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

September 4, 2026: “The Promise,” Coping, “Lovely Ghosts of All My Dead”

It has been a long couple weeks, full of stress and trials at work, broken sewer pipes and digging up the front yard at home.  Sprinkle in the start of the fall semester at the university and my continuing struggles with sadness, and that pretty much describes the second half of August and start of September for me.

I’m very aware that my problems are not unique.  There are millions (billions?) of people worse off than me.  People dealing with food insecurity and housing insecurity and misogyny and racism and homophobia.  I have a roof over my head and clothes to keep me warm.  If I get hungry, all I have to do is open my refrigerator and rummage through the leftovers.  In the grand scheme of things, my tiny, insignificant complaints are trivial.

And yet they feel crushing to me.  Keep me up at night.  Fill my days with spasms of tears.  Overwhelm even the simplest of tasks.  This afternoon, I stood by my kitchen sink, washing dishes, and found myself crying over the loss of poet Wendell Berry.

I know the world is arbitrary.  An earthquake isn’t vengeful, and a forest fire is just a forest fire.  It’s really easy to anthropomorphize things like natural disasters and famines and epidemics, to think of them as evil.  They aren’t.  They’re just what they are.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.  

Even death isn’t necessarily good or bad. Death is just death.

Marie Howe tries to have a conversation with a ghost . . . 

The Promise

by: Marie Howe

In the dream I had when he came back not sick

but whole, and wearing his winter coat,

he looked at me as though he couldn’t speak, as if

there were a law against it, a membrane he couldn’t break.

His silence was what he could not

not do, like our breathing in this world, like our living,

as we do, in time.

And I told him:  I’m reading all this Buddhist stuff,

and listen, we don’t die when we die.  Death is an event,

a threshold we pass through.  We go on and on

and into light forever.

And he looked down, and then back up at me.  It was the look we’d pass

across the table when Dad was drunk again and dangerous,

the level look that wants to tell you something,

in a crowded room, something important, and can’t.

Depression is a haunted state, I think.  I’m surrounded by ghosts right now.  As I deal with my work troubles, as I wait for the excavator who dug up my sewer to send me his bill, the ghosts of simpler, easier times crowd my brain.  I mourn for my daughter’s five-year-old self, how I would read Charlotte’s Web to her at bedtime and she would laugh at Templeton voice.  I mourn for the Sunday dinners my sister Sally used to cook before she got sick, how we would gather at my parents’ house to eat and laugh.  I mourn for my mother’s singing when I play the pipe organ at church, how she anchored the hymns with her soprano voice.  

It all boils down to grieving for things that are gone forever.

I am coping with my blue mood as best I can.  I still cry almost every night as I’m going to sleep.  And I still experience extreme panic while driving to the library or the university during the week.  Tonight, I watched a documentary about the life of Mary Oliver, and I wept at the end of it.  Last night, my wife, son, and I had to stay at a hotel because the water line into our house was either crimped or broken, and, after everyone was asleep, I just lay in bed beside my wife, missing the taste of water from a garden hose as a kid.  Ghosts, ghosts, and ghosts.

I’m sure my therapist would tell me I’m just experiencing obsessive thoughts.  An unhealthy nostalgia for bygone times.  I don’t dispute that.  I miss not having to worry about things like collapsed sewer lines and high water bills and consumer loans.  Nostalgia is a ouija board, conjuring the ghosts of childhoods past.  Was my childhood perfect?  Absolutely not.  Nobody can truthfully claim to have had an idyllic youth. Because we’re human, and human beings are fuckups.  We fuck up relationships and jobs and cars and climate and trees and honeybees and .  . . Well, you get the idea.

I’m a fuckup on many levels, every day.  I’m not afraid to admit that.  Recently, my perceived fuckups have been overwhelming, making me question almost everything about my life.  In the last few weeks, I’ve even questioned if I’ve made a lick of difference in the universe.  On bad nights, the ghosts in my head whisper “No, you haven’t.”  On better nights, the ghosts whisper, “Maybe a little.”  (Ghosts can be pretty annoying sometimes.)

Here’s a poem for his ghosts that Saint Marty wrote a few days ago . . . 

 Lovely Ghosts of All My Dead

by:  Martin Achatz

I feel you around me all the time, your wispy

breaths in my ears, cool fingers on my forehead

at night.  Sometimes, I can hear you as I drive

my car, telling me you like this Action Bronson

song or that new novel from Ann Patchett.  

Let’s get McDonald’s this afternoon.  My treat.

We can sit all together in a booth and talk about

the Perseids in the heavens, solar eclipse in Spain,

coming El Niño winter.  We’ll stay there until 

the oil in the French fryers turns bone cold.

August 16, 2026: “The Last Time,” Mortality, “Card Trick”

Most young people don’t think about death a whole lot.  They’re too busy worrying about popsicles and grades and crushes and friends.  I even see this attitude in my college students.  Their whole focus is the future, what they’re going to be when they grow up.  It’s my job somehow to prepare them for the “real world.”  The problem is that they think they’re going to live forever and have plenty of time to deal with all of life’s brokenness and need.  

Marie Howe receives a lesson in mortality . . . 

The Last Time

by: Marie Howe

The last time we had dinner together in a restaurant 

with white tablecloths, he leaned forward

and took my two hands in his and said,

I’m going to die soon.  I want you to know that.

And I said, I think I do know.

And he said What surprises me is that you don’t.

And I said I do.  And he said, What?

And I said, Know that you’re going to die.

And he said, No, I mean know that you are.

Only people facing impending death really get it.  Whether they’re ten or 75 years old, they understand how brief our time on this planet is, and they also understand how meaningless most of life’s distractions are.  Think about it.  When you’re breathing your last breath, are you going to give a shit whether you own a Lamborghini or a ‘75 Dodge Dart?  And, if you’re lucky enough to reach old age, will it matter if you live in a condo in Boca Raton or an assisted living facility?  Mortality has a way of boiling down life to its essentials:  are you loved?  are you happy?  are you at peace?

In the end, love and happiness and peace are what it’s all about.  A person can be loved by a dachshund in a secluded cabin, and a person can be loved by three generations of family living in a Brooklyn townhouse.  A person can be happy living in a Spanish villa with a billion-dollar bank account, and a person can also be happy living in a studio apartment while working a minimum-wage job.  Finally, a person can find peace watching a Lake Superior sunset, and a person can find peace at a Kendrick Lamar concert at Ford Field in Detroit.

Love.  Happiness.  Peace.  That’s all that really matters.

It’s Sunday night.  My puppy is sleeping on the floor next to me.  An episode of Portrait Artist of the Year is on the TV.  My wife made a delicious dinner of meatballs and gravy.  In a little while, I’m going to be leading a virtual poetry workshop from my home office.  This is definition of a perfect evening for me.  I feel blessed because I’m surrounded by love in a safe space.  And I’m sort of dreading leaving this safe space tomorrow morning to go to work, where love and happiness and peace are much more difficult (if not impossible) to find.

After last night’s post, I think most of you understand my anxiety about reentering the “real” world.  Most weekends, I try to curate an environment where love, happiness, and peace exist freely because the rest of my life is so chaotic and pressured.  I’ve especially embraced this cocoon of serenity this weekend, and the idea of breaking out of it tomorrow is . . . well . . . almost painful.

Many friends and family members have reached out to me with messages of love and support in the 24 hours since I posted yesterday.  That has lifted my spirits so much (and made me cry on a few occasions).  The reading in church today was about the Gentile woman begging Christ to cure her daughter of demonic possession.  Jesus says to the woman, “It isn’t right to take food from the children and throw it to the dogs.”  And the woman responds that even dogs eat the crumbs from their master’s table.  Jesus heals the woman’s daughter because “. . . your faith is great.”

I have faith that I’ll make it through this blue period because I’ve done it before.  Lots of people think the antonym of faith is doubt.  It isn’t.  It’s fear.  Now, I’m not that brave of a person.  I’m afraid of a lot of things.  Rodents.  Heights.  Bad poetry.  Green bean casserole.  The trick is not to let fear rule your life.

I will wake up tomorrow morning, get dressed, and go to work, despite my anxieties.  Or maybe because of my anxieties.  I don’t know.  If I just called in sick and curled up on the couch tomorrow, fear wins.  Anxiety wins.  Sadness wins.  Plus, I might never leave my house again.  So, to paraphrase the advice of a therapist friend, I’m going to fake it ‘til I make it.  

I will have love and happiness and peace in my life again.  Eventually.

Saint Marty wrote this poem today.  It’s about conquering fear . . . 

Card Trick

by: Martin Achatz

My dog doesn’t like lightning, scoots

into the dark bathroom at the first pang

and rumble of electricity in the sky.  There

she stays, curled tight as a fist on the bath mat

while the clouds are stitched with jagged

flame.  I don’t bother her as she cowers

in there, leave her to find some sense

of safety to uncoil the springs of her body.

Sometimes, though, I go and sit next

to her, put my hand on her heaving flanks,

leave it there until she relaxes, looks up at me

as if I’ve just shuffled the deck of her fur,

turned the lightning into the ace of hearts.

August 15, 2026: “How Some of It Happened,” Confession, “hebron”

In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t been posting a lot this summer.  And I’ve made tons of excuses about WHY I haven’t been posting:  taking some “me” time, working hard at the library, focusing on my latest poetry manuscript, reading War and Peace.  You get the idea.  

Here’s my confession:  I haven’t experienced a whole lot of happiness this summer.  Yes, I am so proud of my son for graduating in May and for landing a job at the local children’s museum.  Yes, my daughter continues to amaze me with her drive and courage in her medical school program.  And my wife is the most loving, supportive partner, even when I’m not easy to be around.

Yet, in these long days of summer, I’ve been really struggling.

Marie Howe writes about her brother’s struggles . . . 

How Some of It Happened

by: Marie Howe

My brother was afraid, all his life, of going blind, so deeply

that he would turn the dinner knives away from, looking at him,

he said, as they lay on the kitchen table.

He would throw a sweatshirt over those knobs that lock the car door

from the inside, and once, he dismantled a chandelier in the middle

of the night when everyone was sleeping.

We found the pile of sharp and shining crystals in the upstairs hall.

So you understand, it was terrible

when they clamped his one eye open and put the needle in his cheek

and up and into his eye from underneath

and held it there for a full minute before they drew it slowly out

once a week for many weeks.  He learned to lean into it,

to settle down he said, and still the eye went dead, ulcerated,

breaking up green in his head as the other eye, still blue

and wide open, looked and looked at the clock.

My brother promised me he wouldn’t die after our father died.

He shook my hand on a train going home one Christmas and gave me

five years, as clearly as he promised he’d be home for breakfast when

I watched him walk into the New York City autumn night.  By nine, I promise,

and he did come back.  And five years later he gave me five years more.

So much for the brave pride of premonition, 

the worry that won’t let it happen.

You know, he said, I always knew I would die young.

And then I got sober, and I thought, OK, I’m not.

I’m going to see thirty and live to be an old man.  And now

it turns out that I am going to die.  Isn’t that funny?

—One day it happens:  what you have feared all your life,

the unendurable specific, the exact thing.  No matter what you say or do.

This is what my brother said:  Here, sit closer to the bed

so I can see you.

Howe’s brother experiences what he feared the most:  blindness.  Yet, he learns to lean into it, settle down.  It seems that the certainty of his impending death removes his childhood terror of living in darkness.  One struggle replaces the other, and her brother finds a kind of peace, even as he still tries to shield Howe from pain.  The last two lines of the poem absolutely gut me—the brother’s small act of need and comfort:  “. . .  sit closer to the bed / so I can see you.”  Be near me, he’s saying, and I love you.

My struggles pale in comparison to the subject matter of Howe’s poem.  In fact, I’m almost embarrassed to write about my mental health struggles.  Yet, here I sit in metaphorical darkness, asking you, kind reader, to be near me.

That’s been the hardest part of these last couple months—the loneliness.  When you’re sitting on your living room couch in the middle of the night, crying for no tangible reason, you start feeling like you’re stranded on some alien planet with no way to get home.  (So, either I’m E.T. the extraterrestrial trying to phone home, or I’m Matt Damon in The Martian, trying to grow potatoes to survive until the rescue team shows up.)

I’ve been trying to pinpoint the cause of my current melancholia.  I am now the father of two adult children who no longer depend on me for sage advice or help with homework.  I realized this week that I’ve already lived over half my life and have only 30 or 35 years left.  If I’m lucky.  (Like Howe’s brother, I’ve always thought I was going to die young.)  And, looking back on my life, I’m not sure how much of a difference I’ve made in this world.  I haven’t saved anyone from a burning building or donated a kidney.  As far as I know, my writing hasn’t altered the universe in any way, either.

In short, my life hasn’t really mattered all that much.  (Yes, as I typed those words, I started crying.  Again.)

This weekend, in particular, has been very difficult for many reasons.  The only moment I found a scrap of happiness came this afternoon when I finished a poem I’ve been trying to write for over a week.  I read it to my wife, and she smiled and nodded at me (after making me change one image—she is my best and harshest critic).  For a little while, I actually felt lighter, as if some weight had lifted off my shoulders.  I held onto that feeling for as long as I could before the darkness descended again.

That’s my confession.  This whole summer has been my penance.

Here’s the poem Saint Marty finished today . . . 

hebron

by: Martin Achatz

standing at the mouth of the cave as a tornado

screamed by, elijah thought it was god

blowing out birthday candles.  but it wasn’t.  then

the ground shook its fist, the mountain stomped

its feet, and elijah was sure it was god line dancing

with moses, but it wasn’t.  then a firestorm baked

everything to bricks and pottery, and elijah thought

it was god having a smoke after dinner, but it wasn’t.

then a mosquito flew into his ear, sang him 

a lullaby, and elijah thought it was his mother,

but it wasn’t.  it was god eating ripe blueberries

and humming “what a wonderful world”

before it had even been written.