July 20: "Spring," Apollo 11, Betelgeuse

Mary Oliver on the lust of spring . . . 

Spring

by:  Mary Oliver

All day the flicker

has anticipated

the lust of the season, by

shouting.  He scouts up

tree after tree and at

a certain place begins

to cry out.  My, in his

black-freckled vest, bay body with

red trim and sudden chrome

underwings, he is

dapper.  Of course somebody

listening nearby

hears him; she answers

with a sound like hysterical

laughter, and rushes out into

the field where he is poised

on an old phone pole, his head

swinging, his wings

opening and shutting in a kind of

butterfly stroke.  She can't

resist; they touch; they flutter.

How lightly, altogether, they accept

the great task, of carrying life

forward!  In the crown of an oak

they choose a small tree-cave

which they enter with sudden quietness

and modesty.  And, for a while,

the wind that can be

a knife or a hammer, subsides.

They listen

to the thrushes.

The sky is blue, or the rain 

falls with its spills of pearl.

Around their wreath of darkness

the leaves of the world unfurl.

For over seven months, I've been exploring the universe with Mary Oliver as my guide.  She inspires me to be a better caretaker, person, and poet.  I've always had a great respect for the mysteries of nature, and Oliver fully embodies those mysteries.  She asks questions without needing answers.  Observes without having to explain.  All around her, leaves unfurl, rain falls, and birds laugh and sing.  

Human beings are inherently curious animals.  That's hardwired into us.  We like to understand how things work, from the subatomic to the celestial.  Perhaps that's the divine part of ourselves.  If you believe we are made in the image of God, then the need to create and comprehend is just a reflection of the great Poet who wrote us into existence.

Today is the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, and Neil Armstrong taking that one giant leap onto the lunar surface.  Fifty-four years ago, three human beings were kicking up dust in the Sea of Tranquility, and the entire planet was watching.  I'm sure it felt like humankind had just reached up and touched the face of God.

Yet, in the grand scheme of things, we still don't understand a whole lot.  We've made great scientific and technological advances, yet we're still pretty much those apes at the beginning of 2001:  A Space Odyssey encountering the monolith for the first time.  We still kill each other over waterholes and exploit resources.  

I was an astronomy nerd when I was a kid.  I know that's hard to believe, given my current state of coolness.  I had a cheap telescope, subscribed to Astronomy magazine, and got geeked about things like eclipses and meteor showers and sunspots.  I can't tell you how many nights I spent studying the surface of the moon, imagining what it was like to walk on its powdery landscape.  

I never wanted to be an astronaut or physicist.  Didn't study laws of motion or Einstein's relativity.  I was just enthralled with the idea that, when I saw Betelgeuse shining in the heavens, that light was 430 years old.  By looking up at the stars, I was literally peering through a window into the past.  Pretty cool.

Mary Oliver probably found that pretty cool, too.  The past shining down on the present into the future.  Time travel, in a way.  When the light from Betelgeuse hits Earth tonight, that light came into being a couple months after playwright Christopher Marlowe was murdered in England and Mumtaz Mahal, Queen of India and inspiration for the Taj Mahal, was born.  

We are surrounded by miracles, each and every day.  We just don't pay that much attention to them, from Oliver's flicker to Galileo's mountains on the moon.  The universe is unfurling around us, and we're just hatchlings, really, looking up at the blue, blue sky from the bowl of our nest, hungry and desperate.

That's Saint Marty's one small step of a blog post tonight.

May 20: Kilgore Trout, Science Fiction, Hope

Night came to the garden of giraffes, and Billy Pilgrim slept without dreaming for a while, and then he traveled in time.  He woke up with his head under a blanket in a ward for nonviolent mental patients in a veterans' hospital near Lake Placid, New York.  It was springtime in 1948, three years after the end of the war.

Billy uncovered his head.  The windows of the the ward were open.  Birds were twittering outside.  "Poo-tee-weet?" one asked him.  The sun was high.  There were twenty-nine other patients assigned to the ward, but they were all outdoors now, enjoying the day.  They were free to come and go as they pleased, to go home, even, if they like--and so was Billy Pilgrim.  They had come here voluntarily, alarmed by the outside world.

Billy had committed himself in the middle of his final year at the Ilium School of Optometry.  Nobody suspected that he was going crazy.  Everybody else thought he looked fine and was acting fine.  Now he was in the hospital.  The doctors agreed.  He was going crazy.

They didn't think it had anything to do with the war.  They were sure Billy was going to pieces because his father had thrown him into the deep end of the Y.M.C.A. swimming pool when he was a little boy, and had then taken him to the rim of the Grand Canyon.

The man assigned to the bed next to Billy's was a former infantry captain named Eliot Rosewater.  Rosewater was sick and tired of being drunk all the time.

It was Rosewater who introduced Billy to science fiction, and in particular to the writings of Kilgore Trout.  Rosewater had a tremendous collection of science-fiction paperbacks under his bed.  He had brought them to the hospital in a steamer trunk.  Those beloved, frumpish books gave off a smell that permeated the ward--like flannel pajamas that hadn't been changed for a month, or like Irish stew.

Kilgore Trout became Billy's favorite living author, and science fiction became the only sort of tales he could read.

Rosewater was twice as smart as Billy, but he and Billy were dealing with similar crises in similar ways.  They had both found life meaningless, partly because of what they had seen in war.  Rosewater, for instance, had shot a fourteen-year-old foreman, mistaking him for a German soldier.  So it goes.  And Billy had seen the greatest massacre in European history, which was the fire-bombing of Dresden.  So it goes.

So they were trying to re-invent themselves and their universe.  Science fiction was a big help.

Of course, science fiction is a huge part of Slaughterhouse.  Billy is unstuck in time through the entire novel.  He travels on a flying saucer, lives in a zoo on the planet of Tralfamadore.  Now, the question is whether the science fiction aspects of the book are just the results of Billy's unstable mind, or are they real?  Is Billy a time and flying saucer traveler?  Does Tralfamadore exist out in the far reaches of the universe, beyond stars and time, or in the inner reaches of Billy's brain?

I prefer to accept Vonnegut's science fiction as the truth of the novel.  I want to believe in the collapse of time and the presence of alien life on the planet Earth.  Of course, I grew up watching sci-fi movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still and Forbidden Planet.  I loved sci-fi before Star Wars.  Grew up watching reruns of the original Star Trek.  I wanted a tribble for a pet.

I think my attraction to the genre is very much the same as Billy Pilgrim's.  I love the idea of reinventing myself and the universe.  Science fiction is all about possibility for something better.  Or something worse.  It all depends on what aliens have taken over the planet, and whether those aliens eat human beings, breed them as slaves, or find them "fascinating," to quote Spock.

I want to believe in a better future (hard to do in Trumpland right now).  I want to reinvent myself into a better me.  Richer.  Smarter.  Thinner.  More successful.  All I need to do is come up with a way to teleport myself across the universe or meet a kind Tralfamdorian who likes my jokes. 

Of course, Vonnegut uses science fiction as a way of dealing with, as he says above, "the greatest massacre in European history."  Reality is too painful, too horrific.  So, Vonnegut changes reality and time, gives himself an escape hatch on a flying saucer.  It's through this alternate reality that Vonnegut is able to come to terms with all that he witnessed in Dresden.  Kilgore Trout and the bird that sings "Poo-tee-weet?" fill in the gaps, ask the questions, provide the music in a world that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to Vonnegut.

That is what, I think, science fiction is all about, whether it be dystopian or pulp.  The Day of the Triffids or 2001:  A Space Odyssey.  It's about making sense out of senselessness, hope out of ashes.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for martians and Jedi knights.

October 5: Migrating Canada Geese, Happy Saint Marty's Day, HAL

Last year I saw three migrating Canada geese flying low over the frozen duck pond where I stood.  I heard a heart-stopping blast of speed before I saw them; I felt the flayed air slap at my face.  They thundered across the pond, and back, and back again:  I swear I have never seen such speed, such single-mindedness, such flailing of wings.  They froze the duck pond as they flew; they rang the air; they disappeared . . . 

Yes, Saint Marty's Day is upon us, after weeks of preparation--shopping, baking, decorating, cooking.  And, like all days of importance, it comes and goes quickly.  It is almost four o'clock in the afternoon, and the day seems to be flying away, like Dillard's geese.  A blast of speed.  Flailing of wings.  Ringing the air.  Then, it's over.  Gone for another year.

But, for now, it is still Saint Marty's Day.  I'm sitting in my office at school, listening to rain pounding the roof above me.  There's thunder, too.  A holiday rainstorm.  I've eaten a chocolate chip peanut butter pie and chocolate cake.  When I got to work this morning, the phone started ringing.  Friends calling to wish me "Happy Saint Marty's Day."  They sang to me, too.  Saint Marty's Day carols.

Tonight, I teach my introduction to film class.  We will be watching 2001:  A Space Odyssey, which is a terrific Saint Marty's Day flick, with the monkeys and HAL and the Star Child.  In fact, it is rumored that Stanley Kubrick edited out a scene where the astronauts Frank and Dave share some Saint Marty's Day tapioca and HAL becomes jealous.

I wish all of my disciples a Happy Saint Marty's Day.  Plenty of gifts and blessings.  At the end of the day, I plan to sit on my couch with a wine glass of Diet Mountain Dew and a bowl of tapioca pudding.  (Are you sensing a theme?  It's all about the tapioca.)  The lights of the tree will be glowing.  Outside, wind will be whipping through the branches of the maple tree.  Rain.

Saint Marty's Day is flying south for the winter.

Dave . . . can I have some tapioca?

July 12: Chloroplast, I'm Hungry, Ghosts

You are a cholorplast moving in water heaved one hundred feet above ground.  Hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen in a ring around magnesium . . . You are evolution; you have only begun to make trees.  You are God--are you tired? finished?

Dillard writes a series of passages like this one.  You are God.  You are a man.  You are a starling.  You are a sculptor.  You are a choloroplast.  It's all about creation and transformation and evolution.  One thing turning into something else.  Dillard is fascinated by this process.

I am not feeling very creative tonight.  I just spent three hours typing up lecture notes on 2001:  A Space Odyssey for my online film class.  Tomorrow night, it's Toy Story.  Then a quiz and a discussion forum to post.  I suppose there's a modicum of creativity in all that work.  But, it's not about transformation.  It's about translating what's in my head into something coherent and understandable.  Not inspiring, but informative.

My wife is working tonight, so I'm on my own with my kids.  My daughter is self-sufficient; she stays in her room and talks to her friends on her phone and plays video games.  My son, on the other hand, requires a little more effort.  He's going to try anything and everything to stay up as late as he can.  It'll start with "I'm hungry."  Then "I want to play with Connor."  Then "I want to watch Pokemon."  My son is infinitely creative when it comes to avoiding bedtime.

It will be a good night.  I will give in a little.  Let him watch America's Got Talent for a while.  Maybe eat some cheese cubes and crackers.  It's summer.  Eighty degrees at eight o'clock at night.  The sun won't go down until after ten.  I remember what it was like to be his age, out of school, full of energy and imagination.  I wanted to dig up dinosaurs in the backyard.  Communicate with visitors from outer space.  See ghosts flying across the moon.  Write books with beautiful pictures.  I remember that feeling that I could be anything.
.Even a saint.  All it takes is imagination, creation, transformation, and evolution.

April 22: Pagan Stars, Earth Day, Neanderthal

Later I lay half out of my sleeping bag on a narrow shelf of flat ground between the cottage porch and the bank to the dam.  I lay where a flash flood would reach me, but we have had a flood; the time is late.  The night was clear; when the fretwork of overhead foliage rustled and parted, I could see the pagan stars.

Dillard is camping out.  In the darkness, she listens to the sound of the trees and trees' inhabitants.  Goldfinches.  A squirrel or two.  And cicadas, "the guns of August."  Night is not a time of rest in the woods.  It's a time of movement, scavenging, and noise.  Lots of noise.  Nature's stage is never empty.  The actors simply change with the sunlight and season.  Earth is in perpetual performance.

Happy Earth Day!  In celebration of this important event, I spent nine hours inside, sitting before a computer, answering phones, and dealing with people.  The closest I came to being environmentally conscious was taking the stairs instead of the elevator when I left work.  (I work on the third floor of a medical center; there was no way I was going to walk up three flights of stairs this morning. )

When my alarm went off this morning, I looked out the window and saw snow flying.  I had to scrape ice off my windshield.  I did not think or say very kind things about Mother Earth as I zipped up my winter jacket yet again.  It was dark and windy.

Now, I don't want to hear any lectures about global warming and the melting polar icecap.  I know that we have messed up this little piece of rock in the solar system we call home.  Human beings have a way of discovering natural things like crude oil or natural gas and going all apeshit over it.  I'm reminded of the scene from the beginning of 2001:  A Space Odyssey where one Neanderthal clubs another Neanderthal to death over a pool of muddy water.  We haven't progressed all that much from that prehistoric moment. 

So, tonight, I will do something green.  Maybe I'll return the bag of pop cans on my front porch.  Or go for a walk.  Turn off all the lights in my house and read by candlelight.  (I thought about going natural this morning by forgoing deodorant, but I didn't want to offend my coworkers--two twenty-something girls who wouldn't appreciate my efforts.)  So I'm still formulating my Earth Day plans.

Maybe Saint Marty will watch Wall-E and eat unsalted popcorn.  Or Pringles and Easy Cheese and Midnight in Paris.  But he'll think about acid rain as he's eating.

February 25: Linda Nemec Foster, "The Shape of Rain"

I am at the end of a very long day.  Eight hours in the medical office.  Another five hours at the university.  I have taught my film class, written two hand-outs for my poetry class, and typed up two blog posts.  I would say that's a pretty productive day.

I'm pretty beat.  I sort of feel like I've just lived through the ending of 2001:  A Space Odyssey.  Lots of color and light and music.  I'm not really sure what it all means, but I survived.  Tomorrow night, I get to talk about poetry for three hours.  That's my reward.  I can't wait.

I have another Linda Nemec Foster poem for you.  It's beautiful and heartbreaking.

Which sort of describes most of Saint Marty's day.

The Shape of Rain

by:  Linda Nemec Foster

The shape of rain has nothing
to do with the shape of clouds,
those faces we imagine in the sky.

The shape of rain has everything
to do with the shape of our hands;
but we forget the rumor of this.

The shape of rain is not the opaque
veil of life.  Not the dancer's robe
in a fairy tale on the verge of being spoken.

The shape of rain is the wide, clear
curve of suicide.  Bright and empty
concave of silence.  No echo of regret.

The shape of rain looks straight down,
the long leap that sifts through miles
of dead air to reach the glory of pavement.

Where's Gene Kelly?

October 1: Five Days, Lisel Mueller, "Tears"

Yes, only five more days until Saint Marty's Day.  Five more days of last minute shopping and gift wrapping and baking.  I'm not saying it's too late to get prepared, but, if you're depending on Amazon to get your Saint Marty's Day presents, you better get started.

It's been a pretty long day.  I watched 2001:  A Space Odyssey with my students this evening.  Tried to prepare them for it.  Apes and monoliths and deadly computers and such.  When I told them that the first five minutes of the film was a black screen with music, they looked at me as though I was speaking Urdu.  They weren't thrilled.

I have a Lisel Mueller poem about sorrow.  I've been thinking a lot about happiness and sadness in the last couple of days.  It's the normal array of problems:  money, exhaustion, auto, health.  My wife discovered some unexpected expenses on Monday, and suddenly we find ourselves on a very tight budget for the next couple of weeks.  My ear is sore.  I think I'm coming down with an ear infection.  I think the transmission is acting up on my car.  And the first case of Ebola has been diagnosed in the United States.

Yet, I really don't have anything to complain about.  I have two jobs.  A home.  Two great kids.  A laptop computer.  The Big Bang Theory is on TV.  I should be happy a majority of the time, minus the occasional bout of gastrointestinal distress due to the ingestion of too much buttered movie popcorn.  Of course, that would require me to ignore everything that I just listed in the previous paragraph.

Saint Marty isn't really good at ignoring potential plagues or unpaid bills or earaches.

Tears

by:  Lisel Mueller

The first woman who ever wept
was appalled at what stung
her eyes and ran down her cheeks.
Saltwater.  Seawater.
How was it possible?
Hadn't she and the man
spent many days moving
upland to where the grass
flourished, where the stream
quenched their thirst with sweet water?
How could she have carried these sea drops
as if they were precious seeds;
where could she have stowed them?
She looked at the watchful gazelles
and the heavy-lidded frogs;
she looked at glass-eyed birds
and nervous, black-eyed mice.
None of them wept, not even the fish
that dripped in her hands when she caught them.
Not even the man.  Only she
carried the sea inside her body.

Open the pod bay doors...

March 11: Gratitude Number Seven

I am grateful this evening for teaching.

This gratitude is a little double-edged, however.  I'm not sure, with the changes to come in my working situation, whether I'm going to be able to continue to teach.  I have to provide for my family, even if that means forfeiting the classroom.

I've always said that the job at the medical office feeds my family; the job at the university feeds my soul.  This afternoon, I had a great time with my students.  We watched 2001:  A Space Odyssey, a difficult film, to say the least.  But these kids were enthralled, the way I remember being the first time I saw 2001.

I can't imagine not teaching.

Hopefully, it won't come down to that for Saint Marty.

Open the pod bay doors, Hal

October 7: In a Rush, Between Office and Class, Magic 8-Ball

I will admit at the outset of this post that I am in a rush.  I have been in my office at the university for a little over two hours, and I haven't accomplished a whole lot.  It's one of those days where I seem to be working all the time, and nothing really gets done.  I hate days like this.

I will probably not even proofread this post before I publish it.  I don't have that much time.  So, if there are glaring typos or misplaced punctuation marks or misspelled words, blame it on the time crunch I'm under.  I have to teach my Intro to Film class about 2001:  A Space Odyssey in T-minus 25 minutes.

It's going to be a crazy week for me.  My daughter is in a special musical program at school.  She's dancing with the dance team at a football game on Wednesday night.  Thursday is normal.  And then Friday, we head off to the Wisconsin Dells for a dance convention.  If I am still sane by the end of these next seven days, it will be a miracle.

My question for the Magic Holden 8-Ball is:

Will I still be sane in seven days?

And the answer from J. D. Salinger is:

"I'd like to--I really would," I said.  "But I have a bad leg.  I have to hold it in a certain position.  I think I'd better sit down in the chair outside their door."

There you have.  I really would like to be sane in seven days, but I have a bad brain.  I have to hold it in a certain position.


Saint Marty will just sit down in a chair and wait for the guys in the white coats to come and get him and his pal, Harvey.  You know, the big white rabbit?

Me and my buddy.  I'm the one in the suit, looking like Jimmy Stewart.

February 21: Naked Truth

Yes, I am going to cater to the prurient disciples of blogs again with my title.  I've noticed a definite increase in pageviews for my afternoon/evening posts since I've been using words like "raw" and "naked" and "blow."  As I've said many times before, I am not above playing dirty to get readers.  Anything that will get me the Blog of Note recognition from the people at Blogger.

I actually have to teach this afternoon.  It will be the first time I've stepped into a classroom since Monday.  It's going to be an easy day.  I'm giving a quiz, and I'm screening Singin' in the Rain.  If I get done early with that film, I've also got 2001:  A Space Odyssey to begin.  That's it.

The naked truth of this day is that I'm ready for it to be over.  Tonight at church, I have to play a mini-concert with Underground Praise, my band.  I'm a little anxious about the gig.  I'm not sure who's going to show up to listen.  I'm not sure who's going to show up to play (besides myself and our lead singer/guitar player).  I don't even know what I'm going to play.  I will eventually go home and relax, after 8 p.m.  That's about an 18-hour day.

If Saint Marty's tired now, he's going to be freakin' exhausted in a little while.

This is as naked as the truth gets

September 28: Ready for the Weekend

It has been a pretty long day of work and meetings and cleaning.  My normal Friday.  But, my house is cleaned, my beds are made, my dishes are done, and, pretty soon, my second blog post will be complete.  I even went for my run already, and it's only 6 p.m.  I am so far ahead of the game that I'm already on Saturday.

Tonight, I plan on watching 2001:  A Space Odyssey.  That's the next movie for my film class.  I started watching it this afternoon while I was cleaning, but I was a little distracted.  I need to focus a little more closely on the apes and spaceships and HAL.  I'm not too sure my students are going to like Kubrick's vision of the future, but it is/was a groundbreaking sci-fi movie.  They will thank me in about ten years.

Well, I have to give my son a bath now.  It's Friday night, and, as soon as he's in bed, I can kick back and start worrying about all the work I have to get accomplished this weekend.  I can also start feeling anxious about next week.

It's a complicated life Saint Marty leads.

A little light viewing for the weekend