August 7: "Black Oaks," Treeness, Ambition

Mary Oliver has tree envy . . . 

Black Oaks

by:  Mary Oliver

Okay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary,

     or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance

     and comfort.

Not one can manage a single sound, though the blue jays

     carp and whistle all day in the branches, without

     the push of the wind.

But to tell the truth after a while I'm pale with longing

     for their thick bodies ruckled with lichen

and you can't keep me from the woods, from the tonnage

     of their shoulders, and their shining green hair.

Today is a day like any other:  twenty-four hours, a 

     little sunshine, a little rain.

Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from

     one boot to another--why don't you get going?

For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.

And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists

     of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money,

     I don't even want to come in out of the rain.

I get Oliver in this poem.  I really do.

It's Monday, and I spent a majority of the day at my computer, doing the unglamorous side of my job at the library--creating flyers, typing up program descriptions, answering a ton of emails.  I sat down in my chair at 8 a.m., and, aside from a couple bathroom breaks, that is where I stayed for a majority of the workday.  Over seven hours staring at my monitor.  

If I had a new poem or short story or essay to share right now, I would feel as though I actually accomplished something amazing.  Added a new fragment of beauty to the universe.  But I didn't.  I simply slogged through my busyness, not  completing even half of what I set out to do this morning.  

That's why Oliver's poem hits home with me today.  Because trees don't worry about deadlines and timeclocks and productivity.  They're too busy just being trees in all their treeness--the tonnage of their shoulders and their lichen-ruckled bodies and their green hair.  That's enough for them.

Really, it should be enough for everybody.  Just being yourself is a full-time occupation.  Yet, humans are vain creatures, constantly looking for ways to get "ahead."  That's why, in the poem, Oliver's ambition is antsy, urging her to get a move on, as my dad used to say.  My parents instilled in me a pretty strong work ethic, and that, coupled with my own shallow aspirations, complicates my days tremendously.

In the last couple weeks, I've been adrift, if you haven't noticed.  When I was younger, I used to refer to these times as my "blue moods."  Now that I've been an adult for quite some time, I have other words and terms for these seasons in my life:  situational depression, anxiety, melancholy, grief, sorrow, ennui, languor, restlessness.  Rather than growing out of my blue moods, I've just come up with new and improved ways to describe them.

Oliver's black oaks can't do a lot of things that I deem important or meaningful.  They can't write a symphony or poem or love letter.  They don't have a dictionary or thesaurus to define their states of mind, and they don't need one.  Here's what they do have--deep, deep roots; sunshine; rain; snow; blue jays chattering in their limbs; mossy shadows; and the constancy of the seasons.  

That's tree happiness.  It may even be tree heaven.

Humans are more fragile and impermanent.  I'm staring out the window of my office at a maple tree across the street.  It stands taller than the library building, and it will probably still be standing there when I'm fertilizing daisies.  That maple isn't disappointed because it never finished college.  It doesn't have an abandoned novel in a desk drawer, and it doesn't envy the cedar bushes below or the seagulls wheeling above.

Here is what it has:  a cloudless blue sky, warm sun on its leaves, the waves of Lake Superior in the distance.

This afternoon while I was at work, I received a bouquet of flowers from my wife.  The note with the flowers read, "Thank you for all your hard work.  I love you."

Yes, I'm fragile and impermanent.  Full of ambition.  I don't have deep roots, and I may not be around in a month or week or day or hour.  Chances are, fifty years from now, nobody is going to remember my name.  Perhaps my picture will be hanging on a wall in some old building somewhere, and a passerby may casually wonder who I was before she walks on and forgets me.  

If you are reading this blog post 100 years from now, do me a favor.  Look at the picture of the flowers below, and remember this:

Saint Marty was here, and he was loved.  And that is enough.

May 26: "The Orchard," Memorial Day Weekend, Ambition

Mary Oliver on apples and time and ambition . . . 

The Orchard

by:  Mary Oliver

I have dreamed

of accomplishment.

I have fed

ambition.

I have traded

nights of sleep

for a length of work.

Lo, and I have discovered

how soft bloom

turns to green fruit

which turns to sweet fruit.

Lo, and I have discovered

all winds blow cold

at last,

and the leaves,

so pretty, so many,

vanish

in the great, black

packet of time,

in the great, black

packet of ambition,

and the ripeness

of the apple

is its downfall.

This season is all about accomplishment, time, and ambition.  Young people graduate from grade school to middle school, middle school to high school, high school to college, and college to whatever awaits.  Outside, the trees graduate from bare to green, and everything begins to open and become sweet.  You can taste ripeness with every deep breath.

It is the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, which, in the United States anyway, marks the beginning of the summer season.  For my international disciples, Memorial Day celebrates and honors members of the armed forces who sacrificed their lives in battle.  It's a national holiday in the U.S., although the majority of people overlook or forget its true significance.

I always find this weekend a little melancholy, because it's wrapped up so much in farewells and closing doors and remembrances.  Many tears are shed this time of year.  Perhaps I'm too sensitive, but I can't help it.  I'm a poet and spend a good deal of my time reflecting on shit like this.  

This afternoon, I screened Steven Spielberg's film The Fabelmans at the library where I work.  I first watched this movie in January of this year, when I was stuck at home with COVID.  It's a beautiful piece of art.  Sort of a love letter to cinema and family and growing up and pursuing your dreams.  In short, a perfect celluloid metaphor for what I'm talking about tonight.

Having ambition is a good thing.  Accomplishments are wonderful.  In the larger picture, however, they are also very temporary.  When I graduated from high school, I was voted "Most Likely to Succeed," but nobody defined that success.  When I stepped outside that high school auditorium in my cap and gown, I wanted to be a bestselling author.  Pulitzer Prize winner.  Nobel laureate.  People Magazine's Sexiest Writer Alive.  That was the definition of success.  (By the way, I would have settled for the Pulitzer and the Nobel.)

Tonight, I sit here on the cusp of another summer, and success looks very different to me.  Making enough money to pay all my bills.  Having healthy, happy children.  Writing a new poem every now and then.  Finishing this blog post tonight.  Feeling happy.  Laughing a lot.  That's all success.

As I've gotten older, my ambitions have just become more . . . realistic.  As Oliver says, the riper the apple, the sooner its downfall.  I don't think my apple is ready to fall just yet.  I have a few more things to learn, a little fuel left in my tank.  Every once in a while, I still write something that's not terrible, and eventually I'd like to finish reading Finnegans Wake (although that may be shooting too high).

So, if anybody from the Swedish Academy or Nobel Foundation is reading this blog post, Saint Marty is alive and kicking and waiting for that phone call.

March 9: Burnished Gold Fish, Really Beat, Selfcare

Santiago catches a dolphin . . . 

Just before it was dark, as they passed a great island of Sargasso weed that heaved and swung in the light sea as though the ocean were making love with something under a yellow blanket, his small line was taken by a dolphin. He saw it first when it jumped in the air, true gold in the last of the sun and bending and flapping wildly in the air. It jumped again and again in the acrobatics of its fear and he worked his way back to the stern and crouching and holding the big line with his right hand and arm, he pulled the dolphin in with his left hand, stepping on the gained line each time with his bare left foot. When the fish was at the stern, plunging and cutting from side to side in desperation, the old man leaned over the stern and lifted the burnished gold fish with its purple spots over the stern. Its jaws were working convulsively in quick bites against the hook and it pounded the bottom of the skiff with its long flat body, its tail and its head until he clubbed it across the shining golden head until it shivered and was still.

The old man unhooked the fish, rebaited the line with another sardine and tossed it over. Then he worked his way slowly back to the bow. He washed his left hand and wiped it on his trousers. Then he shifted the heavy line from his right hand to his left and washed his right hand in the sea while he watched the sun go into the ocean and the slant of the big cord.

Santiago needs to eat.  That's why he hauls in the dolphin and kills it.  The old man has no idea how much longer the battle with the fish will last.  It could be hours or days.  And he is in a boat in the ocean, with no land in sight.  So he has to keep up his strength somehow.

It is late Wednesday night.  I just got home after a long day of work.  I'm pretty really beat.  For some reason, I packed all my evenings with events this week.  Concerts.  Astronomy presentations.  Author Readings.  Science presentations.  I do this kind of intensive scheduling at least one week out of every month.  Not by design.  It just happens.

So, I find myself trying to practice a little self-care, like Santiago in the above passage.  He knows he has to eat and rest.  That's how to survive in a society that thinks downtime is a luxury instead of a necessity.  Americans just don't get the impulse to withdraw and be alone.  There's this constant push to strive and achieve.

I'm not saying ambition is a bad thing.  I am literally the posterchild for Overextended.  It has something to do with my need to please.  To say "yes" or "no problem," even when there are claxons going off in my cerebral cortex and entire nervous system.  I'm a very ambitious person, in my job and artistic life.  

Yet, there is a price for this lifestyle of overachievement.  It's called exhaustion.  It happens to me once every couple of months.  I find that I simply cannot function.  I need to literally lay down on my couch and take a twelve hour nap.  Practice a little selfcare.  I think I am reaching that point soon.

Please forgive me if this post seems short and a little indulgent.  My cup runneth over.  And over.  And over.  And over.  Perhaps, by tomorrow night, after the fourth program of the week, I will carve out a little "me" time.

Translation:  Saint Marty will take a nap.

May 24: Full Manual Control, March Video, Ambition

The crew of the Heart of Gold are facing an impending attack for being too nosy . . .

"Oh," said Trillian.

"Er . . ." said Arthur.

"Well?" said Ford.

"Look," said Zaphod, "will you get it into your heads?  That's just a recorded message.  It's millions of years old.  It doesn't apply to us, get it?"

"What," said Trillian quietly, "about the missiles?"

"Missiles?  Don't make me laugh."

Ford tapped Zaphod on the shoulder and pointed at the rear screen.  Clear in the distance behind them two silver darts were climbing through the atmosphere toward the ship.  A quick change of magnification brought them into close focus--two massively real rockets thundering through the sky.  The suddenness of it was shocking.

"I think they're going to have a very good try at applying to us," said Ford.

Zaphod stared at them in astonishment.

"Hey, this is terrific!" he said.  "Someone down there is trying to kill us!"

"Terrific," said Arthur.

"But don't you see what this means?"

"Yes.  We're going to die."

"Yes, but apart from that."

"Apart from that?"

"It means we must be on to something."

"How soon can we get off it?"

Second by second the image of the missiles on the screen grew larger.  They had swung round now on to a direct homing course so that all that could be seen of them now was the warheads, head-on.

"As a matter of interest," said Trillian, "what are we going to do?"

"Just keep cool," said Zaphod.

"Is that all?" shouted Arthur.

"No, we're also going to . . .er . . . take evasive action!" said Zaphod with a sudden access of panic.  "Computer, what evasive action can we take?"

"Er, none, I'm afraid, guys," said the computer.

"Or something," said Zaphod, " . . .er . . ." he said.  

"There seems to be something jamming my guidance systems," explained the computer brightly, "impact minus forty-five seconds.  Please call me Eddie if it will help you relax."

Zaphod tried to run in several equally decisive directions simultaneously.  "Right!" he said.  "Er . . . we've got to get manual control of this ship."

"Can you fly her?" asked Ford pleasantly.

"No, can you?"

"No."

"Trillian, can you?"

"No."

"Fine," said Zaphod, relaxing.  "We'll do it together."

"I can't either," said Arthur, who felt it was time he began to assert himself.

""I'd guessed that," said Zaphod.  "Okay, computer, I want full manual control now."

"You go it," said the computer. 

Welcome to the weekend--the time when I take full manual control of my life for a couple days.  From now until Tuesday morning, I decide what I'm going to do and when I'm going to do it.  Nobody looking over my shoulder, telling me what my next job is.

Of course, that doesn't mean that I have nothing to accomplish this weekend.  I have plenty to keep me busy.  I just don't feel like doing anything right now.  It is one of those days where, as soon as I got home after work, I felt exhausted.  Still do.

This exhaustion could have something to do with a video I found on Facebook this afternoon.  It was of my daughter marching with her class through the halls of her elementary and middle schools in her cap and gown while the little kids applauded.  In the background, I could hear "Pomp and Circumstance" playing through the overhead speakers.  I've watched that video about twenty times now, and it has choked me up every time.  Just watched it again.  Choked up again.

So, here is the first thing on my agenda:  a nap.  As soon as I finish this post.  After that, dinner with my family at a local restaurant.  Then, maybe some reading when I get home.  That's it.  I don't plan on being very ambitious tonight.

Saint Marty will leave the ambition for tomorrow.