May 15: First Communion, Eloise, Classic Saint Marty

My son is the one with the Mohawk

It was a good ending to a stressful weekend.  In case you are interested, my bathroom is open for business after several hundred dollars.  No collapsed sewer lines.  No invasive tree roots.  No backhoes digging up my front yard.  When I flushed my toilet this morning, I did not hear gurgling in the bathtub drain.  Answered prayer.

Today was eventful.  My son made his First Communion this afternoon.  He did really well.  Remembered where to stand, when to bow.  He was able to stand still, keep his hands to himself.  Didn't drop the Communion wafer or spit out his mouthful of wine.  He even made it through Father Larry's sermon without throwing himself on the floor and saying, "How much longer?"  More answered prayer.

And tonight, we are celebrating my sister's birthday.  She is 51 years old today.  When my sister was born, the doctor told my mother to put her in a sanatorium and forget about her.  Up until 1984, there was a large asylum/mental hospital named Eloise operating outside of Detroit.  At the time my sister was born, it wasn't uncommon for people to simply drop family members who suffered from mental illness off at this facility (which was more like a self-contained city) and never return for them.  That could have been my sister, had my parents followed the doctor's advice.  They didn't.  My sister is a functioning and happy person.  Answered prayer.

I am surrounded by blessings.  In a little while, I will be starting a new job.  Two years ago, I was starting a new job, too, under much different circumstances.  My brother had just died, and my sister was on the verge of starting her slow decline.  I am in a much happier place right now.

May 15, 2014:  New Job and New Snow

Well, I have completed the first day of my new job.  The people are friendly and supportive.  My closest coworkers are helpful and understanding.  They laugh at my jokes.  I have established a chocolate drawer already, and I acquired a new badge from Human Resources.  One that reflects my new position and department.  Overall, it wasn't horrible, although I truly miss the work and people at my old job.

It is snowing currently.  Sitting in my office at the university, I am watching thick, fat snowflakes falling.  They're starting to accumulate on the grass.  It would be a lovely scene if it weren't the middle of May.  New snow at this time of year is about as welcome as a case of explosive diarrhea.  Lake Superior is still frozen over, and, two weeks ago, I still had snow drifts in my backyard.  Winter is never going to end.

Saint Marty is ready to start singing "Let It Go."

I'm tired of letting things go...

May 14: Scarred and Broken, Sewer Again, Tracy K. Smith, "The Universe: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack"

Is this what it's like, I thought then, and think now:  a little blood here, a chomp there, and still we live, trampling the grass?  Must everything whole be nibbled?  Here was a new light on the intricate texture of things in the world, the actual plot of the present moment in time after the fall; the way we the living are nibbled and nibbling--not held aloft on a cloud in the air but bumbling pitted and scarred and broken through a frayed and beautiful land.

Dillard is musing on the violent beauty of the world.  She has just witnessed a mosquito land on the back of a rattlesnake, drink its fill, and then fly off.  She marvels at this sight, the rattlesnake not even responding to the annoyance of the feeding insect.  It's all part of the broken and scarred nature of creation.  The world after the fall.

I am thinking quite a bit about the brokenness of the world this morning.  You may recall that a couple days ago I had a little problem with my sewer.  I paid $150 to have my sewer line cabled by a couple of plumbers.  This morning, as I was going about my morning ablutions, I flushed the toilet and heard gurgling in my bathtub drain.  My sewer is blocked again.

Being the son of a plumber, I have a good idea of the implications of this second blockage.  There's probably something a little more serious going on.  This isn't a minor annoyance.  I can't swat this mosquito away.  Of course, being the eternal optimist, I am thinking about how I scrounge up thousands of dollars to get a sewer line dug up and replaced.  (Yes, I know, I know--I don't even know what's wrong, but I like preparing for the absolute worst.  Then, if anything better than the worst occurs, I count it as a blessing.)

I have called the plumbers who came on Thursday, left a message.  I have not received an answer.  I called my brother, who is a licensed plumber and lives about an hour away from me.  No go on that possibility, either.  So, I am sitting in McDonald's in a kind of sewage limbo.  We can't use the bathroom in my house.  Can't shower,  Can't wash dishes.  I don't really want to crap in a bucket and use it as fertilizer for a garden.  (I don't think my neighbors would appreciate that, either.)  So, I'm stuck at the moment.  Not moving backward or forward.

The world is a broken place.  When Adam and Eve messed up in Eden, they kind of screwed the rest of us.  If it hadn't been for that apple, I would be lounging, naked, on the banks of a river, eating chocolate off a chocolate tree, enjoying another perfect day of warmth and peace.

Instead, it's snowing and cold; sewage is in the air; and Saint Marty is thinking of going off the grid.

Maybe a poem will help . . .

The Universe:  Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

by:  Tracy K. Smith

The first track still almost swings. High hat and snare, even

A few bars of sax the stratosphere will singe-out soon enough.

Synthesized strings. Then something like cellophane

Breaking in as if snagged to a shoe. Crinkle and drag. White noise,

Black noise. What must be voices bob up, then drop, like metal shavings

In molasses. So much for us. So much for the flags we bored

Into planets dry as chalk, for the tin cans we filled with fire

And rode like cowboys into all we tried to tame. Listen:

The dark we've only ever imagined now audible, thrumming,

Marbled with static like gristly meat. A chorus of engines churns.

Silence taunts: a dare. Everything that disappears

Disappears as if returning somewhere.

I know how i feel--shitty

May 13: Hagfish, Shrine Circus, Best Night Ever

That's my son on the hump . . .

The world is full of creatures that for some reason seem stranger to us than others, and libraries are full of books describing them--hagfish, platypuses, lizardlike pangolins four feet long with bright green, lapped scales like umbrella-tree leaves on a bush hut roof, butterflies emerging from anthills, spiderlings wafting through the air clutching tiny silken balloons, horseshoe crabs . . . the creator creates.  Does he stoop, does he speak, does he save, succor, prevail?  Maybe.  But he creates; he creates everything and anything.

Dillard marvels at the complexity of creation.  Hagfish and platypus, butterfly and spiderling.  She notes the possibility of anything to exist.  It is a fascination that keeps people flocking to things like zoos and circuses--because of the chance to see these wonders up close. 

Now, I am going to talk about attending a circus.  Please do not send any angry comments my way.  I know all the stories.  I have read Water for Elephants.  I am not writing this post to shed light on injustice in the animal kingdom.  I am writing because the Shrine Circus came to town, and my son got to ride on a camel and an elephant.  A dream come true for a seven-year-old boy.  Plus he got cotton candy and popcorn.

It was a small circus, with more jugglers and clowns than big cats and pachyderms.  My son sort of wandered around the arena with eyes as large as silver dollars.  The first thing he did was climb onto a camel.  Then he got a light saber.  Then he rode on the back of an elephant.  He was in heaven.

My daughter and her boyfriend came along, too.  Of course, teenagers have to play it a little cooler than a seven-year-old does.  Before the show began, they were texting and Snapchatting.  When the lights went down, however, they were all about the Siberian tigers and contortionists.  My favorite act:  two women who were quick change artists, switching from dress to dress in a shower of confetti.  It made me feel like a kid again.

Of course, the bottles of water were three dollars each, and a small box of popcorn cost five dollars.  Riding an elephant set us back $15.  We didn't get our faces painted, and no snake pictures were taken.  (I wasn't particularly interested in wrapping a boa constrictor around my neck.)  Circuses are expensive.

But, my son got to see real elephants and tigers.  At the end of the night, as I was getting him in his pajamas, he said, "I had the best night ever."

Saint Marty can't put a price tag on that.

My son out for a stroll on his elephant

May 12: Growth Pressure, Blocked Sewer, Bad Day

The growth pressure of plants can do an impressive variety of tricks.  Bamboo can grow three feet in twenty-four hours, an accomplishment that is capitalized upon, legendarily, in that exquisite Asian torture in which a victim is strapped to a mesh bunk a mere foot above a bed of healthy bamboo plants whose wood-like tips have been sharpened.  For the first eight hours he is fine, if jittery; then he starts turning into a collander, by degrees.

This afternoon, I sat on my couch, reading this little paragraph as my sewer was being unblocked by a couple of plumbers.  It's a horrifying little tale that Dillard spins--a victim slowly impaled on bamboo spikes through plant growth pressure.  Nature turned into an instrument of torture. 

My sewer is clear, and I am $150 poorer.  The culprit of the problem was, among other things, roots.  Yes, trees and bushes are growing into my sewer line.  Plant growth costing me money and time.  I was not a happy homeowner.  However, I am grateful that the problem was not more serious.  I live in fear of collapsed pipes and backhoes.  (I come from a family of plumbers, so I am familiar with the hazards of tree roots and orangeburg pipe.)

Dillard, a little bit later in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, says this about roots:

The experimenters studied a single grass plant, winter rye.  They let it grow in a greenhouse for four months; then they gingerly spirited away the soil--under microscopes, I imagine-- and counted and measured all the roots and root hairs.  In four months the plant had set forth 378 miles of roots--that's about three miles a day--in 14 million distinct roots.  This is might impressive, but when they get down to the root hairs, I boggle completely.  In those same four months the rye plant created 14 billion root hairs, and those little strands placed end-to-end just about wouldn't quit.  In a single cubic inch of soil, the length of the root hairs totaled 6000 miles.

That's a lot of roots.  No wonder I'm having sewer problems.  Six thousand miles of roots in a spoonful of dirt.  By my calculations, that would be three round-trips to China in roots that were clogging my sewer today.  Or, to put it in bamboo terms, strap me down and stab me now.

Saint Marty dealt with a lot of shit today.

Even chickens have bad days