February 7: Pile of Dirty Clothes, Super Bowl Sunday, Amanda Gorman

Merton gets blind drunk . . . 

With the money I had kept in my pocket we went into the other places we would have done well to keep out of, and saw all of the carnival, and then went into Bradford where, drinking beer in a bar, we began to feel better and started to assuage our wounds by telling a lot of fancy lies to some girls we met in the bar—they were maids who worked at the t.b. sanatorium at Rocky Crest, on the mountain about a mile and a half from the cottage. 

I remember that as the evening went on, there was a fairly large mixed audience of strangers gathered around the table where we were holding forth about the amusement ring which we managed and controlled. It was called the Panama-American Entertainment corporation, and was so magnificent that it made the present carnival in Bradford look like a sideshow. However, the effect was somewhat spoiled when a couple of Bradford strong men came up with no signs of interest in our story, and said:

 “If we see you guys around here again with those beards we are going to knock your heads off” 

So Rice stood up and said: “Yeah? Do you want to fight?” 

Everybody went out into the alley, and there was a great deal of talk back and forth, but no fight, which was a good thing. They were quite capable of making us eat those beards. 

We eventually found our way home but Rice did not dare try to drive the car into the garage for fear he would miss the door. He stopped short in the driveway and we opened the doors of the car and rolled out and lay on the grass, looking blindly up into the stars while the earth rolled and pitched beneath us like a foundering ship. The last thing I remember about that night was that Rice and I eventually got up and walked into the house, and found Lax sitting in one of the chairs in the living room, talking aloud, and uttering a lot of careful and well-thought-out statements directed to a pile of dirty clothes, bundled up and ready for the laundry, which somebody had left in another armchair on the other side of the room. 

There's nothing very deep in this passage from The Seven Storey Mountain.  It can be summed up pretty easily:  Thomas Merton and his friends lose most of their money gambling, get stinking drunk, drive home, and pass out.  If you throw football into the mix, you'd have a perfect description of today in the United States.

It's Super Bowl Sunday.  The teams playing--the Tampa Bay Buccaneers versus the Kansas City Racially Insensitive Mascots.  I just checked Google to see who won.  It appears the Buccaneers defeated the Racially Insensitive Mascots pretty soundly.  I don't know if that was a surprise or not.  What was a surprise to me:  Amanda Gorman reading a Super Bowl poem.

It appears that Gorman is the It Girl at the moment.  Presidential Inauguration.  Interviewed by Michelle Obama for Time Magazine.  Now, the preshow for the Super Bowl.  I don't think poetry has ever been in the spotlight in my country this much.  First, American poet Louise Gluck wins the Nobel Prize in Literature last October, and now Amanda Gorman dominates two of the biggest events that will happen this year.  

As a poet, this makes me quite happy.  Obviously.  That teenagers and 20-somethings have a young, African American poet as a role model.  And, at one of the largest sporting events in the world, poetry takes the same stage as the Weeknd, and gets better reviews.  If you're feeling a little cold, that's because hell is freezing over.

I didn't watch the Super Bowl tonight.  Don't really care about football.  Instead, I led a poetry workshop.  Spent a couple of hours writing with two talented poets.  It was a pretty good ending to a cold weekend.  (Or should that be Weeknd?)  If I could make my living just doing workshops and poetry readings, that would be a dream.  

From a pretty good source, I found out that Amanda Gorman is now pulling down $50,000 for a virtual appearance.  If you want Amanda to actually walk across your stage, the price tag goes up to $100,000.  Now, I am not saying that she doesn't deserve to be paid well for what she does.  I believe all artists are underpaid and underappreciated.

I've called myself a poet for the majority of my adult life.  I'm happy if I'm given a free poster and a plate of brownies for doing a reading.  The kind of money Gorman is making is unfathomable to me.  If I were her, I'd do about ten or 12 readings in January and February, and then I'd take the rest of the year off.  Maybe go to Disney World.  Or buy a condo there.

So, now I have a new goal:  reading a poem at the Super Bowl.  I think that should be worth at least a free dinner at Red Lobster.  Or a box of Oatmeal Cream Pies.

Saint Marty gives thanks for poetic miracles.

 

February 5: The Game is Open, Carnival Barkers, Free Will

 Merton takes a gamble . . . 

A carnival came to Bradford. To us that meant a couple of Ferris wheels and a bingo game and the “Whip” and a man wearing a white uniform and a crash helmet being fired out of a cannon into a net. We got into the car and started out along the Rock City road, through the dark woods alive with the drumming of the oil-pumps. 

It was a big carnival. It seemed to fill the bottom of a narrow valley, one of the zig-zag valleys in which Bradford is hidden, and the place blazed with lights. The stacks of the oil refinery stood up, beyond the lights, like the guardians of hell. We walked into the white glare and the noise of crazy electric music and the thick sweet smell of candy. 

“Hey, fellows, come over this way if you please.” 

We turned our beards shyly towards the man in shirt sleeves, hatted with a felt hat, leaning out of his booth. We could see the colored board, the numbers. We approached. He began to explain to us that, out of the kindness of his big foolish heart, he was conducting this game of chance which was so easy and simple that it really amounted to a kind of public charity, a means for endowing intelligent and honest young men like ourselves with a handsome patrimony. 

We listened to his explanation. It was not one of those games where you won a box of popcorn, that was evident. In fact, although it started at a quarter, the ante doubled at every throw: of course, so did the prize, and the prize was in dollars. 

“All you have to do is roll the little ball into these holes and...” 

And he explained just what holes you had to roll the little ball into. Each time you had to get a new and different combination of numbers. 

“You put down a quarter,” said our benefactor, “and you are about to win two dollars and fifty cents. If you should happen to miss it the first time, it will be all the better for you, because for fifty cents you’ll win five dollars —for one dollar you’ll take ten—for two you’ll take twenty.” 

We put down our quarters, and rolled the little balls into the wrong holes. 

“Good for you,” said the man, “now you stand a chance of winning twice as much.” And we all put down fifty cents. 

“Fine, keep it up, you’re getting ready to win more and more each time— you can’t miss, it’s in-ev-i-table!” 

He pocketed a dollar bill from each of us. 

“That’s the way, men, that’s the way,” he exclaimed, as we all rolled the little ball into the wrong holes again. 

I paused and asked him to go over the rules of the game a second time. He did, and I listened closely. It was as I thought. I hadn’t the vaguest idea what he was talking about. You had to get certain combinations of numbers, and for my own part I was completely unable to figure out what the combinations were. He simply told us what to shoot for, and then rapidly added up all the numbers and announced: 

“You just missed it. Try again, you’re so close you can’t fail.” And the combination changed again. 

In about two and a half minutes he had taken all our money except for a dollar which I was earnestly saving for the rest of the carnival and for beer. How, he asked us, could we have the heart to quit now? Here we were right on the point of cleaning up, getting back all our losses, and winning a sum that made us dizzy: three hundred and fifty dollars. 

“Men,” he said, “you can’t quit now, you’re just throwing away your money if you quit. It doesn’t make sense, does it? You didn’t come all the way out here just to throw away your dough? Use your heads, boys. Can’t you see you’ve got to win?” 

Rice got that big grin on his face that meant “Let’s get out of here.” 

“We haven’t any more money,” someone said. 

“Have you any traveler’s checks?” the philanthropist inquired. 

“No.” 

But I never saw anyone so absorbed and solemn as Lax was, at that moment, in his black beard, with his head bowed over all those incomprehensible numbers. So he looked at me and I looked at him, and the man said: 

“If you want to run home and get a little more money, I’ll hold the game open for you—how’s that?”

 We said: “Hold the game open, we’ll be back.” 

We got into the car and drove, in the most intense silence, fifteen miles or whatever the distance was to the cottage, and fifteen miles back, with thirty-five dollars and all the rest of the money we had: but the thirty-five alone were for the game. 

When the benefactor of the poor saw the three of us come through that gate again, he really looked surprised and a little scared. The expressions on our faces must have been rather frightening, and perhaps he imagined that we had gone home not only to get our money but our guns. 

We walked up to the booth. 

“You held this game open for us, huh?” 

“Yes, indeed, men, the game is open.” 

“Explain it over again.” 

He explained it over again. He told us what we had to get to win—it seemed impossible to miss. We put the money down on the counter and Lax rolled the little ball—into the wrong holes. 

“Is that all, boys?” said the prince of charity. 

“That’s all.” We turned on our heels and went away. 

Merton the gullible.  He and his friends fall victim to two things:  a grifter and their own prides.  I've been to many of those carnival midways--as most people have--where people bark at you from inside their booths, trying, by hook or by crook, to get you to stop and lay down some cash.  And the results are pretty much what Merton describes here:  you shell twenty dollars for a sickly goldfish in a plastic bag of water.  Or you walk away empty-handed.

When I was younger, I allowed myself to get lured in by these barkers.  Walking along with my girlfriend, a man chewing a cigar shouting at me, "Hey, lover boy, want to win something for that pretty girl of yours?"  Trying to rush my children past the booths, a tattooed woman calling out, "Hey, kids, don't you want to take home a unicorn as big as you?"  The messages are always different, tailored to the situation and carnival goers.  But it's all about temptation--the game runners size you up for your weaknesses and then go to work.

As a kid, going to Catholic catechism, I would hear the story of Christ being tempted by the devil in the desert after 40 days of fasting.  I always pictured the devil as a carnival barker, offering Jesus the biggest stuffed animal on the sandy midway.  Of course, Jesus doesn't surrender to this conman.  Because . . . well, He's God.  Christ recognizes that the game is rigged.  There is literally no human way to win.

Every day is like that for humans.  We  make choices, from the time we climb out of bed in the morning to the time we crawl back in at night.  The carnival barkers are all there, vying for our attentions.  We make good choices (an apple and oatmeal for breakfast) and bad choices (a bottle of watermelon wine and Little Caesar's pizza for dinner).  It's all about free will.

I'm not a big fan of free will a lot of the time.  Because many of the people who I love make terrible choices, every day, all day.  It's so easy, as Merton learns in the passage above, to get suckered by the lights and smells and excitements of the carnival games.  In the end, however, most of us leave the fairgrounds broke and broken.

Yet, free will is what makes life interesting, I suppose.  The world would be pretty boring if everyone ate the same things, dressed the same way, read the same books, listened to the same music, liked the same movies.  Without free will, I wouldn't be a poet.  Because the world doesn't put a high value on poetry, unless you happen to be Amanda Gorman or Joy Harjo.  Instead, I'd be an accountant or doctor or plumber.  Something utilitarian.  

So, free will is a double-edged sword.  It allows abusers to be abusers.  Saints to be saints.  Trump supporters to be Trump supporters.  Poets to be poets.  You have to take the good with the not-so-good.  I'm not saying that poetry is the equivalent of losing all your money at a carnival ring toss game.  What I'm saying is that free will leaves room for poetry, but it also for porn addiction.

I chose to ask my wife to marry me.  She chose to marry me.  We chose to have children.  I chose to be a poet and contingent university professor.  I chose to have three glasses of Bailey's Irish Cream mixed with eggnog tonight.  And to watch The Man Who Invented Christmas because Christopher Plummer died today.

Like I said, every day is about possibilities, with very few opportunities for do-overs.  I'm lucky because I wouldn't change a whole lot about my life.  I would still marry my wife, despite all of the struggles we've faced because of mental illness and addiction.  I would still be a father, regardless of the fact that my son seems headed for a repeat of seventh grade.  And I would still be a poet, though it will never buy groceries or pay the water bill.  All of these choices were winning hands for me.

Saint Marty knows when to hold 'em, and knows when to fold 'em. 

January 15: The Prudence of the Flesh, Grant Writing, Obsessions and Passions

Merton realizes that there's more to being a Christian than he thought . . .

One of the big defects of my spiritual life in that first year was a lack of devotion to the Mother of God. I believed in the truths which the Church teaches about Our Lady, and I said the “Hail Mary” when I prayed, but that is not enough. People do not realize the tremendous power of the Blessed Virgin. They do not know who she is: that it is through her hands all graces come because God has willed that she thus participate in His work for the salvation of men. 

To me, in those days, although I believed in her, Our Lady occupied in my life little more than the place of a beautiful myth—for in practice I gave her no more than the kind of attention one gives to a symbol or a thing of poetry. She was the Virgin who stood in the doors of the medieval cathedrals. She was the one I had seen in all the statues in the Musée de Cluny, and whose pictures, for that matter, had decorated the walls of my study at Oakham. 

But that is not the place that belongs to Mary in the lives of men. She is the Mother of Christ still, His Mother in our souls. She is the Mother of the supernatural life in us. Sanctity comes to us through her intercession. God has willed that there be no other way. 

But I did not have that sense of dependence or of her power. I did not know what need I had of trust in her. I had to find out by experience. 

What could I do without love of the Mother of God, without a clear and lofty spiritual objective, without spiritual direction, without daily Communion, without a life of prayer? But the one thing I needed most of all was a sense of the supernatural life, and systematic mortification of my passions and of my crazy nature. 

I made the terrible mistake of entering upon the Christian life as if it were merely the natural life invested with a kind of supernatural mode by grace. I thought that all I had to do was to continue living as I had lived before, thinking and acting as I did before, with the one exception of avoiding mortal sin.

It never occurred to me that if I continued to live as I had lived before, I would be simply incapable of avoiding mortal sin. For before my Baptism I had lived for myself alone. I had lived for the satisfaction of my own desires and ambitions, for pleasure and comfort and reputation and success. Baptism had brought with it the obligation to reduce all my natural appetites to subordination to God’s will: “For the wisdom of the flesh is an enemy to God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither can it be. And they who are in the flesh, cannot please God ... and if you live according to the flesh, you shall die: but if by the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you shall live. For whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” Spiritu ambulate, et desideria carnis non perficietis. 

St. Thomas explains the words of the Epistle to the Romans very clearly and simply. The wisdom of the flesh is a judgement that the ordinary ends of our natural appetites are the goods to which the whole of man’s life are to be ordered. Therefore it inevitably inclines the will to violate God’s law. 

In so far as men are prepared to prefer their own will to God’s will, they can be said to hate God: for of course they cannot hate Him in Himself. But they hate Him in the Commandments which they violate. But God is our life: God’s will is our food, our meat, our life’s bread. To hate our life is to enter into death, and therefore the prudence of the flesh is death. 

The only thing that saved me was my ignorance. Because in actual fact, since my life after my Baptism was pretty much what it had been before Baptism, I was in the condition of those who despise God by loving the world and their own flesh rather than Him. And because that was where my heart lay, I was bound to fall into mortal sin, because almost everything that I did tended, by virtue of my habitual intention to please myself before all else, to obstruct and deaden the work of grace in my soul. 

But I did not clearly realize all this. Because of the profound and complete conversion of my intellect, I thought I was entirely converted. Because I believed in God, and in the teachings of the Church, and was prepared to sit up all night arguing about them with all comers, I imagined that I was even a zealous Christian. 

What Merton is saying here is that human beings are pretty much selfish creatures.  They care only about their own fleshy needs.  Eternity is not really on the minds of most people.  It's all about feeding hungers.  For McDonald's.  Sex.  Poetry.  Rock and roll.  Whatever.  You name it, and someone is probably obsessed with it or obsessing over it.

I apologize for my prolonged absence.  These last five days, I've been obsessed with grant writing and playing Jeopardy.

At the library, I've been working on a very large programming grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.  It has pretty much consumed my thoughts and energies for the last week-and-a-half.  And I have another two weeks left before I have to submit it.  Which may sound like quite a bit of time.  However, I have to secure presenters and workshop leaders and venues and videographers and partnering organizations.

At home, every time I've had a few minutes of my own to write, I've been playing a Jeopardy board game with my family.  My son and daughter have been a little obsessed with it.  And I get to play Alex Trebek.  I think they let me be the host simply because I can pronounce all of the names and terms and geographical locations correctly.  

And right now most of the people in the United States are obsessed with the second impeachment of Donald Trump and coronavirus restrictions and vaccines.  I try to avoid the rabbit hole of Facebook posts about these subjects.  For example, the members of the Baraga County Board here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan issued a "manifesto" stating they would no longer enforce the health department's pandemic restrictions--throwing open the doors to dining in restaurants, no facemasks, and crowded bars.  A friend of mine--who is a nurse, no less--posted this news with the comment "Wow about time."  (The sheer short-sightedness and scientific ignorance of that statement astounds me--and I could easily obsess about it.)

Obsession can be a good thing, too.  Just found out that Amanda Gorman will the the poet at Joe Biden's Presidential Inauguration this coming Wednesday.  I can guarantee you that, over the next few days, I will be obsessing about Gorman and her work.  (I've already been obsessing about inaugural poets, anyway.  I'm hosting a virtual reading at the library of all of the past Presidential Inaugural poems, so I've been doing lots of research and reading on the subject.)

There's not much difference, I think, between obsession and passion.  Yet, to say that you're passionate about someone or something seems respectable.  To say you're obsessed about someone or something has a Charles Manson-quality.  Notice the difference in tone between these two statements:  "I'm really passionate about kitchen knives" and "I'm obsessed with kitchen knives."  The former phrase could be uttered by a contestant on Master Chef, and the latter is straight Hannibal Lecter material.

Yet, passion and obsession are two sides of the same coin.  Healthy.  Unhealthy.  Light.  Dark.  They're both about feeding a hunger.  Fleshy.  Metaphysical.  Here are a few of my healthy obsessions/passions from the last few weeks:  poet Natasha Trethewey, Charles Dickens, the film The Man Who Invented Christmas, Louisa May Alcott, Greta Gerwig's Little Women, my puppy, the films The Family Stone and Love Actually, poet Joy Harjo, Bigfoot, poets Richard Blanco and Diane Glancy, and Clementine oranges.  

Here are a few of my less healthy obsessions/passions from the last few weeks:  staying up until 2 a.m. every night watching the movies I listed above, drinking a few too many glasses of wine in the evening, late-night Amazon orders, Facebook posts about Donald Trump's unraveling presidency, COVID-19 infection and fatality numbers, and the Weather Channel app.  

So, you see what has kept me from posting these last five or so days.  These selfish distractions.  I have said it before, and I will say it again: 

Saint Marty is a very weak person--with very strong passions.