do have moments of bliss.  Reading my son a story at night.  Listening to a Roger Miller song.  Sitting next to my wife at night, not talking, just being together.

That's Saint Marty's idea of floating under carefree stars.  Unafraid.  Happy.

Just take Exit I Don't Give a Shit...

February 28: Gimme a Brake

Well, we still have to get the brakes on my wife's car checked out.  I'm sure it's going to be expensive, and I'm sure we're not going to be able to afford it.

Aside from that, I don't know what to say.  We have to get that car fixed.  To get my daughter to dance class.  To get my kids to school.  To get my wife to church so she can work in the nursery.  To do a lot of things.

I'm going to take it one step at a time.  On Monday, we will get an estimate for the repairs.  Then, we will start thinking about the money.

This weekend, I'm going to try to relax.  I'll go to McDonald's tomorrow morning for breakfast.  A dollar sausage biscuit and a dollar Diet Coke.  I'll go to mass on Saturday night.  I'll go to worship on Sunday morning.  I'll watch the Oscars Sunday night.  I will not worry.

Worry is useless.  Worry is soul-killing.

Saint Marty needs a brake.

I waste a lot of time worrying

October 9: Nobody Won, Daughter's Dance Team, Barely Awake

"Nobody won," I said.  Without looking up, though.                       

Holden has caused his school's fencing team to lose their meet.  He lost their foils on the subway.  That means they showed up to compete and found out all of their equipment was A. W. O. L.  Holden can't seem to hold anything together in his life.


My daughter was supposed to dance with her school's dance team at a J.V. football game tonight.  She didn't dance.  This afternoon, she came home from school sick.  She threw up.  She threw up yesterday morning before school, too.  However, she said she was just really hungry, and she went to school.  Today, my daughter couldn't dance at the football game because the school nurse is one of the helpers with dance.  The school nurse said my daughter wasn't allowed to participate.

My daughter was disappointed.  She went to bed before 9 p.m.  The last time she did that was when she was six or seven years old.  She must be really tired.  I haven't heard a single noise from her bedroom since she went in there.  Either she's playing with her iPod, or she really went to sleep.  My money's on the iPod.  Before she went to sleep, she told me that she never would have called to come home if she knew it would interfere with dance.

Worries tend to multiply during the day.  I find that if I wake up with a worry on my mind, at the end of the day, that worry has multiplied into dozens of additional concerns.  I was worried about my daughter this morning because she wasn't feeling well.  Tonight, I'm worried that my daughter won't go to school tomorrow morning, that my son will accidentally cut off someone's thumb with a pair of art scissors, that we're not going to have enough money for our trip to the Wisconsin Dells this weekend, that my daughter will spend the entire three days at the Kalahari Resort throwing up.  And that's only a few of them.

I am falling asleep at the moment.  It's nearly 10 p.m., and I've officially been awake for 18 hours straight.  The good thing is, I get to do the same thing tomorrow, too.  So I'm going to be barely awake on Thursday, too.

Worry never helps things.  Usually, I worry about things I have no control over at all.  Like my daughter's illness or my son's tendency to stick crayons in his ears at school.  No control.  I need to let it all go.  I'm cranky, and my wife is berating me for not washing my daughter's dinner plate.  I need to keep my lips closed, or else I'm going to say something I'll regret.

Saint Marty doesn't recommend alcohol as a coping mechanism, but a cup of spiked hot chocolate would taste pretty damn good about now.

That's what I count on...

August 7: Day Two from Grand Mountain Lodge, Finally Relaxing

Greetings from Grand Mountain Lodge once more.  I'm taking advantage of the fact that my kids are at the arcade down the hall to type this post.  They will soon be returning with their cheap, Oriental Trading Company prizes.  "Look what I won, daddy," my daughter will yell, waving a plastic snake in front of my face, "and it only took twenty dollars in tickets!"

We've had a great day.  We went to the water park.  We went out to lunch.  We rode the chair lifts up the mountain to take some pictures at the top.  My daughter and sister decided to brave the zip line adventure (I was the intrepid videographer, both feet safely on the ground.)  Above all, I relaxed. Finally.

The best news:  my car started this morning, despite my immense, unfounded worries of yesterday evening.  I don't know how that happened.  All that worry for nothing.  I even had a little bit of a nightmare last night about car problems.  Maybe, just maybe, worry doesn't really change the outcome of anything.  Maybe, just maybe, worry only causes unneeded grief and insomnia.

Hmmmmmm.  Saint Marty will have to worry about that one for a little while.

We have been to the mountain top

December 12: Walking Up and Down, E-mail, Daughter

He was not reading now, but walking up and down despairingly. Scrooge looked at the Ghost, and with a mournful shaking of his head, glanced anxiously towards the door.

The reason Scrooge is mournful in this passage is simple: he is about to witness an encounter from his past. It’s between a young Scrooge and “little Fan,” Scrooge’s sister. Fan is one of the few people in the novel who exhibits affection and love for Scrooge, and Scrooge is absolutely devoted to her. Of course, Fan dies at a young age, giving birth to Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, which probably explains Scrooge’s animosity toward him in the opening pages of A Christmas Carol. This little moment preceded a scene with the other woman who loved the young Scrooge, his fiancé, Belle. There’s a great deal of disappointment and heartache in Scrooge’s past.

This Worry Wednesday, I want to talk about my daughter. Yesterday, I received an e-mail from one of her teachers. The subject line was simply my daughter’s name. No details. No hint of what the message contained. I didn’t want to open it. I was afraid I was going to find out my daughter was failing a subject or owed the school $600 for a computer she had broken. Well, I wasn’t far off. The first line of the message was, “I’m worried about your daughter.” The teacher went on to explain that my daughter had missed turning in several assignments and was close to receiving a detention. “I’m just wondering if something is wrong,” her teacher wrote, “because she’s such a good student.”

I was touched by the teacher’s concern, and I was a little worried about my daughter. I have to admit that I did a little walking up and down, like young Scrooge in the above passage. I started imagining the worst. Boy trouble. Bully trouble. Mental illness trouble. Physical abuse. Sexual abuse. Verbal abuse. My mind went everywhere. My wife and I have been talking about our financial situation a lot since she lost her job. Maybe she picked up on my worries. (I must admit that I don’t hide my feelings in this arena very well.)

Something was obviously troubling my daughter. She comes by her penchant for worry naturally. It’s in her genetics.

I spoke to my daughter last night. She got pretty agitated when I told her about the e-mail from her teacher. When she calmed down, she told us that she had completed the missing assignments, but she kept on forgetting to turn them in. They were stacked up in her locker at school. (This explanation touches upon another of my worries: I think my daughter has ADHD. Again, she’s genetically predisposed to this condition.)

My daughter’s explanation was a lot better than I expected it to be. No trauma. Nothing requiring extensive therapy. No vandalism or truancy issues. I told her to turn in the missing assignments for partial credit, and I suggested she always carry a folder for important papers to complete and submit to her teachers. Problem solved.

I wish all of my worries were so easily solved. I wish I could put all my troubles into a folder and submit it to somebody for possible solutions. It isn’t quite that simple. Yeah, yeah, I know about prayer and trust and faith. I know all that.

But Saint Marty will still wear a rut in the living room rug the next time he gets an e-mail from his daughter’s teacher.

Do snakes get e-mails? 

September 25: Only Once a Year, Making Rather Merry, Full Circle

The clerk observed that it [Christmas] was only once a year.

Of course, the sentence above is part of one of the most famous passages from A Christmas Carol.  Scrooge's response to Bob Cratchit's statement is repeated in stage and movie adaptations all the time.  I bet anybody reading this post could quote it verbatim:  "A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!" 

Most people do not know that Bob repeats the exact observation at the end of the novel. He is late for work the day after Christmas, and Scrooge, playing a joke on his clerk, demands, ""What do you mean by coming here at this time of day?"  Bob, stammering, says, "It's only once a year, Sir...It shall not be repeated.  I was making rather merry yesterday, Sir."

The story has come full circle.  The difference, this time, is that Scrooge is a changed man.  Christmas is no longer a nuisance to him; it is a cause for rejoicing.  He no longer fears life; he rejoices in it.

Life has a way of repeating itself.  I think it has something to do with the fact that human beings are pretty flawed creatures.  We have bad habits, and we repeat the same mistakes.  Over and over and over.  That's the nature of being human.  It takes Scrooge almost an entire lifetime (and a few pretty scary ghosts) to change his ways.

I know my life goes in cycles.  Autumn (settling into teaching, trying to catch up with money problems).  Winter (preparing for the holidays, teaching again, feeling a little more caught-up with money issues).  Spring (ending of school, getting ready for Lent and Easter and summer, starting to worry about money again).  Summer (swimming, running, holding my breath over dwindling money).  Those are the seasons of my life, every year.

Like me, like Scrooge, I think most people live in fear of something.  I wish I could be more calm and secure in my life.  I wish I could be more like Bob Cratchit, whose life is shitty, but who seems content and at peace with his circumstances.  It's a matter of faith.  Bob has a lot of faith.  He believes Tiny Tim will get better.  He believes Scrooge is the founder of the Cratchit Christmas feast.  He believes in the goodness of people, even when he can barely feed his wife and children.  I wish I could have that kind of spirit.  The cycles of Bob's life are not ruled by doubt and worry.  They're ruled by hope and joy.  That's what I want.  More hope and joy.

Maybe Saint Marty needs to move to London and find a job as a clerk in a business office.  God Bless Us.  Everyone!

The real Circle of Life

August 10: Aught to Teach Me, One Hundred Thousand, Perspective

"Spirit," said Scrooge submissively, "conduct me where you will.  I went forth last night on compulsion, and I learnt a lesson which is working now.  To-night, if you have aught to teach me, let me profit by it."

Scrooge is speaking to the Ghost of Christmas Present.  The Ghost of Christmas Past has already taught him a few things, and now Scrooge says he will accompany the Second Spirit, ready to accept any lesson coming his way.  Scrooge is already a mighty humbled literary character.

I learned a lesson last night while I was looking for my lost keys.  I learned that some of the things that preoccupy my thoughts on a daily basis are pretty silly.  When I found my keys last night, I experienced a kind of happiness and relief I haven't felt in a long time.  I know it seems stupid to get that upset about a set of keys, but I did.  And it put things into perspective for me in a way.

Most of the stuff I worry about day-to-day is pretty small.  I've been obsessing about the poetry contest I entered.  Money is in my thoughts constantly.  In the past week, I've been thinking about my daughter's dance lessons this fall.  I still have to put together a syllabus for my film class, and I haven't even finished reading my textbook.

Life is full of worries.  Worry has been the guiding force of my life recently.  Small worries and big worries.  But worry doesn't do any good.  It doesn't solve problems.  It doesn't stave off fear.  It doesn't make me feel any safer or more prepared for challenges.  Worry is just a waste of energy.

I let small things, like keys, run my life.  If I have my keys, then everything will be great, all the time.  The sun will shine.  I will have plenty of money in my bank account.  I will win that poetry contest.  President Obama will be elected to a second term.  The Swedish Academy will award me the Nobel Prize in Literature.  World peace will be established. 

Of course, all that's just a load of horse crap.

Keys will not solve the problems of the world.  Neither will worry.  Worry just opens up doors to more worries.  Worry makes life miserable.  I just need to do my work, take care of my family, and recognize the blessings of my life.  That's my job.

In that spirit, I will acknowledge a blessing this morning:  Saint Marty just passed 100,000 page views.  That's an amazing blessing.  One hundred thousand people have looked at or stumbled upon my blog.  I hope that I have done some good with my posts.  Provided some laughs or comfort or wisdom.  Maybe alleviated some worries.

Saint Marty celebrates one hundred thousand blessings today.