December 18, 2024: "The Deep," Hope and Joy, Window

Well, I'm semi-recovered from the start of the week. Still feeling a little . . . hungover from end-of-semester stress, among other things. When my mind is engaged for such an extended period of time, without breaks or rest, it takes me a while to recover. Plus, with the headspace I've been in recently (still am), I'm floating in a world that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The holidays are supposed to be filled with hope and joy.

Billy Collins studies a map . . .

The Deep

by: Billy Collins

Here on this map of the oceans everything is reversed—
the land all black except for the names of the continents
whereas the watery parts, colored blue,
have topographical features and even place names

like the Bermuda Rise, which sounds harmless enough
as does the Cocos Ridge, but how about exploring
The Guafo Fracture Zone when you're all alone?
And from the many plateaus and seamounts—

the Falkland, the Manning, the Azores—
all you could see is water and if you're lucky
a big fish swallowing a school of smaller ones
through the bars of your deep-sea diver's helmet.

And talk about depth: at 4,000 feet below the surface,
where you love to float on your back all summer,
we enter the Midnight Zone where the monkfish
quietly says his prayers in order to attract fresh prey,

and drop another couple of miles and you
have reached The Abyss where the sea cucumber
is said to undulate minding its own business
unless it's deceiving an attacker with its luminescence

before disappearing into the blackness.
What attacker, I can hear you asking,
would be down there messing with the sea cucumber?
And that is exactly why I crumpled the map into a ball

and stuffed it in a metal wastebasket

before heading out for a long walk along a sunny trail

in the thin, high-desert air, accompanied

by juniper trees, wildflowers, and that gorgeous hawk.

I think everyone harbors a certain fear of deep things--water, caverns, tunnels, conversations, therapy.  It's very human to avoid places or circumstances that force you to confront the sea cucumbers or monkfish of your life.  Not to mention those large, dark shapes so far away that you can't even identify them.

Most people retreat to the familiar and comfortable.  A sunny trail lined with juniper trees and wildflowers.  I just finished teaching a Good Books class at the university.  All of the memoirs, novels, and graphic memoirs we read this semester dealt in some way with forms of mental illness.  In several of the works, when the authors are dealing with deep depressions, they begin reading books they loved as a child, which makes complete sense to me.

Think about it.  You feel yourself floating in an abyss of darkness, where you can't seem to find any light whatsoever.  Then you start reading Charlotte's Web or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Island of the Blue Dolphins--stories that are so familiar you can almost recite them from memory.  It's like draping yourself in a warm quilt.  For a short while, you gain a miniscule sense of control over your life.  

I've been swimming in the deep for a while now.  What have I been doing for comfort?  Reading poets I love.  Mary Oliver, in particular.  Watching movies I've seen a hundred times.  White Christmas starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye is my current jam.  I still cry, but the tears are familiar to me.  I expect to get choked up when I read "Wild Geese" by Oliver or watch the final scene in White Christmas when it starts to snow on Christmas Eve.  I guess that's my version of crumpling up my map of the deep, scary oceans, throwing it out, and going for a sunny walk.  

Sometimes, even looking out a window you've looked out thousands of times can be a form of therapy.  From my office at the library, I can see the church across the street, a tree that's still retaining fragments of autumn in its branches, and falling snow.  Three small, lit Christmas trees line the windowsill.  On the tree are Bigfoot ornaments, adorned with the word "Believe."

Saint Marty needs that reminder on a daily basis right now.

December 28: Started to Work, Best Friends, "Charlotte's Web"

But remember to sleep, he thought. Make yourself do it and devise some simple and sure way about the lines. Now go back and prepare the dolphin. It is too dangerous to rig the oars as a drag if you must sleep.

I could go without sleeping, he told himself. But it would be too dangerous.

He started to work his way back to the stern on his hands and knees, being careful not to jerk against the fish. He may be half asleep himself, he thought. But I do not want him to rest. He must pull until he dies.

Santiago knows how to fish.  In fact, it's all he really knows.  That and baseball.  His whole life has been salt water and currents and waves and weather.  The sea is his best friend.

It was the last day of work at the library for one of my best friends.  She's accepted a new job and is really excited about it.  However, she's been at the library for 15 years.  You can't be at a job that long without it becoming a part of who you are, like the sea and Santiago.  So, she's excited and sad at the same time.

I'm happy for her, but I know that I'm going to be a little lost in the office without her.  In the last few weeks, we spoke about big life changes.  Letting go of things that are important to you and, somehow, being at peace with that letting go.  It's not easy.  

When she told me that she'd accepted a new job, she said that she felt guilty leaving me.  We've seen each other through a lot of difficult things in the past few years.  A global pandemic.  Family deaths and illnesses.  The normal day-to-day headaches of work and family and life.  What we have learned in the years we've shared an office is this:  we are very similar people.

One of the biggest things we bonded over is that we both had siblings with special needs.  She lost her brother a while ago.  I lost my sister this year.  In a lot of ways, my sister with Down syndrome was the center of my family.  The same was true of my coworker's life with her brother.  We both knew the joys and heartaches of a childhood with someone who faced immense challenges every day.

I've haven't met a lot of people who understand that side of my life so much.  When my sister passed in January, my coworker understood that feeling of being unmoored.  Adrift.  So, tomorrow, when I step into my office, it will feel pretty empty.

I've been thinking a lot about the last words E. B. White wrote in Charlotte's Web:  "Wilbur never forgot Charlotte.  Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart.  She was in a class by herself.  It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.  Charlotte was both."

Words are powerful things.  My friend and I talked every day about words in our office.  The job she did revolved around words.  So does mine.  We both know that words can help and hurt, build up and tear down.  I'm sure that I will get along with whoever is hired to replace my friend, but that person will never quite take her place in my heart.  She truly is in a class by herself.  

Saint Marty will never forget her.

February 4: Feeling Nostalgic, "Pantoum Lullaby," Vote

I am feeling a little nostalgic tonight, watching my kids enjoy their day off from school.  They've played video games, watched A Series of Unfortunate Events, and listened to the branches crack and snap outside.

Eighteen years ago tomorrow, my daughter was two months old, and I was dreaming all kinds of things for her.  How she would be a dancer and singer and writer.  How I would read to her every night, all of my favorite kid's books--Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlotte's Web, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  How I would watch her grow into a smart, beautiful young woman.

Tonight, that beautiful young woman is upstairs in her bedroom, eating blueberry pancakes with her boyfriend, and Saint Marty is looking at her baby pictures.

Pantoum Lullaby

by:  Martin Achatz

Little one, curled tight
in my love's belly,
can you hear me
sing in the night?

In my love's belly,
can hear words I
sing in the night
as you swim and dance?

Can you hear words? I
press my hand to you
as you swim and dance
in your universe of water.

Press my hand to you,
beneath my love's heart,
in your universe of water,
dark and warm with sound.

Beneath my love's heart,
the music never ceases.
Dark and warm with sound,
you tremble and wait.

The music never ceases.
Hush little baby, I sing.
You tremble and wait
in your liquid twilight.

Hush little baby, I sing.
My voice is the moon
in your liquid twilight.
I'm calling you home.

My voice is the moon.
Can you hear me?
I'm calling you home,
Little one, curled tight.

Please vote for Saint Marty (Marty Achatz) at the 2019/2020 Poet Laureate of the U. P. at the link below:

Vote for the 2019/2020 Poet Laureate of the U. P.

October 13: The Needle, Senior Night, Uncharted Territory

Next morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of mighty bulk, and striving in the Pequod's gurgling track, pushed her on like giants' palms outspread. The strong unstaggering breeze abounded so, that sky and air seemed vast outbellying sails; the whole world boomed before the wind. Muffled in the full morning light, the invisible sun was only known by the spread intensity of his place; where his bayonet rays moved on in stacks. Emblazonings, as of crowned Babylonian kings and queens, reigned over everything. The sea was as a crucible of molten gold, that bubblingly leaps with light and heat.

Long maintaining an enchanted silence, Ahab stood apart; and every time the teetering ship loweringly pitched down her bowsprit, he turned to eye the bright sun's rays produced ahead; and when she profoundly settled by the stern, he turned behind, and saw the sun's rearward place, and how the same yellow rays were blending with his undeviating wake.

"Ha, ha, my ship! thou mightest well be taken now for the sea-chariot of the sun. Ho, ho! all ye nations before my prow, I bring the sun to ye! Yoke on the further billows; hallo! a tandem, I drive the sea!"

But suddenly reined back by some counter thought, he hurried towards the helm, huskily demanding how the ship was heading.

"East-sou-east, sir," said the frightened steersman.

"Thou liest!" smiting him with his clenched fist. "Heading East at this hour in the morning, and the sun astern?"

Upon this every soul was confounded; for the phenomenon just then observed by Ahab had unaccountably escaped every one else; but its very blinding palpableness must have been the cause.
Thrusting his head half-way into the binnacle, Ahab caught one glimpse of the compasses; his uplifted arm slowly fell; for a moment he almost seemed to stagger. Standing behind him Starbuck looked, and lo! the two compasses pointed East, and the Pequod was as infallibly going West.
But ere the first wild alarm could get out abroad among the crew, the old man with a rigid laugh exclaimed, "I have it! It has happened before. Mr. Starbuck, last night's thunder turned our compasses- that's all. Thou hast before now heard of such a thing, I take it."

"Aye; but never before has it happened to me, sir," said the pale mate, gloomily.

Here, it must needs be said, that accidents like this have in more than one case occurred to ships in violent storms. The magnetic energy, as developed in the mariner's needle, is, as all know, essentially one with the electricity beheld in heaven; hence it is not to be much marvelled at, that such things should be. Instances where the lightning has actually struck the vessel, so as to smite down some of the spars and rigging, the effect upon the needle has at times been still more fatal; all its loathsome virtue being annihilated, so that the before magnetic steel was of no more use than an old wife's knitting needle. But in either case, the needle never again, of itself, recovers the original virtue thus marred or lost; and if the binnacle compasses be affected, the same fate reaches all the others that may be in the ship; even were the lowermost one inserted into the kelson.

Deliberately standing before the binnacle, and eyeing the transpointed compasses, the old man, with the sharp of his extended hand, now took the precise bearing of the sun, and satisfied that the needles were exactly inverted, shouted out his orders for the ship's course to be changed accordingly. The yards were hard up; and once more the Pequod thrust her undaunted bows into the opposing wind, for the supposed fair one had only been juggling her.

Meanwhile, whatever were his own secret thoughts, Starbuck said nothing, but quietly he issued all requisite orders; while Stubb and Flask- who in some small degree seemed then to be sharing his feelings- likewise unmurmuringly acquiesced. As for the men, though some of them lowly rumbled, their fear of Ahab was greater than their fear of Fate. But as ever before, the pagan harpooneers remained almost wholly unimpressed; or if impressed, it was only with a certain magnetism shot into their congenial hearts from inflexible Ahab's.

For a space the old man walked the deck in rolling reveries. But chancing to slip with his ivory heel, he saw the crushed copper sight-tubes of the quadrant he had the day before dashed to the deck.
"Thou poor, proud heaven-gazer and sun's pilot! yesterday I wrecked thee, and to-day the compasses would fain have wrecked me. So, so. But Ahab is lord over the level loadstone yet. Mr. Starbuck- a lance without the pole; a top-maul, and the smallest of the sail-maker's needles. Quick!"

Accessory, perhaps, to the impulse dictating the thing he was now about to do, were certain prudential motives, whose object might have been to revive the spirits of his crew by a stroke of his subtile skill, in a matter so wondrous as that of the inverted compasses. Besides, the old man well knew that to steer by transpointed needles, though clumsily practicable, was not a thing to be passed over by superstitious sailors, without some shudderings and evil portents.

"Men," said he, steadily turning upon the crew, as the mate handed him the things he had demanded, "my men, the thunder turned old Ahab's needles; but out of this bit of steel Ahab can make one of his own, that will point as true as any."

Abashed glances of servile wonder were exchanged by the sailors, as this was said; and with fascinated eyes they awaited whatever magic might follow. But Starbuck looked away.

With a blow from the top-maul Ahab knocked off the steel head of the lance, and then handing to the mate the long iron rod remaining, bade him hold it upright, without its touching the deck. Then, with the maul, after repeatedly smiting the upper end of this iron rod, he placed the blunted needle endwise on the top of it, and less strongly hammered that, several times, the mate still holding the rod as before. Then going through some small strange motions with it- whether indispensable to the magnetizing of the steel, or merely intended to augment the awe of the crew, is uncertain- he called for linen thread; and moving to the binnacle, slipped out the two reversed needles there, and horizontally suspended the sail-needle by its middle, over one of the compass cards. At first, the steel went round and round, quivering and vibrating at either end; but at last it settled to its place, when Ahab, who had been intently watching for this result, stepped frankly back from the binnacle, and pointing his stretched arm towards it, exclaimed,- "Look ye, for yourselves, if Ahab be not lord of the level loadstone! The sun is East, and that compass swears it!"

One after another they peered in, for nothing but their own eyes could persuade such ignorance as theirs, and one after another they slunk away.

In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his fatal pride.

Say what you want about Ahab.  Yes, he's obsessed, crazy, prideful, mean, rage-filled.  He keeps his crew in a constant state of fear with his behaviors.  Starbuck has his misgivings, but he, at this point in the novel, will not cross Ahab.  With this little act of magnetic magic, Ahab proves that he's not to be trifled with.  He is commander of the Pequod's fate and has a needle of his own making as a guide.

It's has been really easy for me to become unmoored recently.  I think it has something to do with my daughter navigating the seas of her senior year of high school, and me navigating the seas of fathering her through this time.  I can't tell her exactly what she needs to do.  That's not my job.  I can urge.  Gently suggest.  Remind.  Goad.  But I can't tell her what school to attend next year or what her major should be.  That's all her.

After doing this father job for 18 years, I now find myself having to step back from the steering wheel.  That's pretty tough.  Last night, I attended my daughter's last home football game where she was playing in the marching band.  It was senior night, so, at half time, my wife and I walked out onto the field and stood beside our daughter as she was introduced.  She even let us kiss her in front of the crowd.

Now, I'm not a big football fan.  In fact, I brought a book to every game I attended.  I wasn't there for the touchdowns.  I was there for the music and the half-time show.  That's it.  My Friday nights, September through October, were spent on metal bleachers, watching a game I don't quite understand.

That being said, I'm going to miss those Friday nights.  Not because I care about football.  Because it was a time to connect with my daughter.  Watch her do something she loves to do:  play her flute with a band.  Then, go out to dinner with her.  Laugh.  Spoil her a little bit.  Show her how much I love her.

My compass has become reversed.  Instead of knowing where I'm headed, I'm striking out into uncharted territory.  A couple times this past week, my daughter asked me to come to her room upstairs and tuck her into bed.  I sang her the songs that I sang to her when she was small.  Said the same prayers.  She snuggled into my chest, and, for a few moments, she was that little girl again, who watched Frosty the Snowman every day after school, listened raptly as I read her Charlotte's Web, collected Barbies.

Saint Marty is thankful for those small moments with his daughter.

January 15: Quiet Day, Syllabi, Classic Saint Marty

A very quiet day.  I just spent a couple hours putting together my syllabi for teaching.  Classes begin at the university this Tuesday.

Three years ago on this day, I wrote a post about gratitude.  Since I am trying to be more grateful this year, I thought it would be appropriate to revisit it. 

So, from the Year of Charlotte's Web . . .

January 15, 2014:  Beautiful Air, Gratitude, Peanuts

Wilbur burst into tears.  "I don't want to die," he moaned.  "I want to stay alive, right here in my comfortable manure pile with all my friends.  I want to breathe the beautiful air and lie in the beautiful sun."

Wilbur has just learned the fate of all young pigs on the farm.  The old sheep tells him that, as soon as the cold weather sets in, Wilbur will be turned into smoked bacon and ham.  As the sheep says, it's a regular conspiracy, involving every person in the Zuckerman family and employ.

Of course, Wilbur gets hysterical over all the things he'll miss if he's butchered:  the comfortable manure pile, the beautiful air, the beautiful sun.  All the things he normally takes for granted each day.

I think all of us go through life taking things for granted.  For example, I love Planters Dry Roasted Peanuts.  I usually have a huge container of them at home all the time.  When I'm in the kitchen, I'll sometimes grab a handful of them without even thinking about it.  I expect them to be there.

I'm like Wilbur.  Wilbur doesn't think about what he loves most until he's faced with the prospect of losing it.  Then, the manure pile becomes the pig-version of Citizen Kane's Rosebud. It's the warmth of summer mornings, the chuckle of the goose, the buzz of flies in Charlotte's web.

I've decided to do away with Worry Wednesdays.  From now on, every Wednesday I will write about something I take for granted.    Big things.  Small things.  Quiet things.  Loud things.  I want to cultivate more gratitude in my life.

So, this Wednesday, Saint Marty gives thanks for Planters Dry Roasted Peanuts.

Nothing comes between me and my nuts (yes, I went there)

December 26: Ordinary Goat Moth, Obsession, Next Book

I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, neither bother nor impress other people even slightly.  I am horribly apt to approach some innocent at a gathering and, like the ancient mariner, fix him with a wild, glitt'ring eye and say, "Do you know that in the head of the caterpillar of the ordinary goat moth there are two hundred twenty-eight separate muscles?" . . .

I think most writers obsess like Annie Dillard.  Her particular preoccupations are with the natural world and God's workings in it.  She goes for walks around Tinker Creek and finds moments of grace.  That's her thing, at least in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.  I'm sure that she has other obsessions.  Most people do.

My obsession is about to change.  For a full year, I have been writing about Annie Dillard and Pilgrim.  Come January 1, 2017, I need a new book to focus my energies on.  In the past, I have lived for a year with Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.  Then there was the year of Charlotte's Web, followed by 365 days of The Catcher in the Rye.  The year 2015 was all about Oscar Hijuelos' Mr. Ives' Christmas.  And now 2017 is almost upon us.

I am contemplating three novels for next year.  I love each of them for different reasons.  Those three books are:

So, those are the choices.  In the past, I have left it up to a popular vote, asking people to weigh in with their opinions.  I will do this again, although I don't usually get a whole lot of responses.  (Count yourself lucky:  one of the books I had been thinking about for 2017 was Cormac McCarthy's The Road, but, after 365 days of that book, I might have been suicidal.)

So, it's up to my disciples.  What will my next obsession be?:

• The World According to Garp by John Irving
• Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• My Antonia by Willa Cather

All you have to do is leave a comment for me with your opinion this week.  On December 31--this Saturday--I will make my choice.  It's in your hands.  Let's hope this election turns out better than the last one in the United States.

Of course, I am leaning toward one book in particular, but I will not name that book.  I don't want to sway the vote.

Speaking of swaying the vote . . .

Please vote for Saint Marty

Voting for next Poet Laureate of the U. P.

April 17: Habits of This Life, Going Back, Nostalgic Fairy Tale

That had all happened long ago, and a few weeks before another Christmas, Ives awoke in the bedroom of his apartment on Ninety-third Street as a much older man and recalled how for years he would get up for work at seven in the morning, and swear that he could hear his son, Robert, whistling the theme to The Andy Griffith Show in the hallway, as he used to in the days when he delivered newspapers.  Ives would dress, half-expecting to find the boy in the hall, ready to start his morning's work regardless of the weather; or he would hear Bach sung faintly through his door, or find one of the books his son had been reading in the living room, left casually open on the couch as if he had just been reading it again.  And although he would think, "Caroline," another part of him imagined his body, nostalgic for the habits of this life, materializing from the hereafter.

Ives spends a good portion of the book wishing he could go back to happier times in his life, when his son was still alive and the future held so much hope and promise.  Ives wants a life without tragedy and loss.  A life where his son is delivering newspapers in the neighborhood and his daughter is dancing to Beatles records in her bedroom.  Where his wife and he sit on a couch in their living room, listening to jazz recordings, sipping gin and tonics.

Of course, everyone wants a life without tragedy and loss.  I miss my daughter as a little girl, sitting in my lap, letting me read Charlotte's Web to her.  I miss going to movies with my wife and making out in the darkness.  I miss my son learning to walk, lurching across the floor like a newborn colt.  These are memories that make me happy, nostalgic for better times.

Life never seems to get easier.  It just moves from minor setbacks to catastrophic losses and back.  I hope that doesn't sound too pessimistic.  I have been in a bit of a funk all day.  After I'm done typing these posts, I'm going to visit my sister in the nursing home.  One of my best friends has arranged for a lawyer to take on her case.  That's good news.  My sister has an appointment at Mayo Clinic in early June.  That's good news.  Now, getting my sister to Mayo Clinic is a whole other issue.  Suing a national healthcare system is, too.

I wish I could go back to last September, so that I could tell my sister not to have her back surgery.  I wish I could go back to last November, so that I could tell my friend, Ray, to go to the hospital before he had his fatal heart attack.  I wish I could go back to right before the birth of my daughter, when my wife and I were painting the nursery pale purple and plastering the walls with Winnie the Pooh stickers.

But that isn't the way life works.  There's no going back.  Happiness is as fragile as a soap bubble.  But so is sadness.  My funk will pass tonight.  By tomorrow morning, I will be sitting at McDonald's, eating some kind of McBreakfast, and having some form of McFun.

Once upon a time, there was a fisherman named Clyde who spent his whole life wishing he could go back to school and finish his degree in Culinary Arts.  "I could have been the cook to the king," he would tell anyone who would listen.

One day, Clyde cooked a pork roast for his wife.  As always, as he was cutting the meat, he said to his wife, "I could have been the cook to the king."

Clyde's wife looked at him and said, "The pork is dry.  The mashed potatoes are lumpy.  The carrots are half-cooked.  And the chocolate cake looks like a pile of cow manure."

Clyde stared at her.

"I'm sorry, honey," his wife said.  "You're a great fisherman, but you're a terrible cook."

That night, his wife died of severe food poisoning because Clyde didn't cook the pork long enough.

Moral of the story:  always cook your pork to an internal temperature of 150 degrees.

And Saint Marty lived happily ever after.

Saint Marty loves him some pork...

June 12: Another Story, Waiting for Rain, Publication

"Tell me another story!" begged Wilbur.

Wilbur is expressing a very human urge.  We all love to hear good stories.  That's why books like Charlotte's Web and The Catcher in the Rye and A Christmas Carol still exist.  They are wonderful tales.

I have not been reading much this week.  Nothing new resides in my book bag.  I've read a few good poems, but most of my reading has been back issues of Entertainment Weekly in my bathroom.  Yes, I deserve to be shamed.  I apologize.  In my defense, I have been working like mad on my Father's Day poem, which I will unveil to my disciples this Sunday.  Hopefully.

At the moment, I'm sitting in my office, blogging, waiting for the rain to start while my daughter is at dance rehearsal.  It looks like the heavens are really going to unleash something.  Dark, low clouds.  Plenty of wind.  Dusk falling.

I have decided that I am going to put forth a concerted effort to publish this summer.  I have a completed poetry manuscript that I need to place somewhere.  Somewhere good.  If I am ever going to get a full-time teaching position at a university anywhere, I need to publish.  Unfortunately, the old chestnut is true:  publish or perish.  I've been perishing for way too long.

Well, it's time to pick up my daughter.  No rain.

Saint Marty isn't going to get wet.  Yet.

This says it all

February 3: Poetry Everywhere, Mondays, "Web" Dip

I have been thinking poetry all day long.  I teach my poetry workshop tonight, and I've been putting together handouts, writing drafts of poems, and finalizing my plans.  Basically, I've been doing everything I love to do.  I would almost sacrifice an organ to get paid well for doing this on a full-time basis.  Not a necessary organ.  Maybe my gall bladder.  I've already given up my appendix.

I love these Mondays where I see occasions for poetry everywhere.  It's not that my life is different in any way today.  I still got up at 4 a.m.  I still worked eight hours at the medical office.  I'm still sitting in my office at the university, dutifully conducting my office hours, and, in a little less than an 50 minutes, I will head across campus to teach my Introduction to Film class.  That's all the same.

It's my attitude that's different today.  I'm looking for poetry, and when I do that, I usually find it.  I was even able to complete a draft of a poem this morning.  It's not a great draft.  More like a really shitty, less-than-first draft.  But I will share it tonight with the members of my poetry workshop.  They need to know:  it's OK to write crap, as poet Natalie Goldberg says in Writing Down the Bones.

I do have a question for the little spider this afternoon:

Will my poetry workshop go well tonight?

And I'm looking up at Charlotte's web in the corner, and it says:

Everyone rejoiced to find that the miracle of the web had been repeated...

Yes, that says it all.


Saint Marty is going to have a miraculous night.

Breathe it in

January 22: Snow, a Delicate Veil, Thankful Wednesday

When I got finished teaching this evening at the university, it was snowing.  A misty, fine snow.  The kind of snow that falls when it's arctically cold.  Even though I was on a busy college campus, students hurrying to class and cars circling for parking spots, the late afternoon was quiet as Christmas Eve.

As a life-long resident of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I'm allowed to complain about snow.  It's my inheritance.  But I'm not complaining tonight.  It was beautiful and peaceful.  I don't think I take enough time out of my day to really appreciate all the beautiful things I encounter.  E. B. White sort of touches on this in Chapter XI of Charlotte's Web:

On foggy mornings, Charlotte's web was truly a thing of beauty.  This morning each thin strand was decorated with dozens of tiny beads of water.  The web glistened in the light and made a pattern of loveliness and mystery, like a delicate veil...

That's how Charlotte saves Wilbur's life, with the beauty and mystery of nature.  If we all took a little time each day to look around, I think we'd all see little miracles.  Spiderwebs in the fog.  Icicles the size of thunderbolts.  Snow, fine and powdery.


This Wednesday, I'm thankful for the snowfall I walked in this evening.  I'm thankful for the silence of it.  The white of it.  The delicate veil of it.

Saint Marty has to say, it was "Some Snow."

Look around.  You never know what you might see.

January 1: "Charlotte's Web," Year of the Runt, Happy New Year

Small and weak

"Well," said her mother, "one of the pigs is a runt.  It's very small and weak, and it will never amount to anything.  So your father has decided to do away with it."

Wilbur the pig does not have a very auspicious start in Charlotte's Web.  As E. B. White writes, Wilbur is a runt, small and weak.  None of the adults on the farm expect him to survive.  As Fern's mother says, "...it will never amount to anything."  Wilbur is a victim of low expectations.

Welcome to the Year of the Runt.  In 2014, I will be focusing on E. B. White's little book about the friendship between a pig and a spider.  It ranked number ten on Entertainment Weekly's greatest novels of all time.  That's pretty good for a story about a runt.

I sort of felt like Wilbur for most of the year 2013.  People didn't seem to expect a whole hell of a lot out of me.  I always thought I was a really valuable employee.  Hard-working, dedicated, loyal.  I thought I was a pretty good church organist.  Dependable, a little talented, adaptable.  I thought I was a gifted poet/writer.

Well, my hours were cut at work.  The church gave my organist job to somebody else.  And I lost no less than three poetry competitions I entered.  I am the runt of the litter.  I need to find a spider to spin a few webs for me.  Maybe something like "Some Poet" or "Wonderful Musician" or "Will Play Organ for Food."

I'm not going to write about any worries tonight.  That's not a great way to start out a new year.  I will cling to the idea of hope and happiness.  The year 2013 is in my rear view mirror, and I give thanks for that fact.  Wilbur started his life as a worry.  A mouth that couldn't be fed.  Through love, Wilbur manages to live and thrive.  He becomes something extraordinary.

This year, through love, I will accomplish extraordinary things.  I have to believe that.

Saint Marty wishes all his disciples a blessed and happy new year.

December 27: Next Year's Book

After much deliberation, I have chosen the book for next year.

You may remember that I was considering Willa Cather's My Antonia and E. B. White's Charlotte's Web.  Both are great books, and made Entertainment Weekly's list of the top ten novels of all time.  Either one would be a worthy choice.

Well, I have consulted many experts.  I prayed.  I called up the Vatican and spoke to Pope Francis.  I listened to the small inner voice inside my head.  (That didn't help.  It just kept saying, "Hillary Clinton for President!")

After all that, I'm pleased to announce that my choice for next year is...

Just kidding.

Next year's book is Charlotte's Web.

Saint Marty isn't really into badly written pornography.

December 12: Book for Next Year

Well, it's time for me to start thinking about next year's book.

If you have been reading Saint Marty for any length of time, you know that, for the past two years, I have picked a novel and written about it for 365 days, starting on January 1.  Two years ago, it was Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, which was a lovely stroll down a happy street.  This year, it was The Catcher in the Rye, which has been a long hike down a mountain path on a moonless night.

I have two books in mind for next year.  This year, the magazine Entertainment Weekly published a list of the top 100 novels of all time.  In the top ten were Willa Cather's My Antonia, a book I first read as a high school sophomore, and E. B. White's Charlotte's Web, which I first read when I was seven or eight years old.  I love both of these novels.  They remind me of my childhood, of really happy times.  I don't need another Catcher next year.  I need something more uplifting.

I'm torn.  I love both Cather's book and White's, and I can't make up my mind.  I'm leaning toward Charlotte's Web, because it's such a simple story of love and friendship.  My memory of the story of My Antonia is a little fuzzier.  I recall it's a love story set on the prairie.  A young boy falls in love with an immigrant girl.  That's all I got.

What do you think?  Which one should I pick?

Drop Saint Marty a comment and let me know your thoughts.

This...

 
or this...

December 2: Almost Teenage Daughter, Feeling Old, Magic 8-Ball

In three days' time, I will be the father of a teenager.  My daughter will officially turn 13 on December 5.  In a way, I've been the father of a teenager for over a year.  I've been victim to my daughter's mood swings, eye rolling, sighs, and secrecy since she turned twelve.  I'm getting used to my little girl not being my little girl any more.

The impending official date of teenhood makes me feel quite old.  I know parents say this all the time, but it really does seem like last year when we brought her home from the hospital on that cold, snowy December day.  I don't know where all the time has gone.

I found myself last night standing by her bed in the middle of the night, the way I used to stand by her crib.  I watched her sleep, listened to her deep breaths.  I reached down and pulled the covers up on her.  I thought about how I used to read to her at night.  When she was four going on five, I read her Charlotte's Web.  Each night, we spent one chapter with Wilbur and gang.  She loved that book.  I loved reading her that book.

Now, at night, she sits on the couch and watches videos on her iPod.  When I suggest that she pick up a book, she gives me a pained expression, as if I've just offered her a plate of sauerkraut.  My little girl is in that teenager somewhere, but she seems a little lost to me at the moment.  There are moments when my little princess breaks through, like sunlight through a thundercloud.  Moments when we share a joke, walk hand-in-hand for a few feet, sing a song together on the radio.  But those moments are scarce.

My question this Magic 8-Ball Monday is simple:

Have I been a good father to my little girl?

And Holden's answer is:

"She's a dancer," I said.  "Ballet and all.  She used to practice about two hours every day, right in the middle of the hottest weather and all..."

Holden might be talking about Jane, but he might as well be describing about my daughter, too.  Ever since she was little, my daughter's dreamed of being a ballerina.  Last year, she got en pointe for the first time.  When I bought her first pointe shoes last fall, she held them like a doll in the car.  She slept with them on her feet the first few nights.  She was a ballerina.  Her dream.  She'd done it.

I guess I'll take that as a "yes" to my question.

Saint Marty hasn't screwed up fatherhood too much.

Dreams do come true...