December 16, 2024: "All Eyes," Grading Like Crazy, Ghosts

I am furiously finishing up my teaching duties for the semester.  That means that I'm grading like crazy, have been all day.  Will be grading all night, literally, with a short nap here and there when my eyes cross and I can't see the computer screen clearly.

Translation:  I am not fit to be around people or impart wisdom tonight.  By tomorrow night, I will look like an extra on a zombie movie.  Let's call it Night of the Grading Dead.

Billy Collins writes about being dead . . . 

All Eyes

by:  Billy Collins

Just because I'm dead now doesn't mean
I don't exist anymore.
All those eulogies and the obituary
in the corner of the newspaper
have made me feel more vibrant than ever.

I'm here in some fashion,
maybe like a gust of wind
that disturbs the upper leaves,
or blows a hat around a corner,
or disperses a little cloud of mayflies over a stream.

What I like best about this
is you realizing you can no longer
get away with things the way your used to
when it would be ten o'clock at night
and I wouldn't know where you were.

I'm all ears, you liked to say
whenever you couldn't bother listening.
And now you know that I'm all eyes,
looking in every direction,
and a special eye is always trained on you.

I often imagine my dead as spirits constantly around me, watching my every move.  That's both comforting and terrifying at the same time.  Tonight, I wish I could hand them my laptop, tell them what needs to be graded, and go to bed.

I can't do that, obviously, because I don't know if ghosts can identify a comma splice or a sentence fragment.

Therefore, it is going to be a long, sleepless night.

Saint Marty did step into his backyard a moment ago and saw a bright star burning in his neighbor's window.  Even in the midst of darkness, there is light.

December 15, 2024: "France," Good Catholic Boy, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Sometimes, the pure ridiculousness of life is astonishing.  This morning, at the Lutheran church where I play keyboard, I experienced that sort of astonishment.

Billy Collins gets fed up . . . 

France

by: Billy Collins

You and your frozen banana,

you and your crème brûlée.

Can't we just skip dessert

and go back to the Hotel d'Orsay?

You and your apple tart

and your plates of profiteroles.

Can't we just ask for the check?

Can't you hear Time's mortal call?

Why linger here at the table

stuffing ourselves with sweets

when all the true pleasures await us

in room trois cent quarante-huit?

Collins really doesn't want to eat any dessert.  Doesn't want a fancy sweet that he can't pronounce all that well.  What he's trying to do is convince his dinner companion to return to their hotel room for some post-meal delight, and he does so with his usual wit and charm.

I don't have anything quite so sexy to write about.  

I played four church services this weekend--two last night, two this morning.  All but one were Catholic.  The outlier was a Lutheran church.  The opening hymn for the Lutherans was listed as 626 in the hymnal, a song titled "By Gracious Powers," with words by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, music by Robert Buckley Farlee.  I'd never heard it before.  

As I started playing it on the pipe organ, I chose a quieter setting, counting on the song being an old standard for the gathered congregation.  I went through the introduction then launched into the first verse.  

Nobody sang, except the pastor, and even he seemed to be struggling.

Realizing that something was amiss, either with my playing or the congregation itself, I got to the end of the refrain and immediately launched into verse two, louder, the right hand an octave higher on the keyboard.

Still, nobody was singing, and I began to panic.

About verse three, I realized that I was on my own.  Everyone else had given up.  It was five verses long, but it felt like an entire symphony.  There I sat on the organ bench, a good Catholic boy, powering through a Lutheran hymn that even a retired Lutheran pastor of 30 years didn't recognize.

With each consecutive verse, I played louder and louder, until the stained glass windows seemed to be rattling and fracturing.  When the song finished, I lifted my hands from the keyboard and looked out at the congregation.  They sat there, dumbfounded and confused.  I sat there, drenched in sweat.

At the end of the entire service, one gentleman from the music selection committee made an announcement, apologizing for "By Gracious Powers."  "I don't know what happened," he said.  "I was not familiar with that song at all."

The pastor chimed in, "In the 30-plus years I worked as a pastor, I think I've sung that song twice."

The whole situation was pretty fucking hilarious.  A Catholic leading a bunch of Lutherans in a song that nobody knew.  Ridiculous.  Astonishing.  Even tonight, as I was recounting this story to two musician friends, I couldn't stop laughing.

Saint Marty died a slow, musical death this morning.

December 14, 2024: "Best Fall," Good Ole Days, Golden Light

Today, I found myself full of nostalgia for the "good ole days."  Now, if you ask me what the "good ole days" were, I wouldn't be able to define them all that well.  I suppose it would include me not having to work five jobs; my kids being young enough still to think I was one step away from being a god; all my siblings living and healthy; and the Felon in Chief being just a two-bit real estate hustler with a bad haircut, living off his daddy's fortune. 

Billy Collins gets nostalgic, too . . . 

Best Fall

by: Billy Collins

was what we called a game we played

which had nothing to do

with a favorite autumn,

somebody else’s gorgeous reds and yellows.

no, eleven years old

all we wanted was to be shot

as we charged sacrificially into the fire

of the shooter lying prone behind a hedge,

or even better, to be that shooter

and pick off the others

as they charged the gun

each one stopping in his young tracks

to writhe and twist

aping the contortions of death

from the movies,

clutching our bleeding hearts

holding ourselves

as we lifted—a moment of ballet—

into the air then tumbled

into the grass behind our houses.

and whoever invented that game

made sure it would have

no ending,

for the one who was awarded

best fall by the shooter

got to be the next shooter

and so it went, shooting and being shot,

tearing at our cowboy shirts

trying our best

to make death look good

until it got almost dark

and our mothers called us in.

Of course, nostalgia paints the past in golden light, erasing all the struggles and pains and stresses.  It's not about objective reality.  Rather, it's a Norman Rockwell rendering of reality, wholesome and mostly untrue.  

Yet, most of the day, I was yearning for John Hughes movies and Walkmans, Molly Ringwald and River Phoenix.  My life was seemed much simpler back then.  No mortgages, car payments, or income taxes.  All I worried about was getting someone to take me to see Star Wars:  A New Hope again.  (I saw that film 27 times in the theater when it was first released.)  

I'm sure one or two or five years down the road, I'm going to be thinking back nostalgically on tonight.  Christmas tree glowing in the corner of the room.  Puppy snoring and moaning in her cage.  A full moon glowing in tree branches outside.  And Joe Biden serving as President of the United States.  (Come January 20, 2025, when the Felon in Chief takes the oath of office, the past four years are going to seem like a trip to Oz on the back of a flying monkey named Ozzie.)

Nostalgia is a retreat from unpleasant or painful presents.  An escape hatch, if you will.  The 1980s were far from perfect (Ronald Reagan was President of the United States, for God's sake!), but we had the best music.  The past four years weren't utopian, but we didn't have a person with the IQ of a rabbit in charge of the nuclear codes.  

For me, thinking backward is a retreat from the darkness I'm currently experiencing.  I remember lying on my bed, listening to the local Top 40 station, recording a hit mix of songs with my cassette player.  Billy Joel's "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" and Yes's "Owner of a Lonely Heart."  And that was the most important thing I had to do.

Saint Marty will return to reality tomorrow.  Tonight, he's going to watch bad Hallmark holiday movies and dream of white Christmases, just like the ones he used to know.  Without global warming, convicted rapists in the Oval Office, and Fox News.

December 13, 2024: "After the Funeral," Friday the 13th, Light-Light

I try not to be superstitious, but I don't take any chances, either.  I don't walk under ladders or break mirrors.  Avoid places where black cats may wander across my path.  If I see a penny tails up on the ground, I don't reach for it.  My rationale is that there has to be some kind of basis for these old beliefs.  (Think about it--if you walk under a ladder, the chances of something falling on your head and injuring/killing you are greatly enhanced.)

I did venture out this Friday the 13th, although I avoided putting myself in the same room with anyone wearing a hockey mask.

Billy Collins buys his friend a drink-drink . . . 

After the Funeral

by: Billy Collins

When you told me you needed a drink-drink
and not just a drink like a drink of water,

I steered you by the elbow into a corner bar,
which turned out to be a real bar-bar,

dim and nearly empty with little tables in the back
where we drank and agreed that the funeral

was a real funeral-funeral complete with a Mass,
incense, and tons of eulogies.

You know, I always considered Tom a real
friend-friend, you said, lifting your drink-drink

to your lips, and I agreed that Tom
was much more than just an ordinary friend.

We also concurred that Angela’s black dress
was elegant but not like elegant-elegant,

just elegant enough. And a few hours later
when the bartender brought yet another round

of whiskeys to our table in the corner
we recognized by his apron and his mighty girth

that he was more than just a bartender.
A true bartender-bartender was what he was

we decided, with a respectful clink-clink
of our drink-drinks, amber in a chink of afternoon light.

So I didn't experience any bad Friday the 13th luck-luck, just regular bad luck.  I screened the film Shadowlands at the library today as part of a C. S. Lewis Holidays series.  For some reason, I decided to set things up early and make sure all the equipment was working properly.  When I inserted the brand new, just-out-of-the-package Blu-ray into the player, it didn't work.  It froze and wouldn't play.

I quickly ascertained that Shadowlands is not streaming on any service.  The best I could do was a pirated version uploaded on YouTube for free.  So, I went to a good friend in the library's Tech Services Department.  He examined the Blu-ray disk, saw that it was fingerprinted and scratched in one place.  He pulled out a contraption that looked like a rejected prop from the original Star Trek  series, and he buffed the disk.  

Problem solved.  Disaster averted.  A large group of people showed up to watch the movie.  That's good luck-luck.  

Had dinner with my whole family tonight--pizza from Little Caesar's, mac & cheese from Domino's.  Then I went home, put together music for this weekend's worship services, and headed out to a couple churches to practice.  

Most of the churches where I play are already decked out in Christmas finery.  (Except for the Catholics.  That transformation happens after the Fourth Sunday of Advent.)  At the Lutheran church this evening, I stopped to admire the decorations.  A beautiful manger scene.  Eight- or nine-foot tree.  Greens and candles.  An Advent wreath, of course.  

I took some pictures, to look at if I started feeling particularly sad-sad later.

As I said earlier, I'm not a superstitious person.  Yet, I wonder if I somehow did something wrong that brought on this affliction of darkness right now.  I know that's the sadness talking, coming from a place not based on rational thought, but superstition and faith are not based on objectivity and observation.  They're based on pure belief, regardless of verifiable truth.  One (superstition) based on fear.  One (faith) based on hope.

I'm not going to get all philosophical here.  That would be boring-boring.  

I just want to say that I choose hope over fear, lighting a candle each week to shine light into the dark corners of my life.  Real light.  Light-light that pushes away feelings of isolation and loneliness and despair.

Saint Marty is now ready for sleep-sleep.