February 18: Some Peanuts, In Between Teaching, Parents' Night

Ford has saved Arthur's life, although Arthur does not know that yet . . .

He heard a slight groan.  By the light of the match he saw a heavy shape moving slightly on the floor.  Quickly he shook the match out, reached in his pocket, found what he was looking for and took it out.  He ripped it open and shook it.  He crouched on the floor.  The shape moved again.

Ford Prefect said, "I bought some peanuts."

Arthur Dent moved, and groaned again, muttering incoherently.

"Here, have some," urged Ford, shaking the packet again, "if you've never been through a matter transference beam before you've probably lost some salt and protein.  The beer you had should have cushioned your system a bit."

I sort of feel as though I've been through a matter transference beam right now.  I'm starving.  In need of some salt and protein.  In between classes at the moment, gulping down some dinner in my office at the university.  It's one of those nights where I simply don't have a whole lot of time to be thoughtful with my post.  I spent most of the day at the medical office sorting through patient charts, getting them ready for either storage or shredding.  This afternoon, it was mythology--hero myths.  Perseus.  Hercules.  Jason.  Ulysses.  Tonight, composition--poetry analysis papers, among other things.

Because of teaching tonight, I am going to miss something at my daughter's school--parents' night at the basketball game.  That's when the seniors of the basketball team and the pep band are recognized with their parents.  I have been attending parents' nights for three years, knowing that, some day, I would be standing down on the gym floor with my daughter.

As you can tell, I'm not going to be at the basketball game.  Won't be there for my daughter's last pep band performance.  Instead, I'm going to be in a classroom, trying to teach college students how not to plagiarize.  That kind of makes me sad.  I'm not much of an organized sports kind of guy.  Couldn't care less who wins the game tonight.  But I do love hearing and seeing my daughter play in the band.  I'm going to miss that when she graduates.

That's where my mind is tonight.  Not in this post.  Not in the classroom.  It's in the gymnasium at my daughter's school.  I've actually been saying a few prayers that something would happen to either cancel classes tonight at the university or postpone the basketball game.  It appears that neither of those things are going to be happening.

Saint Marty will just have to be satisfied with the knowledge that his daughter will be missing him greatly.  (There's sarcasm in that statement, if you can't tell.)

September 27: Time Window, Worry About Tomorrow, Shades Drawn

People drifted away now, seeing the color return to Billy's cheeks, seeing him smile.  Valencia stayed with him, and Kilgore Trout, who had been on the fringe of the crowd, came closer, interested, shrewd.

"You looked as though you'd seen a ghost," said Valencia.

"No," said Billy.  He hadn't seen anything but what was really before him--the faces of the four singers, those four ordinary men, cow-eyed and mindless and anguished as they went from sweetness to sourness to sweetness again.

"Can I make a guess?" said Kilgore Trout.  "You saw through a time window."

"A what?" said Valencia.

"He suddenly saw the past or the future.  Am I right?"

"No," said Billy Pilgrim.  He got up, put a hand into his picket, found the box containing the ring in there.  He took out the box, gave it absently to Valencia.  He had meant to give it to her at the end of the song, while everybody was watching.  Only Kilgore Trout was there to see. 

"For me?" said Valencia.

"Yes."

"Oh, my God," she said.  Then she said it louder, so other people heard.  They gathered around, and she opened it, and she almost screamed when she saw the sapphire with a star in it.  "Oh, my God," she said.  She gave Billy a big kiss.  She said, "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

Time window.  I'm sitting in my office at the university right now, and I would give my left testicle for a window of any kind right now.  I'm staring at four, cream-colored walls.  There's not a whole lot of distraction, and I sort of like it that way.  It makes it easier to concentrate on blog posts or reading or grading.

I have plenty of time windows in this office, though.  It doesn't take much to get me to stare into some pane of the past.  For instance, just a moment ago, I was thinking about the day after the birth of my son.  I taught a class of freshman composition, and I showed pictures of my newborn.  The teenage girls "awwed" and "oooohed."  The teenage guys kind of rolled their eyes, and I think one of them asked, "Does this mean you're going to push back the due date of the paper?"

My window into the future is kind of limited at the moment.  All I see is myself, in about five hours, leaving campus, exhausted and hungry.  I also see myself freezing my ass off at a football game this Friday night.  Aside from that, I got nothing.  Future windows are always foggier than past windows.

Some people would probably say that gazing through times windows is a waste of time.  It either makes you sad and nostalgic, or fearful and anxious.  In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says, "So don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries.  Today's trouble is enough for today."  Translation:  no time windows for you.  It's good advice, from a pretty good source.

So, I'm going to try to keep my shades drawn on time windows for the rest of the afternoon and evening.  I'm just going to focus on the next moment, which involves a chicken sandwich and paper grading.

Or maybe Saint Marty should plan out his life for the next five years, instead.

September 6: Chicken Sandwich, John Ashbery, "Mean Particles"

Welcome to the second half of my day.

I'm sitting in my office at the university, trying to gather some energy for teaching my night class.  I have classical music playing (Mozart), and, after I'm done blogging, I'm going to walk down the hall and get my dinner out of the English Department's fridge.  Chicken sandwich.

If you can't tell, I'm struggling right now.  I've been up since 4:45 this morning, so the prospect of another six hours of work is not very appealing.  Perhaps I will put my head down on my desk for a little while.  Try to nap.

I'm not complaining.  This is my life.  I'm used to it.  When I woke up this morning, I hated everyone.  If I were a dog, I would have hid under the bed and bitten anyone who came near me.  I'm still feeling like that.  A little.

Saint Marty needs to make peace with his day, or his students are not going to have a good night.

Mean Particles

by:  John Ashbery

Sometimes something like a second
washes the base of this street.
The father and his two assistants
are given permission to go.
One of them, a woman, asks, "Why
did we come here in the first place,
to this citadel of dampness?"

Some days are worse than others,
even if we can't believe in them.
But that was never a concern of mine,
reasoned the patient.

Sing, scroll, or never be blasted by us
into marmoreal meaning, or the fist for it.
Kudos to the prince who journeyed here
to negotiate our release, if you can believe it.

You're right. The ballads are retreating
back into the atmosphere.
They won't be coming round again.
Make your peace.

August 30: All Right with Billy, Self Pity, Chicken Sandwich

Billy was brought down Sugarbush Mountain on a toboggan.  The golliwogs controlled it with ropes and yodeled melodiously for right-of-way.  Near the bottom, the trail swooped around the pylons of a chair lift.  Billy looked up at all the young people in bright elastic clothing and enormous boots and goggles, bombed out of their skulls with snow, swinging through the sky in yellow chairs.  He supposed that they were part of an amazing new phase of World War Two.  It was all right with him.  Everything was pretty much all right with Billy.

I wish I could be more like Billy Pilgrim.  No, I don't want to be a survivor of a plane crash.  I don't want to be abducted by aliens and placed in a zoo on a distant planet to mate with a porn star.  Don't want to be a soldier in a war.  Don't want to be an optometrist.

What I want is Billy's ability to be all right with everything.  Not get upset when his life crashes into the side of a mountain.  That's how I wish I could be like Billy Pilgrim.  I want to be much calmer about the vicissitudes of my daily existence.  I think that would make me a much happier person.

At the moment, I'm feeling pretty sorry for myself.  And I hate it.  Self pity is one of my least favorite emotions.  Sure, I get sad and mad and confused.  That's normal for every human being, except maybe Donald Trump.  But he's delusional.  A person cannot be happy every second of the day.  Even Jesus Christ wept every once in a while.  Ask Lazarus.

Billy Pilgrim knows when he's going to die.  He knows when and how the universe is going to end.  He's experienced his birth and childhood and adulthood over and over and over.  No surprises.  The terrible things in his life aren't so terrible because he knows what's coming.  Death isn't an ending.  It's one bead on a string of beads.  Like a rosary, where you can come back to the same moments in Christ's life again and again.

I have no major wisdom this afternoon.  All I have is a chicken sandwich and some apple juice.  That's my happiness.  Maybe, if I were Billy Pilgrim, I would know that this chicken sandwich will change my life in some way.  I would know how teaching my class will go this evening.  Would know what's going to happen this weekend and next week.  And I could be all right with it all.

Saint Marty needs a nap and a time machine.