December 14, 2024: "Best Fall," Good Ole Days, Golden Light

Today, I found myself full of nostalgia for the "good ole days."  Now, if you ask me what the "good ole days" were, I wouldn't be able to define them all that well.  I suppose it would include me not having to work five jobs; my kids being young enough still to think I was one step away from being a god; all my siblings living and healthy; and the Felon in Chief being just a two-bit real estate hustler with a bad haircut, living off his daddy's fortune. 

Billy Collins gets nostalgic, too . . . 

Best Fall

by: Billy Collins

was what we called a game we played

which had nothing to do

with a favorite autumn,

somebody else’s gorgeous reds and yellows.

no, eleven years old

all we wanted was to be shot

as we charged sacrificially into the fire

of the shooter lying prone behind a hedge,

or even better, to be that shooter

and pick off the others

as they charged the gun

each one stopping in his young tracks

to writhe and twist

aping the contortions of death

from the movies,

clutching our bleeding hearts

holding ourselves

as we lifted—a moment of ballet—

into the air then tumbled

into the grass behind our houses.

and whoever invented that game

made sure it would have

no ending,

for the one who was awarded

best fall by the shooter

got to be the next shooter

and so it went, shooting and being shot,

tearing at our cowboy shirts

trying our best

to make death look good

until it got almost dark

and our mothers called us in.

Of course, nostalgia paints the past in golden light, erasing all the struggles and pains and stresses.  It's not about objective reality.  Rather, it's a Norman Rockwell rendering of reality, wholesome and mostly untrue.  

Yet, most of the day, I was yearning for John Hughes movies and Walkmans, Molly Ringwald and River Phoenix.  My life was seemed much simpler back then.  No mortgages, car payments, or income taxes.  All I worried about was getting someone to take me to see Star Wars:  A New Hope again.  (I saw that film 27 times in the theater when it was first released.)  

I'm sure one or two or five years down the road, I'm going to be thinking back nostalgically on tonight.  Christmas tree glowing in the corner of the room.  Puppy snoring and moaning in her cage.  A full moon glowing in tree branches outside.  And Joe Biden serving as President of the United States.  (Come January 20, 2025, when the Felon in Chief takes the oath of office, the past four years are going to seem like a trip to Oz on the back of a flying monkey named Ozzie.)

Nostalgia is a retreat from unpleasant or painful presents.  An escape hatch, if you will.  The 1980s were far from perfect (Ronald Reagan was President of the United States, for God's sake!), but we had the best music.  The past four years weren't utopian, but we didn't have a person with the IQ of a rabbit in charge of the nuclear codes.  

For me, thinking backward is a retreat from the darkness I'm currently experiencing.  I remember lying on my bed, listening to the local Top 40 station, recording a hit mix of songs with my cassette player.  Billy Joel's "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" and Yes's "Owner of a Lonely Heart."  And that was the most important thing I had to do.

Saint Marty will return to reality tomorrow.  Tonight, he's going to watch bad Hallmark holiday movies and dream of white Christmases, just like the ones he used to know.  Without global warming, convicted rapists in the Oval Office, and Fox News.

October 28: "A Question About Birds," Puppy's Favorite Toy, Universal

When I throw my puppy's favorite toy, I see her joy when she snatches it out of the air.  When I sit on the couch in the living room at night, I hear my son's joy as he plays video games with his friends.  When I walked across campus to teach this morning, I passed two young men walking together, holding hands, joyful in each other's closeness and love.  When I ate a blueberry muffin my wife made this afternoon, I tasted joy.

Joy needs no translator.

Billy Collins goes birdwatching . . . 

A Question About Birds

by: Billy Collins

I am going to sit on a rock near some water 

or on a slope of grass 

under a high ceiling of white clouds, 

and I am going to stop talking 

so I can wander around in that spot 

the way John Audubon might have wandered 

through a forest of speckled sunlight, 

stopping now and then to lean 

against an elm, mop his brow, 

and listen to the songs of birds. 

Did he wonder, as I often do, 

how they regard the songs of other species? 

Would it be like listening to the Chinese 

merchants at an outdoor market? 

Or do all the birds perfectly understand one another? 

Or is that nervous chittering 

I often hear from the upper branches 

the sound of some tireless little translator?

Of course, the catalyst for joy is different for all creatures.  I can't feel joy over a fat earthworm, but a robin can.  I will sing Billy Joel's "Captain Jack" at the top of my lungs every time I hear it, but my son makes me turn off my music when I drop him off at school in the morning.  Some evenings, I watch rabbits graze joyfully on the grass in my backyard, the antennae of their ears twitching for danger.

Some afternoons, I walk down to Lake Superior to listen to waves as I eat my lunch.  That brings me joy.  Tonight, I listened to an arrow of geese flying overhead, and their joyful blats and honks sounded like a New Year's Eve party.  Even autumn leaves spinning in whirlwinds look like kids on a merry-go-round, dizzy with joy.

While Collins wonders if birdsongs need translation from one feathered chanteuse to another, I think joy is pretty universal--I recognize it everywhere.  That doesn't mean that I'm perpetually joyful.  However, it does mean that joy is as abundant as oxygen.  Take a deep breath, and you can taste it.

Saint Marty is now going to joyfully brush his teeth and watch a little Hocus Pocus on Disney+.

August 12: "Yes! No!", Opinions and Assholes, Endless and Proper Work

Mary Oliver expresses some opinions . . . 

Yes!  No!

by:  Mary Oliver

How necessary it is to have opinions!  I think the spotted trout lilies are satisfied, standing a few inches above the earth.  I think serenity is not something you just find in the world, like a plum tree, holding up its white petals.

The violets, along the river, are opening their blue faces, like small dark lanterns.

The green mosses, being so many, are as good as brawny.

How important it is to walk along, not in haste but slowly, looking at everything and calling out.

Yes!  No!  The

swan, for all his pomp, his robes of glass and petals, wants only to be allowed to live on the nameless pond.  The catbrier is without fault.  The water thrushes, down among the sloppy rocks, are going crazy with happiness.  Imagination is better than a sharp instrument.  To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

The first line of this poem says it all:  it is necessary to have opinions.  Oliver wants to share her beliefs about the world, and for the rest of the stanzas, that's what she does.  She calls attention to ideas she holds dear.

I have opinions.  Anybody who personally knows me knows that I'm opinionated.  Sometimes obnoxiously so.  Oliver's poem is a list of her opinions, right down to her last sentence:  "To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work."

I try to avoid expressing too many opinions in my blog posts.  One of my father's favorite sayings was, "Opinions are like assholes.  Everybody has one."  Scroll through Facebook if you want to witness the truth of this statement.  So, I'm very careful about with whom I share my opinions, lest I look like an asshole.  Tonight, however, I'm going to express a few of my opinions, but I will try to avoid topics that deal with politics or religion.

Here goes . . .

The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie ever made.

I prefer Captain Kirk to Captain Picard.

Poetry and art and music can save your life.

Climate change is real.  Ask the polar bears.

Jesus was a person of color who hung out with hookers, lepers, and tax collectors.

My puppy is the sweetest, smartest, prettiest dog ever.

Rain is better than snow, but snow is pretty cool, too.

The best Billy Joel song is "Captain Jack."  Listen to it.

The guy standing outside Walmart holding a sign ("Haven't eaten in three days") is an angel.

So is the lady at the Taco Bell drive-thru who gives my puppy treats every Sunday morning.

Both my kids are way smarter than me.

Baja Blast Zero is the best Mountain Dew flavor ever.

The pandemic was real.  Facemasks worked.  Vaccines saved hundreds of thousands of lives.  (Again, this is science, not politics.)

Politicians are not scientists.  Neither are religious leaders.

I used to believe in Bigfoot when I was a kid.  Now I believe in wonder.  

Bigfoot and wonder are the same thing.

Tonight, when I go to bed, I will lie awake for a while and listen to my wife's breaths, counting them like starfish on a beach.

Paying attention is our endless and proper work.  So is love.

Love is love is love.

Here endeth Saint Marty's lesson for tonight.

July 26: "Winter at Herring Cove," Retrospective Falsification, 1980s

Mary Oliver and a remembrance of seals . . . 

Winter at Herring Cove

by:  Mary Oliver

Years ago,

in the bottle-green light

of the cold January sea,

two seals 

suddenly appeared together

in a single uplifting wave--

each in exactly the same relaxed position--

each, like a large, black comma,

upright and staring;

it was like a painting

done twice

and, twice, tenderly.

The wave hung, then it broke apart;

its lip was lightning;

its floor was the blow of sand

over which the seals rose and twirled and were gone.

Of all the reasons for gladness,

what could be foremost of this one,

that the mind can seize both the instant and the memory!

Now the seals are no more than the salt of the sea.

If they live, they're most distant than Greenland.

But here's the kingdom we call remembrance

with its thousand iron doors

through which I pass so easily,

switching on the old lights as I go--

while the dead wind rises and the old rapture rewinds,

the stiff waters once more begin to kick and flow.

Memory is a tricky thing.  Oliver's recollection of these two seals could be completely factual.  Or not.  She acknowledges the slipperiness of the mind.  Every experience is both instant and memory.  The moment something happens, it becomes remembrance, and that remembrance is tinged with retrospective falsification, where the brain filters out the negative, leaving only the warm and fuzzy.  Retrospective falsification is the reason why women will endure childbirth more than once.  The pain and suffering of labor is erased by the joy of holding a newborn child.

Looking back on "the good old days" is something we all do.  I was a child of the 1980s.  That means the soundtrack of my youth was Michael Jackson, Madonna, Tina Turner, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, and Simple Minds, among others.  Big hair, parachute pants, ripped jeans, and Miami Vice pastels.  E. T. the Extraterrestrial, Dead Poets Society, and The Breakfast Club.  In my nostalgic mind, it was a great decade to grow up in.

Of course, Ronald Reagan was President of the United States.  The AIDS epidemic killed millions.  The space shuttle Challenger exploded.  John Lennon was assassinated.  People were in a satanic panic.  And Betamax cassettes came and went.  So, not everything was sequins and moonwalking.  Retrospective falsification is hard at work.

I don't want to go back to the 1980s.  Being a teenager kind of sucked in all of its painful awkwardness.  I remember the constant feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem.  My inability to ask the person I was crushing on to go to a movie.  I was a mess in a quiet, straight-A-student kind of way.  I didn't even get truly black-out drunk until my senior year of high school.

Tonight, when I got home from the library, it was around 9 p.m.  The houses in the neighborhood were bathed in a kind of golden summer light that appears only around dusk in July or early August.  I took my puppy for a trot around the backyard, and she flushed a rabbit out of the lilac bushes.  I could smell barbecue--someone had grilled some hot dogs.

I love this time of the year, when the hullaballoo of Independence Day subsides and what's left are long days of sun and blue, blue sky.  Is the world a perfect place tonight?  No, but it's really not about perfection.  It's about being content.  That's what I am tonight, Donald Trump and Canadian forest fires notwithstanding.

In short, for Saint Marty, it's the best of times, it's the worst of times.  Right here.  Right now.

May 6: Free Will, Good and Bad, Naked Gardening Day

"If I hadn't spent so much time studying Earthlings," said the Tralfamadorian, "I wouldn't have any idea what was meant by 'free will.'  I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more.  Only on Earth is there any talk of free will."

Billy has just commented to his alien abductor that it sounds as if Tralfamadorians don't believe in free will--the ability to make choices and change the future.  The Tralfamadorian explains that free will is indigenous to human beings on Earth.  Like the white rhinoceros or the mountain gorilla.  And if free will exists only on our planet, then the concept of good and bad exists only on this planet, as well.

The Tralfamadorian take on the universe doesn't make a lot of sense to Billy at this point in Slaughterhouse, and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, either.  Every person is brought up to believe in free will--choosing what path of life to follow.  Making hard or easy choices.  My brother made a choice many years ago not to take his diabetic medications.  Now, he is in a hospital bed, struggling for breath as a result of his choice.

I also believe in the concept of good and bad.  No one would argue with me if I say that Adolf Hitler was a bad person.  Or Josef Stalin.  The Holocaust was evil.  Disenfranchising millions of people from healthcare in the United States, not good.  Goodness is the result of a person/people making choices that are beneficial to others--family, friends, neighbors, refugees, strangers, Mother Nature.  When someone makes a choice that harms others, that is bad.  That's what ethics and morality and religion are built upon.

I suppose that I do make neutral choices in a day.  Cheerios or Lucky Charms for breakfast.  Mountain Dew or Coke Zero.  Billy Joel or Bruce Springsteen on the radio.  Gardening naked on Naked Gardening Day.  These decisions don't really hurt anything or anyone.  Okay, maybe me planting tulip bulbs in my backyard naked might be a little traumatizing to some people.  You get the idea, though.

The difficult choices in life, however, have consequences.  Sometimes personal.  Sometimes far-reaching.  If I were an addict and did not seek help for my addiction, I would be making a choice that would negatively impact my wife and kids and loved ones.  I would lose my job and my family and, eventually, my life.  Bad choice leading to bad consequences.

Free will can be a wonderful thing.  Free will can be a bitch, too.

Saint Marty is thankful for the free will to take a nap this afternoon.

March 4: Weekend Music, Robert Morgan, "The Grain of Sound"

Most of my weekend is consumed by music.  I pick out music.  Rehearse.  Play at two church services.  I don't mind, though.  During the week, there's not much room for music in my life.  So, I have to get my fill on Saturday and Sunday.

I am not the greatest keyboard player in the world.  I get by.  Having been a church organist for over 30 years, I've learned a few tricks.  I always work with people who have more musical talent than I do.  That makes me a better musician.

Of course, my taste in music isn't limited to simply worship.  I love jazz and blues and classical and ragtime and pop and rock.  Billy Joel and Cheap Trick.  The Doobie Brothers and Lawrence Welk.

Saint Marty even likes banjo music.

The Grain of Sound

by:  Robert Morgan

A banjo maker in the mountains,
when looking out for wood to carve
an instrument, will walk among
the trees and knock on trunks. He'll hit
the bark and listen for a note.
A hickory makes the brightest sound;
the poplar has a mellow ease.
But only straightest grain will keep
the purity of tone, the sought-
for depth that makes the licks sparkle.
A banjo has a shining shiver.
Its twangs will glitter like the light
on splashing water, even though
its face is just a drum of hide
of cow, or cat, or even skunk.
The hide will magnify the note,
the sad of honest pain, the chill
blood-song, lament, confession, haunt,
as tree will sing again from root
and vein and sap and twig in wind
and cat will moan as hand plucks nerve,
picks bone and skin and gut and pricks
the heart as blood will answer blood
and love begins to knock along the grain.

November 17: Spreading Silence, Blizzard Brewing, Snow Days

I left the woods, spreading silence before me in a wave, as though I'd stepped not through the forest but on it.  I left the wood silent, but I myself was stirred and quickened.  I'll go to the Northwest Territories, I thought, Finland.

Walking through the woods.  Dillard experiences a stunning silence, as if her mere presence turned down the volume knob on the world.  No birds chittering.  No winds bansheeing through the trees.  Yet, something moves in her.  Through the quiet, she feels an urge to keep going.  Walk and walk and walk.  Through mountains.  Over tundra and glacier.  To Great Bear Lake, Great Slave Lake, Mount Nirvana.  All the way to Helsinki.

I have experienced that kind of silence.  In a snow storm.  Rising early to shovel my driveway.  The whole world is muffled, as if encased in thick cotton batting.  I used to love weather like that.  My older sister and I would pile into her Dodge Aspen and go plowing through the streets.  That early, nothing's moving.  No cars.  No people.  No dogs or skunks.  No paper carriers.

There's a blizzard brewing in the middle of the United States right now, and it's headed straight toward the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  This Saturday, the forecast is for 60 mile per hour winds and snow.  Depending on who you believe, there's going to be between 0.1 and 11 inches of white stuff on the ground by the time it's all over.

I am not looking forward to this little weather event, silence notwithstanding.  In fact, I was hoping for a green Thanksgiving.  I used to love winter.  It was my favorite time of the year.  Loved the cold and dark and wind and ice.  And that winter silence, when the whole world seems cryogenic.

Now, I'm more of a summer guy,  I prefer heat waves to blizzards.  I think it has something to do with age.  When I was younger, bad winter weather meant I got to sleep in and listen to Billy Joel and Quiet Riot mix tapes.  Now that I'm a husband and father, bad weather means I have to get up even earlier than normal.  It means over an hour of back-killing work with a snow shovel.  Then a treacherous drive down U. S. 41 to get to my office. There are no snow days when you're an adult.

So, I'm not excited about this weekend's weather forecast.  The only good thing--it's happening on a Saturday, when I don't have to worry about getting my car into the street or driving through a white tornado.

Saint Marty supposes he can be thankful for that tonight.

July 28: Only the Good, Camille T. Dungy, "Association Copy"

Tonight's poem by the Poet of the Week is about a person who died at the age of 40--poet Lynda Hull.  After publishing two books, Hull was killed in a car accident in 1994.  Her voice was amazing, and it was silenced way too soon.

In the poem, Dungy writes about finding a book of poems by Phil Levine that has Hull's signature in it.  It probably was from Hull's personal library, sold in the aftermath of tragic passing.  It's difficult giving up a loved one's belongings.  It's sort of like losing the person all over again.

I still have small pieces of junk that my sister gave me squirreled away in dresser drawers and between pages of books.  Yesterday, at work, I came across a note she'd written.  There they were, her unmistakable fat letters.  For a moment, it was like hearing her voice again.  My family still has a whole closet full of her belongings (and that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg).  Letting go is shitty, hard work.

I'm glad I found this poem.  It made me happy.  I don't know why.  It just did.  Perhaps it reminded me of the discovery of my sister's little note yesterday.  That note was a gift.  She's still with me, watching.  Somehow.  Somewhere.

Saint Marty agrees with Billy Joel.  Only the good die young.

Association Copy

by:  Camille T. Dungy

Lynda Hull

Maybe you sold it to buy junk. Though I like to think not.

And I don't want to think you used the money for food

or rent or anything obligatory, practical.

A pair of boots, perhaps. Thigh high burgandy boots

with gold laces. Something crucial as lilies.

Mostly, I want to believe you held onto the book,

that your fingers brailed those pages' inky veins

even in your final weeks. I want to believe

words can be that important in the end.

Who can help the heart, which is grand and full

of gestures? I had been on my way out.

He was rearranging his bookshelves

when, in an approximation of tenderness, 

he handed me, like the last of the sweet potatoes

at Thanksgiving, like a thing he wanted

but was willing to share, the rediscovered book—

he'd bought it years ago in a used bookstore

in Chicago. Levine's poems, with your signature inside.

That whole year I spent loving him, something splendid

as lemons, sour and bright and leading my tongue

toward new language, was on the shelf. These

weren't your own poems, autographed, a stranger's

souvenir—we'd spent vain months leafing through

New York stacks for your out-of-print collections—but you'd cared

about this book, or cared enough to claim it, your name

looped across the title page as if to say, Please.

This is mine, This book is mine. Though you sold it.

Or someone else did when you died.

We make habits out of words. I grew accustomed

to his, the way they spooned me into sleep

so many times. Now I am sleepless and alone

another night. What would you give for one more night

alone? No booze. No drugs. Just that hunger

and those words. He gave me The Names of the Lost.

Need comes down hard on a body. What else

was sold? What else—do you know?—did we lose

Lynda Hull

April 16: The Muse, Billy Joel, Donald Hall

Michael Goldman wrote in a poem, "When the Muse comes She doesn't tell you to write; / She says get up for a minute, I've something to show you, stand here."  What made me look up at that roadside tree?

I love this little quote that Dillard uses.  She's writing about inspiration.  For her, at this particular moment, it is a tree.  But, at another moment, it may be moonlight in a mud puddle or a cloud of mosquitoes attacking a porch light.  The Muse comes when the Muse comes, and the poet just needs to step aside and let her work her magic.

It has been a busy day.  My daughter danced this afternoon.  A tap dance solo to Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire."  It was the first time I've seen her solo.  She did a great job.  The other dancers were great, too.  I'm always amazed at the level of talent at these competitions.  When I watch these dances, I can tell when the Muse is with the dancer.  There's something extra present.  An energy or technique or connection to the music. 

My daughter received an Outstanding Award for her solo.  That's like a gold medal.  I am so proud of her.  She has the Muse, is my Muse.  I know how much she loves to dance, and when I watch her, I can tell when the music takes over.  It's like that moment when I'm writing and something just drops out of the air onto the page.  Something totally unexpected and beautiful.  A sparkle of tinfoil in a robin's nest.

This morning, I went shopping with my son, daughter, and daughter's boyfriend.  We hit Toys-R-Us first.  Then we headed to Barnes & Noble.  I haven't been to an actual Barnes & Noble in years.  I didn't think they still existed.  I found a new book by Donald Hall.  Essays after Eighty.  I've already read about 15 or 20 pages, where Hall talks about that fact that poems don't come to him anymore.  "Prose endures," Hall writes. 

I find that a little depressing.  Donald Hall has been one of my poet heroes for a long time.  I met him a few years ago.  I attended a dinner in his honor.  He was a lovely man.  Close to 90 years old and still sharp as a shard of glass.  The fact that I will never read a new Donald Hall poem again makes the world a little less bright. 

Yet, Hall's prose contains moments of absolute poetry.  The Muse is still visiting him, even in his old age, as he sits by the window in his house and watches snow coat the world.  So, that gives me hope.  My daughter has the Muse.  Donald Hall has the muse.  And tomorrow, I will go watch my daughter dance again.

Saint Marty is having an a-Musing weekend.

One of my favorite pictures