January 17: Sober Cannibal, First Day Teaching, Facing Fears

"Landlord, for God's sake, Peter Coffin!" shouted I. "Landlord! Watch! Coffin! Angels! save me!"

"Speak-e! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e!" again growled the cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scattered the hot tobacco ashes about me till I thought my linen would get on fire. But thank heaven, at that moment the landlord came into the room light in hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him.

"Don't be afraid now," said he, grinning again, "Queequeg here wouldn't harm a hair of your head."

"Stop your grinning," shouted I, "and why didn't you tell me that that infernal harpooneer was a cannibal?"

"I thought ye know'd it;- didn't I tell ye, he was a peddlin' heads around town?- but turn flukes again and go to sleep. Queequeg, look here- you sabbee me, I sabbee- you this man sleepe you- you sabbee?"

"Me sabbee plenty"- grunted Queequeg, puffing away at his pipe and sitting up in bed.

"You gettee in," he added, motioning to me with his tomahawk, and throwing the clothes to one side. 

He really did this in not only a civil but a really kind and charitable way. I stood looking at him a moment. For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal. What's all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself- the man's a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

"Landlord," said I, "tell him to stash his tomahawk there, or pipe, or whatever you call it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and I will turn in with him. But I don't fancy having a man smoking in bed with me. It's dangerous. Besides, I ain't insured."

This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and again politely motioned me to get into bed- rolling over to one side as much as to say- I won't touch a leg of ye.

"Good night, landlord," said I, "you may go."

I turned in, and never slept better in my life.

I love Ishmael's comment in this passage:  "Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian."  Of course, there is still a hint of racism involved.  Ishmael assumes, because of Queequeg's appearance (skin coloring and tattoos), that he is a cannibal.  Yet, Melville does something that's pretty remarkable then.  He compares a sober cannibal to a drunken Christian.  The cannibal wins this character contest.

Of course, there's also a lot of comedy in this little passage that ends chapter three of Moby-Dick.  But the comedy is at Ishmael's expense.  Queequeg is not the fool here.  Ishmael--with his prejudices and fears--comes out looking like the village idiot, and he quickly realizes his error in judgement.

Just finished teaching my first class of the semester--Introduction to Film.  It's one of my favorite courses.  Of course, we did all of the normal things--syllabus and introductions and such.  I always think of the first day as a sort of blind date.  The students don't know if they're going to like me, and I don't know what kind of student hand I've been dealt, either.  So, it's all about first impressions.  Sort of like Ishmael and Queequeg.

I think things went alright tonight.  We ended up watching Charlie Chaplin's City Lights for the last 40 minutes.  It's a great film to break the ice.  A little silly.  A little serious.  Slapstick and melodramatic.  By the end of class, the students were laughing and relaxed.  I count that as a success.  I think I came across as half-cannibal, half-drunken Christian.

Now, I have a couple hours to relax in my office until my daughter is done at her dance studio.  Time to decompress, think about the coming days.

A lot of my life is like Ishmael's first encounter with Queequeg.  I'm thrown into situations that give me stress and anxiety (like teaching a roomful of 35 jaded undergraduates), and I usually end up really enjoying myself.  It's a matter of not letting fear rule my choices.

If I had played it safe my whole life, I would be a plumber right now, spending my days cabling sewers and fixing leaky faucets.  There's nothing wrong with the plumbing profession.  It's hard, honest labor.  However, since my father and brothers and sister were all master plumbers, I wouldn't have been taking any chances if I had chosen the same line of work.  (I'd also be a lot more financially stable.)

Instead, I'm sitting in an office in the English Department of a university, having just finished talking about Charlie Chaplin with a bunch of young people barely older than my daughter.  I'm a poet.  This past December, I added radio performer to my list of credits.  My life has pretty much been about stepping out on ledges, looking down, and then leaping.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for his fears and where they have led him.

August 28: Charlie Chaplin and "City Lights"

This afternoon, I spent about an hour watching Charlie Chaplin's masterpiece City Lights.  None of my students had ever seen the film before.  I was a little tired and cranky.  It was a really good way to end my day.

As I turned off the lights in my classroom and headed back to my office, I had a smile on my face.  The Little Tramp did that for me (and I'm not talking about a coed with a tattoo).

Saint Marty is a happy convalescent tonight.

Get your mind out of the gutter--this is the Little Tramp!

January 28: Rosebud Afternoon

It's been a long Monday.  I'm just about ready to head off to class to teach.  We're finishing up City Lights with Charlie Chaplin, and then we will dip into Citizen Kane at the end of class.  I can hardly wait to be done with this day.

I have to say that is has been a Rosebud kind of afternoon.  In Kane, "Rosebud" is the MacGuffin, the mysterious last words of Charles Foster Kane that drive the entire film.  Of course, at the end of the movie, Rosebud is identified as Kane's childhood sled, but it really means much more than that.  It represents a simpler time in his life, a time of childhood and innocence, a time when the most important things in his world were throwing snowballs.

I kind of feel that Rosebud longing right now.  On a day-to-day basis, my schedule is a little exhausting, with work and teaching and all.  I'd love to have the kind of day I used to have as a grad student.  My Rosebud would be the office I had in the basement of the university library.  I had a beanbag chair and scented candles.  A mountain of returnable cans in the corner.  And friends.  Tons of friends who just hung around, shooting the crap, trading stories, studying Chaucer or Dante, and eating cheap food.  I didn't have another job.  I was a student and a teacher.  It was one of the best times of my life.

Say it with Saint Marty:  "Rosebud."

Where's my sled?

August 20: Busy Day, Busy Work, "Carol" Dip Monday

It is going to be a busy day.  Usually, the first thing I do in the morning is check my e-mails.  Then, I browse through a few blogs I follow on a fairly consistent basis.  I check out the news on Google to see if the world has ended or I've been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (those two occurrences are not mutually exclusive, by the way).  Then I type my morning post for Saint Marty.

This morning, I started my busy work first.  I filled out some forms, did some e-mail business for my wife, and printed out some information I need to complete my syllabus for the fall semester.  That was just in the first half hour of being on task.  After this post, I have tons more busy work to complete. 

There's a worship meeting tonight at church, and since I'm the chair of that committee, I suppose I should get an agenda done and type up the minutes of the last meeting.  As I just indicated, I also plan on completing a major portion of my syllabus for Intro to Film today, everything but the semester schedule.  The schedule's the hardest part, and I still haven't decided in what order I'm going to show the films I've selected for the class.  I know I'm starting with Charlie Chaplin's City Lights and ending with It's A Wonderful Life.  Aside from that, I'm kind of up in the air, although I'm pretty sure Citizen Kane is going to be film number two.

Whew.  That's a lot of crap to get done.  If it doesn't seem like a lot of crap, take my word for it:  it is.  Making up a syllabus gives me a great deal of anxiety.  It's like planning out my life for the rest of the calendar year.  I'm locking down my days and weeks and months.  That kind of commitment is a little difficult for me.  However, I always place a little caveat in all of my syllabi.  In front of the term "Semester Schedule," I place these words "VERY TENTATIVE."  Note the use of capitalization and boldface and italics.  I figure that addition buys me some breathing room, in case I want to change anything.

Well, it is Monday, and that means it's once again time for a Carol dip.  I've been thinking and thinking about a possible question for the great book of Dickens.  I'm not sure the following question qualifies as earth-shattering or important or even interesting, but it's what's on my mind at the moment:

Will my Intro to Film classes go well this semester?

And the answer from the Ghosts of Christmas and Tiny Tim and Ebenezer Scrooge and company is:

Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phantom, with its outstretched hand.  When he roused himself from his thoughtful quest, he fancied from the turn of the hand, and its situation in reference to himself, that the Unseen Eyes were looking at him keenly.  It made him shudder, and feel very cold.

Yeesh.  That's not very encouraging at all.  Nothing like the Grim Reaper to put a chill in the air.  Guess I better really put some thought into that syllabus.

Saint Marty has some serious work to do today.

This is encouraging only if you're Ingmar Bergman

June 18: Rain, Poetry, and Pumpkins

It has been storming all day long.  Each time I looked out a window, the rain was pouring down.  I don't mind so much when I'm stuck inside all day long.  Plus, I planted some pumpkin sprouts in my backyard on Friday afternoon.  From everything I read about growing pumpkins (yes, I actually did a little research), pumpkins need two things in abundance to flourish:  water and sunlight.  Well, those pumpkins probably drowned today.

While I was putting medical charts together at work, I also managed to watch City Lights with Charlie Chaplin.  I'm using that movie in my Intro to Film class this fall, and I found it on YouTube.  I had seen it a looooong time ago, but I barely remembered it.  Now that I've reacquainted myself with it, I have to say that I think it's Chaplin's best film.  The final scene, with the slow fade to darkness, is heartbreaking and ambiguous and sublime.  I can't believe I actually forgot it.

For the rest of the day, I'm going to be working on my new poem, which is turning into a behemoth.  I think.  Who knows?  I may finish it and decide that the only thing worth saving is the first line.  It's happened before.  In the mean time, enjoy the final moments of City Lights.  It's visual poetry.

Saint Marty needs a hankie to watch this.