If you haven't noticed before, I find Sundays a little melancholy. Always have, ever since I was a child. I remember listening to the church bells ring in the afternoon on Sundays and suddenly experiencing an overwhelming sadness. I don't think it had anything to do with church or work or school. It was simply this free-floating sorrow.
This afternoon, I'm feeling it quite strongly. I spent the afternoon back-to-school shopping with my wife and kids. We bought groceries and lunchboxes and folders and clothes. And then we went to Dairy Queen. It was quite lovely, and a good distraction from my general malaise.
Now that it's near supper time, and I have time for reflection, the sadness has returned. Looking back one year for the episode of Classic Saint Marty, I did not find any solace. It's all about loss and disappointment. Things haven't changed much in 365 days. I'm still teaching part-time at the university with no hope of full-time employment. I'm not the Poetry Editor of the university's literary magazine anymore (a change), and my sister just passed away of lymphoma of the brain. In short, I have taken about five or six steps back.
I was also taken aback from the Charlotte's Web passage, as well. Charlotte's last words, her last goodbye. Those two sentences have always affected me strongly. This year, I can barely read them.
I'm sure you're all getting tired of my darksome moods and posts. I, myself, am getting tired of them. I just can't seem to shake them. Tomorrow, I promise to write something more uplifting. Perhaps a reflection on genocide in the twentieth century.
September 6, 2014: All Her Strength, Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Carrion Comfort
"Good-bye!" she whispered. Then she summoned all her strength and waved one of her front legs at him.
Charlotte's last words in the book. It's an incredibly sad moment. It depressed me so much as a child I locked myself in the bathroom and cried for a half hour. It felt like I had lost my best friend. Of course, it's natural. Spiders do not have long life spans, and E. B. White is being accurate in his account of Charlotte's end. Charlotte must die.
You'll forgive me if I'm in a sort of darksome mood this evening. I don't know why this pall has settled upon me. Perhaps it's my week-long illness. Perhaps I'm too tired. Perhaps it's the sound of my neighbor's lawnmower, a dull, lonely drone. Or perhaps it's the silence of my house. My kids are spending the night at grandma's house. My wife is working.
Whatever the reason, I'm a little sad this evening. Rereading the end of Charlotte's Web only emphasizes my state of mind. I'm feeling a little stuck maybe. At the beginning of the summer, I had this grand idea that I was on the verge of obtaining a full-time teaching position at the university. That I would be able to support my family doing exactly what I love doing: teaching and writing. Yet, here I sit, at the beginning of September, facing another year of part-time happiness. Stuck.
I will not prolong this meander into self pity. It's tedious, I know. Forgive me. I will be on to happier subjects tomorrow. Good poetry. Good books. Good movies. Good family. Good life. Tonight, however, I give you a really good, dark poem from Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Saint Marty is summoning all his strength to wave at you and say, "Good night."
Carrion Comfort
by: Gerard Manley Hopkins
Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist--slack they may be--these last strands of man
In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me?
scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruised bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee
and flee?
Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh,
cheer.
Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me,
foot trod
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That
night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!)
my God.
Confessions of Saint Marty
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