December 21, 2024: "Dining Alone," Solitude, Winter Solstice

Because I'm a poet, solitude is essential at times.  To read and think and create.

In modern society, solitude is suspect.  Going to a movie alone attracts sympathy and stares.  Sitting on a bench alone, scribbling in a notebook, makes onlookers uncomfortable, as if you're an undercover FBI agent taking down names.  Dining alone is the ultimate transgression--smacking of isolation or mental illness or serial-killer-in-the-making.

Billy Collins reflects on the etiquette of eating dinner alone . . . 

Dining Alone

by: Billy Collins

He who eats alone chokes alone.

---Arab saying

I would rather eat at the bar,

but such behavior is regarded

by professionals as a form of denial,

so here I am seated alone

at a table with a white tablecloth

attended by an elderly waiter with no name--

ideal conditions for dining alone

according to the connoisseurs of this minor talent.

I have brought neither book nor newspaper

since reading material is considered cheating.

Eating alone, they say, means eating alone,

not in the company of Montaigne

or the ever-engaging Nancy Mitford.

Nor do I keep glancing up as if waiting

for someone who inevitably fails to appear--

a sign of moral weakness

to those who take this practice seriously.

And the rewards?  

I am thinking of an obvious one right now

as I take the time to contemplate

on my lifted fork a piece of trout with almond slices.

And I can enjoy swirling the wine in my glass

until it resembles a whirlpool

in a 19th-centruy painting of a ship foundering in a storm.

Then there are the looks of envy 

from the fellow on the blind date

and the long-married couple facing each other in silence.

I pierced a buttered spear of asparagus

and wondered if the moon would be visible tonight,

but uncapping my pen was out of the question

for writing, too, is frowned upon

by the true champions of solitude.

All that would have to wait

until after I have walked home,

collar up, under the streetlights.

Not until I would hear the echo of the front door,

closing behind me could I record

in a marbled notebook--

like the ones I had as a schoolboy--

my observations about the art

of dining alone in the company of strangers.

It is Winter Solstice--the longest night of the year.  The sun didn't rise until well past 8 a.m., and, by the time I left church at around 5 p.m. this evening, it was already getting dark.  

A little while ago, I stood in my backyard, gazing up into the heavens.  It's a clear, cold night--the kind that seems etched in glass.  I didn't see any moon, but the stars were bright as pearls.

It's easy to feel isolated and alone on this day.  Darkness has a way of making you feel like the first or last person on the planet.  Solitude is all around.  At the moment, everyone else in my house is asleep.  My son isn't screaming at his online gaming friends.  My puppy hasn't so much as moaned since she was put in her cage for the night and covered with blankets.  And my wife surrendered to sleep about an hour ago.

I'm feeling slightly exhausted myself.  (Nothing new there.  I've been exhausted for about a month now.)  My wife and I went Christmas shopping this afternoon.  This year, we are trying as best as we can to shop local.  Too many of the big chain stores and websites contributed to the campaign of the Felon in Chief.  So we decided local artists, artisans, writers, book stores, and art galleries would get our money over, say, Walmart or Amazon.  And it felt really good to know that we weren't helping with the downfall of democracy in this country.  Yes, I know I'm only one person, and whether I buy my son socks at Walmart is not going to destroy the Walton family fortune.  But that one solitary act of protest, if repeated hundreds of thousand of times, will make an impact.  Collective solitude in action.

Tomorrow, days start getting longer, light returning gradually to my part of this planet.  My hope is that the darkness that's ben sitting on my shoulders will gradually fade, as well.  In the meantime, I embrace my solitude.  Feel whatever emotion fills that space with me--sadness or anger or creativity or love.  I know that I'm really not alone and never have been.

Poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote, "I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people:  that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other."

Saint Marty is standing guard this dark night for all his disciples.  

April 20: Nearly Ghostlike, Selling Out a Stadium, Poetry and Beer

And Billy let himself down oh so gradually now, hanging onto the diagonal cross-brace in the corner in order to make himself seem nearly weightless to those he was joining on the floor.  He knew it was important that he make himself nearly ghostlike when lying down.  He had forgotten why, but a reminder soon came.

"Pilgrim--" said a person he was about to nestle with, "is that you?"

Billy didn't say anything, but nestled very politely, closed his eyes.

"God damn it," said the person.  "That is you, isn't it?"  He sat up and explored Billy rudely with his hands.  "It's you all right.  Get the hell out of here."

Now Billy sat up, too--wretched, close to tears.

"Get out of here!  I want to sleep!"

"Shut up," said somebody else.

"I'll shut up when Pilgrim gets away from here."

So Billy stood up again, clung to the cross-brace.  "Where can I sleep?" he asked quietly.

"Not with me."

"Not with me, you son of a bitch," said somebody else.  "You yell.  You kick."

"I do."

"You're God damn right you do.  And whimper."

"I do?"

"Keep the hell away from here, Pilgrim."

And now there was an acrimonious madrigal, with parts sung in all quarters of the car.  Nearly everybody, seemingly, had an atrocity story of something Billy Pilgrim had done to him in his sleep.  Everybody told Billy Pilgrim to keep the hell away.

I am about as tired as Billy Pilgrim right now.  My eyes are heavy, and I had way too many beers after my poetry reading this evening.  I'm not sure if I kick or whimper in my sleep.  My wife has never booted me out of bed for being excessively active while slumbering.

The poetry reading at the Carnegie Library in Ishpeming went really well tonight. There were about 15 or 20 people in attendance.  Not bad for a dreary, cold night.  I was expecting exactly five people--the librarian, my wife, my two musician friends, and myself.  Fifteen people in an audience is like selling out a stadium for a poetry reading.

The only part that I'm regretting is that I have to get up and go to work tomorrow morning.  I would love to sleep in, get up whenever, have breakfast, and stay in my pajamas until the afternoon.  That's not going to happen, but it's a pretty nice fantasy.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for friends and poetry and beer.

January 5: Classic Saint Marty, Cold Night, New Cartoon

It is a cold night.  It's already twelve below zero and getting colder.  Schools all over the Upper Peninsula of Michigan are closed.  My daughter and son are heartbroken.  They were so looking forward to climbing aboard that bus tomorrow morning.  My daughter has been crying for three hours.  (If you can't tell, I'm being sarcastic.)

I went to church this morning.  It was a little strange.  The pastor seemed a little uncomfortable around me.  I spent most of my time working with the lead singer of the praise band on a couple songs.  I'm going to really miss the work I did at the church.  I'm going to miss the people.  But I'm not sure how much of a difference my absence in going to make.  I don't know how big of a hole I'm going to leave behind.

Which reminds me of a Classic Saint Marty that originally aired on Christmas Eve in the year 2011.  It's all about making a difference.

Saint Marty is going to make a difference right now.  He's going to make himself a hot toddy.  Heavy on the toddy.

December 24, 2011:  An Awful Hole

"Each man's life touches so many other lives.  And when he isn't around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?"

George gets pissed at Clarence

Clarence says this to George near the end of It's A Wonderful Life.  George has just visited his mother who, without having George as a son, has turned into an angry, bitter, old woman.  Mrs. Bailey runs a boarding house, and she tells George that Uncle Billy has been committed to an insane asylum since he lost the Building and Loan.  George's brother, Harry, died at age eleven when he fell though the ice on a lake and drowned.  George wasn't there to save Harry.  Without George, everyone's lives have become empty and dark.  George's wish of never being born has brought disaster to each person he loves.

No person really knows about how big a difference his or her life has made.  I often wonder if what I do every day has any impact.  Getting up at 4 a.m., registering patients, teaching writing and literature, singing in the church choir, playing the pipe organ--I'm not sure any of this really effects anything.  Living my life is like writing my blog.  I send these posts out into the ether, not knowing if anybody's reading them, if my words are making any kind of impact at all.  That's a pretty good metaphor for life, I think.

George really is given a great gift.  He gets to see what life would be like without him, and he learns what an awful hole his absence would leave behind.  I just found out a husband and wife from church lost their twenty-something son to a drug overdose yesterday.  An awful hole.  My wife lost her mother to ovarian cancer when my wife was 19.  An awful hole.  My aunt just lost her husband of over 50 years this fall.  An awful hole.  George gets a second chance.  Not many people get second chances.

I've actually gotten a few second chances in my life, and I'm grateful for each and every one of them.  I have a son because of a second chance.  I have a wife because of a second chance.  I've lived a George Bailey life.

Saint Marty really has a wonderful life.

Confessions of Saint Marty