August 26: Resentments, Incredible Hulk, Wendell Berry, "The Peace of Wild Things," Adventures of Stickman

There was something else.  As the years passed, little things about life in the city that never used to bother him had him pacing the floor at night:  loud Latin music, frying-food smells, voices chatting into the early-morning hours, the social life that he had previously found so quaint and familial--the men out on the sidewalks watching television in front of the stores, or playing cards or dominoes, or just talking.  Even long after people had begun to forget, when his son's name was rarely mentioned at Christmas Mass, he still felt certain resentments toward his Spanish-speaking neighbors, his amor for the culture and language had cooled along with his heart.  It was a side of himself that he did not like.  He was still very close to Ramirez and his family, but in meeting or coming across someone new who spoke Spanish, he made a mental inventory of qualities over which he passed judgement, and he kept away.

Yes, the kind, gentle-hearted Ives harbors deep resentments because of his son's death.  Those resentments find a focus in his Hispanic neighbors.  Don't get me wrong.  Ives is no Donald Trump.  Ives doesn't want to deport every person of color living in the United States.  Because his son was killed by a Hispanic youth, Ives starts distrusting any Spanish-speaking stranger.  He stays away from them and lets his anger rule his life.

Ives stays angry for a very long time.  I get that.  It's been three days, and I'm still pissed.  It isn't getting better.  To throw gasoline on the fire, I found out today that a new person is taking over as poetry editor of the university's poetry magazine.  That's the job I took over last year.  The new editor was recently hired by the English Department as a full-time, tenure-track professor.

Now, had this happened at any other time, I would have been severely disappointed and angry.  Right now, I'm like Bill Bixby turning into the Incredible Hulk.  I want to destroy something.  Unfortunately, if I say anything to the powers that be, the only thing I will destroy is my professional career.

I'm not enjoying this stage of grief at all.  Anger--especially anger this strong--is foreign to me.  I don't know what to do with it.  Nothing that I want to do is appropriate or legal.  So, I will go to the college tomorrow, I will teach, and I will keep my friggin' mouth shut.

Saint Marty is in survival mode right now.

The Peace of Wild Things

by:  Wendell Berry

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Adventures of STICKMAN