May 21: Heron, "The Angry Birds Movie," Cartoon Universe

The heron was in calm shallows; the deepest water it walked in went two inches up its orange legs.  It would go and get something from the cattails on the side, and, when it had eaten it--tossing up its beak and contracting its throat in great gulps--it would plod back to a dry sandbar in the center of the creek which seemed to serve as its observation tower.  It wagged its stubby tail up and down; its tail was so short it did not extend beyond its folded wings.

Dillard does this a lot at Tinker Creek--watching things.  She watches muskrats and ice melting.  The moon rising above stands of trees.  She takes things home, like snake skins, and puzzles over shape and form.  In short, she does everything that a writer/poet does when she doesn't have to worry about money or teaching or taking care of kids.  So, on a warm summer day, Dillard interrupts the dinner of a heron, watches it wade through the water and slime.

The reason I chose to focus on a passage about a bird is that I went to see The Angry Birds Movie last night with my son, wife, and sister.  The best thing I can say about the movie is that the buttered popcorn was pretty good.  There's nothing like movie theater popcorn.  As for the film itself . . . well, to be quite honest, I dozed off during a portion of it. 

Now, let me say here that I am not a person who hates animated feature films.  I love animated films.  When I teach Intro to Film, I always include Toy Story or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on the syllabus.  Walt Disney is one of my heroes (overlooking the rumored antisemitism and cooperation with Joseph McCarthy and HUAC in the 1950s).  In fact, one of the few movies I will pay to see this summer will be Pixar's Finding Dory.  (Not being a superhero fanboy, I couldn't care less whether Batman kicked Superman's ass or Captain America and Iron Man work out their relationship issues.)

On our first date, I took my wife-to-be to see The Jungle Book, which had just been re-released.  I sat with her in the back row of the theater full of rugrats.  I sang along to all the songs.  Loudly.  (We did make out a little bit, too, much to the chagrin of some soccer moms.)  Surprisingly, she still married me.

One of my earliest memories of going to the movies is Mary Poppins, especially where Mary takes everybody into the chalk painting.  As a kid, I dreamed of being able to do that--jumping into an animated world.  Of course, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? sort of showed how dangerous being a real person in a cartoon universe can be.  But I still thought it would be cool.  Actually, I wouldn't mind spending a little time with Woody and Buzz or Peter Pan and the Lost Boys.

Now, as for being in a world where little bird balls battle green pigs--I don't think I'd sign up for passage on that boat.  Nothing really magical about that for me.

However, Marty wouldn't mind being a Lego saint.

Confessions of Saint Marty

April 30: Alpha Centauri, Greatest Father, Confessions of Saint Marty

People say that a good seat in the backyard affords as accurate and inspiring a vantage point on the planet earth as any observation tower on Alpha Centauri.  They are wrong.  We see through a glass darkly.  We find ourselves in the middle of a movie, or, God help us, a take for a movie, and we don't know what's on the rest of the film.

Dillard is writing about perspective.  Seeing life, the world, from your backyard instead of some lofty vantage point.  That would mean that the aliens observing the human race's follies from Alpha Centauri have no better understanding of our place in the universe than we do.  Of course, Dillard takes exception with this idea.  As she says, we--human beings--see through a glass darkly.  We may see what's going on around us, but that doesn't necessarily bring us wisdom or understanding.  Those things come with perspective.

Last night, I wasn't the greatest father in the world.  My son, who is struggling with his ADHD right now, was being obstinate and aggravating.  I was trying to make him understand why saying and doing mean things is wrong.  That it hurts people's feelings and gets him in trouble.  He was having none of my talk.  He screamed, stomped his feet, and cried.  I couldn't get him to listen or calm down.  It wasn't my proudest parenting moment ever.  And it accomplished absolutely nothing.

I thought my son was going to hate me forever.  (I'm still convinced last night will be the source of many hours of therapy once he gets older.)  When it was all over, I was still so angry that I didn't speak to anyone for a long time.  I just pounded away on the keyboard of my laptop and glared at everyone.

The funny thing is, a little while after this incident, my son was laughing and talking to me as if nothing had happened.  He had completely recovered from this scarring moment, and I was still sulking in a pool of guilt and anger.  My son had forgiven me, and I was still in my backyard, gazing through a glass darkly.  My son was on Alpha Centauri, looking down and saying, "Can I watch some Minecraft videos?"

I like to think I'm a forgiving person.  That I don't hold grudges and have an Alpha Centauri vantage point.  It's what I think distinguishes mentally and spiritually enlightened people from others.  Well, my son taught me a lesson in forgiveness last night.  By the time I went to bed, I felt like I'd been in some kind of desert for 40 days, facing my inner asshole self.

Marty did not earn any saint points yesterday.

Confessions of Saint Marty

February 20: Adam's Curse, Thistles and Thorns, Quincy Troupe, "Stillness," Confessions of Saint Marty

The thistle is part of Adam's curse.  "Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee."  A terrible curse:  But does the goldfinch eat thorny sorrow with the thistle, or do I?  If this furling air is fallen, then the fall was happy indeed.  If this creekside garden is sorrow, then I seek martyrdom.  This crown of thorns sits light on my skull, like wings.  The Venetian Baroque painter Tiepolo painted Christ as a red-lipped infant clutching a goldfinch; the goldfinch seems to be looking around in search of thorns.  Creation itself was the fall, a burst into the thorny beauty of the real.

Annie Dillard's little reflection on Creation and the fall is so typical of the poet/writer.  In the thorns and sorrow of the world, she sees beauty.  In fact, she seeks out the thistles, wears them like a crown.  She walks the cursed ground, seeing in everything, I think, reflections of God's goodness.  Dillard relishes the martyrdom of the fall.

That's pretty heady stuff for a Saturday morning, but I kind of find comfort in these thoughts.  I've spent most of my life listening to sermons and homilies about the fallen world, original sin, penance, and redemption.  I'm sure Dillard has, too.  The difference is that Dillard finds much to celebrate in the difficulties of the world, because it is through adversity that evolution/transformation happens.  After a forest fire, Nature rolls up its sleeves and gets to work.  Through ash and smolder, green appears.  Then gold and purple and red.  Destruction can be a prelude to creation.

I think I focus too much on the destruction.  It's an easy trap to fall into.  Sort of like the days following the 9-11 attacks, when all the television stations replayed the images:  the planes striking the Towers; the Towers collapsing; people stumbling out of the clouds of white dust.  Destruction for weeks, months.  It's comfortable to focus on sorrow, dwell in that place of pain.

It's harder to be the goldfinch, looking for thistles and thistledown.  Fluttering golden wings through the thorns.  In the last few weeks, I've found myself focused on the absences in my life.  Being unhappy because I don't have the perfect job or perfect home or perfect life.  I don't recommend this practice.  It leads to sleepless night and exhausting days, filled with anger and unhappiness. 

Today, I'm going to try to break this thorny cycle.  Say "thank You" to God when I feel challenged instead of "why me?".  I'm going to celebrate the ashes of Lent because I know Easter morning is coming.  I have to believe that.  That's what being a Christian is all about.

In the stillness of the storm, Saint Marty finds hope.

Stillness

by:  Quincy Troupe

underneath a midnight sky, fresh snow rests still & white
as a summer cloud formation, stretching there, soft as a bed
of just-picked cotton, beneath tailfire of a streaking jet

& soon the wind will stir up again the murmuring dead voices
lying there, beneath that blanket of chilled glittering crystals
reminding of light refracting jewels covering the earth's hard floor

the tongue-lashing speech of god's sawblading breath is quiet now
so soon, again, after the cold shattering cacophony of language
an avalanche brings, the sound deafening in its power

& louder than the scream of god inside the voice of a shattering
tornado, louder than roaring screams sudsing in the curling finger
at the top of a swelling epiphany, above the wall of water

howling in a tidal wave, drowning everything within the blink
of an instant, the frenzy suddenly leveling off flat as quick as it came
& now lies there a dark still pool mirroring as in a dead duck's eye

wide open there, as if it were a midnight sky holding a full moon
above a whispering chilled landscape sculptured by hands of winter
the snow swept up into heaps & shapes by god's tongue there

reminds of sleeping polar bears huddled together when seen
from above:  scattered around still lifes, the wind picking up snow
swirling it like confetti--voices as if torn away from history.

Confessions of Saint Marty

February 13: Pizzazz, God's Thumbprint, Quincy Troupe, "Untitled 3," Confessions of Saint Marty

Of all known forms of life, only about ten percent are still living today.  All other forms--fantastic plants, ordinary plants, living animals with unimaginably various wings, tails, teeth, brains--are utterly and forever gone.  That is a great many forms that have been created.  Multiplying ten times the number of living forms today yields a profusion that is quite beyond what I consider thinkable.  Why so many forms?  Why not just that one hydrogen atom?  The creator goes off on one wild, specific tangent after another, of millions simultaneously, with an exuberance that would seem to be unwarranted, and with an abandoned energy sprung from an unfathomable font.  What is going on here?  The point of the dragonfly's terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows, is not that it all fits together like clockwork--for it doesn't, particularly, not even inside the goldfish bowl--but that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, fringed tangle.  Freedom is the world's water and weather, the world's nourishment freely given, its soil and sap:  and the creator loves pizzazz.

Dillard is thrilled by the wonder of creation, the intricacies of atom, molecule, chloroplast, caterpillar, and cumulus.  She doesn't see the universe as some organized and planned-out event, a divine wedding or birthday party.  No, the universe is a riot of evolutionary leaps, evidence of a Creator in love with creation.  There's God, sitting in front of His canvas, laying on the paint like van Gogh.  Thick swathes and dimples of ocher and umber and canary.

God has been busy all week in the Upper Peninsula.  Looking out the window right now, I see huge swoops and scoops of white, like some frozen seascape.  It's beautiful and humbling at the same time.  Winter storms have a way of reminding me how small and insignificant my contribution to creation is.  This post, for instance, is not going to cure cancer or stop global warming (which exists, despite Republican statements to the contrary).  Perhaps my greatest part in God's chaotic scheme is my kids.  I have taken part in life-creation.  That's God's thumbprint on my life.

I'm watching my son playing in this frozen landscape right now.  He's climbing to the top of a mountain of snow, carrying great white boulders.  He stands there for a moment, and then he tosses them into the air, watches them tumble and roll to the ground.  In some way, I think my son gets God a lot better than I do.  When I see snow, I think of shoveling and muscle ache.  When he sees snow, he thinks of sculpture and play, climbing and falling.  Wonder and awe.

Tonight is all about ballet for me.  Watching my daughter practice and perform.  Another one of my contributions to the universe.  Music and movement and youth and beauty.  And I had a small part in it.  Setting aside her teenage tantrums and stomping, she also gets God a lot better than me, although she is developing a more adult sense of complacency daily.  It's harder and harder to make her joyful.

So, here's Saint Marty's advice to anyone reading this post:  stop and look.  Recognize the work of the Mad Scientist in charge of the universe.  See the beauty and wonder.  My son and daughter do this.  So does Annie Dillard.  And the poet Quincy Troupe.

Untitled 3

by:  Quincy Troupe

birds ski down the day's inscrutable smile
wheeling, banking their diaphanous
sawblading voices, their sword-like sleek feathers
cutting through the day's upper reaches of silence
their convoluted language cacophonous
& raucous, as a lynch mob
in old georgia, the rope-rasping burning of their syllables
hangin their twisting meanings around us & these blooming
dark hours stormy with chaos april brings--
spring leaping suddenly upon us
like a black panther clawing or breath
but is filled with so rare & mysterious
a beauty, it thrills us to death

Confessions of Saint Marty

February 6: Sweet Dreams, Tyrannosaurus Poem, Lenten Promise, Confessions of Saint Marty

Finally I saw some very small children playing with a striped orange kitten, and overheard their mysterious conversation, which has since been ringing in my brain like a gong.  The kitten ran into a garden, and the girl called after it, "Sweet Dreams!  Sweet Dreams!  Where are you?"  And the boy said to her crossly, "Don't call Sweet Dreams 'you'!"

Annie Dillard describes the conversation she overhears between the little boy and girl as "mysterious."  There is something profound in the little boy's admonition, "Don't call Sweet Dreams you!"  Sweet Dreams is Sweet Dreams, not "it" or "he" or "she" or "you."  Certainly, the little girl did not mean to demean the little kitten in any way, but the little boy (perhaps because he's been called "you" in not so kind terms, as in "You better clean your damn room!" or "You are a pain in the ass!") attaches something negative, even threatening, to his friend's words.

Kids are a mystery, in what they say, the way they view the world.  My son can play outside for hours by himself.  When he returns, he's full of stories about fishing and aliens and zombies.  Last Sunday, when he came inside, he held out his hand to me.  I extended my palm to him.  He dropped a dollar bill into my hand.  "I found it," he said.  My daughter, when she was five, did the same thing, except she dropped a dead bird into my outstretched hand.

I've always believed that kids are born poets, seeing things that adults simply overlook or ignore.  There's a natural wonder in young people that, over time, is lost or forgotten.  Adult wants and needs and worries overtake things like zombies and aliens and dead birds.  Sweet Dreams isn't a kitten for an adult; it's a phrase you say to a child heading off to bed--as in, "Good night!  Sweet dreams!"

Every time I sit down to write a poem, I feel like I'm chasing my younger self, trying to recapture a wonder-filled way of looking at the universe.  When I was a kid, I had no problem in believing that I was going to be Charles Dickens or Sherlock Holmes.  It wasn't a huge leap of faith.  Now, I have difficulty believing in anything beyond the confines of my limited life and work.  I read stories of people who discover the bones of a tyrannosaurus in their backyard or an original Picasso in their attic, and the stories seem like fairy tales.  I have no room for wonder or mystery in my day-to-day existence.

Of course, I experience moments of inspiration.  In church.  In the classroom sometimes.  When I'm listening to certain music.  I feel my heart lifting, cracking open a little bit, letting escape a little bit of the child I used to be.  Lent starts this Wednesday, and I have been casting around for something I can do for those 47 days that will lend meaning to the Easter season.

In the past, I have done things like writing a poem a day (pure insanity) to praying for people who've hurt me (headache inducing, but rewarding).  I don't want to commit to anything that is doomed to failure (writing a novel or memoir in 47 days).  Maybe another poetic exercise of a smaller scale.  Something that tries to recapture that sense of child-like wonder and awe.  On every Sunday in Lent, I will write a poem about something strange, weird even.  Something that makes me feel like a kid again.  A tyrannosaurus poem.  A Picasso poem.

That is Saint Marty's Lenten promise.  Amen.

Confessions of Saint Marty

January 16: Ilya Kaminsky, "Marina Tsvetaeva," Confessions of Saint Marty

That the insects have adapted is obvious.  Their failures to adapt, however, are dazzling.  It is hard to believe that nature is partial to such dim-wittedness.  Howard Ensign Evans tells of dragonflies trying to lay eggs on the shining hoods of cars.  Other dragonflies seem to test a surface, to learn if it's really water, by dipping the tips of their abdomens in it.  At the Los Angeles La Brea tar pits, they dip their abdomens into the reeking tar and get stuck.  If by tremendous effort a dragonfly frees itself, Evans reports, it is apt to repeat the maneuver.  Sometimes the tar pits glitter with the dry bodies of dead dragonflies.

Last night, I focused on gifts.  How, in the natural world and life, there are certain creatures/people who are imbued with certain abilities that cross the boundaries of understanding.  Today's passage is about exactly the opposite:  dim-wittedness.  The foolish dragonfly laying its eggs on the hoods of cars, getting stuck on a shining black surface of hot tar.  Over and over.

Humans are not too far off from dragonflies.  We make mistakes, suffer for them, and then, in a little while, make the same mistakes again.  The United States didn't learn enough from Vietnam, so we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan.  The Holocaust.  The Rwandan genocide.  George W. Bush.  Donald Trump.  Over and over.

One of my sisters is stuck on failure.  Last night, I listened to her rail against all of the doctors who cared for my sister, Sally, who died last summer of lymphoma of the brain.  To a person, my sister called each of those physicians "murderers."  Listed all of the mistakes they made in caring for Sally.  At the end of this tirade, my sister said, "Sal would still be alive if it weren't for those killers."

I will be the first to admit that mistakes were made in the care my sister received in the last year of her life.  But, until very close to the end, nobody knew what we were dealing with.  Had the doctors diagnosed her earlier in her illness, Sally might have lived a little longer.  In the end, though, the outcome would have been the same.

My sister is stuck in a forest of blame and anger, and she can't seem to find her way out of it.  Now, it's affecting her health and life.  Panic attacks.  Insomnia.  Depression.  She sees Sally's ghost at night sometimes.  All my sister focuses on is failure--the dragonflies caught in the tar.

I wish I could make my sister understand that Sally's death is not about failure and blame.  That life is sometimes simply not fair.  It doesn't turn out the way we want it to turn out.  And we can spend all our time focused on the injustice of that statement--make ourselves sick over it--or we can accept it and try to carve out some happiness from this broken universe in which we live.

Failure is a part of the world.  Every day of our lives, we fail.  I'm failing right now at expressing my ideas clearly and accurately in this post.  Life is a series of failures, interrupted with moments of joy and blessing.

Saint Marty chooses to focus on the joy and blessing instead of the failure.

Marina Tsvetaeva

by:  Ilya Kaminsky

     During the first year of my deafness, I saw her with a man.  She wore a purple scarf knotted around her head.  Half-dancing, she took his head between her hands and laid it on her breast.  And she began to sing.  I observed her with devouring attention.  I imagined her voice smelling of oranges; I fell in love with her voice.

     She was a woman who lived like a conspirator sending contradictory signals.  "Do not eat the apple seeds," she threatened me, "Not the apple seeds.  The branches will grow from your belly!"  She touched my ear, fingering it.

     I know nothing of her husband except for his fatal heart attack in a moving bus.  There was no strain on her face, but looking at her, I understood the dignity of grief.  Returning from his funeral, she took off her shoes and walked barefoot in the snow.

Confessions of Saint Marty

January 9: Purgatory Mountain, Seasons of Change, Kim Addonizio, "Man on a Corner," Confessions of Saint Marty

Once I stood on a humped rock on nearby Purgatory Mountain, watching through binoculars the great autumn hawk migration below, until I discovered that I was in danger of joining the hawks on a vertical migration of my own.  I was used to binoculars, but not, apparently, to balancing on humped rocks while looking through them.  I staggered.  Everything advanced and receded by turns; the world was full of unexplained foreshortenings and depths.  A distant huge tan object, a hawk the size of an elephant, turned out to be the browned bough of a nearby loblolly pine.  I followed a sharp-shinned hawk against a featureless sky, rotating my head unawares as it flew, and when I lowered the glass a glimpse of my own looming shoulder sent me staggering.  What prevents the men on Palomar from falling, voiceless and blinded, from their tiny, vaulted chairs?

I chose this passage from Annie Dillard simply for the name "Purgatory Mountain."  It appeals to my Catholic upbringing.  It makes me think of a mountain designed by Dante.  Circles of rock, reaching upward toward the clouds and sun and moon and stars.  Also, Dillard's distorted view of the migrating  hawks, the pine branch as big as an elephant.  It's all about perspective.

Last night, I was not in the greatest frame of mind, as evidenced by my blog post.  Too much to do, too much on my mind.  As my four or five Constant Readers know, I don't deal well with endings and beginnings.  Yet, my life is a stream of stops and starts.  Semesters begin.  Semesters end.  Change is the one constant in the medical office in which I toil.  Procedures and policies and duties are amended, appended, addended ad infinitum.

Sometimes, my life strikes me as purgatorial.  I have to endure seasons of change in order to have seasons of joy.  Work--early mornings, moody coworkers, impatient patients, needy students, elitist colleagues, all of it--can seem a little penitential.  Yes, I know it's all a matter of perspective.  Punishment or blessing, two sides of the same coin, like the pet of a homeless man.  Desperation and love sitting on the same soiled blanket.

Right now, I'm at the base of Purgatory Mountain, gazing up at the circling hawks.  Vacation is dwindling.  Work is looming.  Ditto teaching.  There's a snowstorm blowing into the Upper Peninsula tonight.  More shoveling.  And then arctic air for days.

Time for Saint Marty to start climbing.

Man on a Corner

by:  Kim Addonizio

The man with the golden retriever is still sitting

Against the bank’s brick wall on his blanket, while

all along the street the store owners are quitting,

a florist carrying in bouquets, the mild

fragrance of the flowers a brief antidote

to the exhaust of a bus, just releasing

its passengers; they swirl around him, like notes

of some random music, scattering in the increasing

dusk. Now the prone dog lifts its head

and looks at him, as though a sudden thought’s

occurred to it; the man still slumps, dead

or dreaming, figure in a drama not

of the dog’s making, but all it knows

of love; it shifts, sighs, lays its head close.

Confessions of Saint Marty

January 2: An Oracle, Miracles, Kim Addonizio, "New Year's Day," Confessions of Saint Marty

When I slide under a barbed-wire fence, cross a field, and run over a sycamore trunk felled across the water, I'm on a little island shaped like a tear in the middle of Tinker Creek.  On one side of the creek is a steep forested bank; the water is swift and deep on that side of the island.  On the other side is the level field I walked through next to the steers' pasture; the water between the field and the island is shallow and sluggish.  In summer's low water, flags and bulrushes grow along a series of shallow pools cooled by the lazy current.  Water striders patrol the surface film, crayfish hump along the silt bottom eating filth, frogs shout and glare, and shiners and small bream hide among roots from the sulky green heron's eye.  I come to this island every month of the year.  I walk around it, stopping and staring, or I straddle the sycamore log over the creek, curling my legs out of the water in winter, trying to read.  Today I sit on dry grass at the end of the island by the slower side of the creek.  I'm drawn to this spot.  I come to it as to an oracle; I return to it as a man years later will seek out the battlefield where he lost a leg or an arm.

Annie Dillard is an observer.  She sees with a scientist's gaze and a poet's wonder.  Tinker Creek is filled with tiny miracles of nature.  Water striders and crayfish and shiners.  Sun striking water.  Clouds boiling on windless days.  It's a place that makes Dillard stop and reflect.  A New Year's Day made manifest in stone and soil and light and creation.  Every moment about strangeness and newness and oldness.

Yes, I am still in the meditative state of New Year's Eve/Day.  Thinking about the past and wondering about the future.  I am trying to approach 2016 with excitement and hope.  There are blessings headed my way.  I just need to be more aware of them.  I need to be like Annie Dillard in a way.  No, I don't mean I need to live a cabin in the woods and go for hikes three times a day.  I just need to keep my eyes open.  See the miracles.

I'm not much for New Year's resolutions.  Resolutions are promises easily broken, lost after a week or two of reality.  So, I am not calling my miracle-seeking a resolution.  It's a change in attitude or state of mind.  A shift from darkness to light.  I feel much more comfortable with that description.  It seems more doable.  Sort of like saying that I'm going to cut back on drinking Diet Mountain Dew without setting any clear or measurable goal.

And I need to remember that, even in the dark times of life, there are still stars in the heavens, moonlight in the trees.  Loss, I guess, can be a way of making room for blessings.  Pain can be a reminder of how precious life and health and happiness are.  That's what Tinker Creek is all about, I think.

Saint Marty has a New Year's poem for you on this second day of January, 2016.  Find a miracle in your life today.

New Year's Day

by:  Kim Addonizio

The rain this morning falls   

on the last of the snow

and will wash it away. I can smell   

the grass again, and the torn leaves

being eased down into the mud.   

The few loves I’ve been allowed

to keep are still sleeping

on the West Coast. Here in Virginia

I walk across the fields with only   

a few young cows for company.

Big-boned and shy,

they are like girls I remember

from junior high, who never   

spoke, who kept their heads

lowered and their arms crossed against   

their new breasts. Those girls

are nearly forty now. Like me,   

they must sometimes stand

at a window late at night, looking out   

on a silent backyard, at one

rusting lawn chair and the sheer walls   

of other people’s houses.

They must lie down some afternoons   

and cry hard for whoever used

to make them happiest,   

and wonder how their lives

have carried them

this far without ever once

explaining anything. I don’t know   

why I’m walking out here

with my coat darkening

and my boots sinking in, coming up

with a mild sucking sound   

I like to hear. I don’t care

where those girls are now.   

Whatever they’ve made of it

they can have. Today I want   

to resolve nothing.

I only want to walk

a little longer in the cold

blessing of the rain,   

and lift my face to it.

Confessions of Saint Marty

December 26: Literary Ambience, Ghosts of the Past, Joseph Brodsky, "Christmas 1963," Confessions of Saint Marty

Surprising himself--surprising everybody--Ives had, as he promised, booked the tickets.  All arranged, it seemed a dream, their journey to begin and end in London, and taking them to Ireland, Scotland, and other parts.  They went by rail and by car in September, when the weather was mild.  Interested in the literary ambience, she planned to soak up the atmosphere and allow it to influence her readings of Fielding, Smollett, and Dickens, whose books she brought along.  And she had been working on a children's biography of Dickens, which she hoped Ives might illustrate, so part of their plan was to make like tourists, and the other to go about with sketchbooks and diary, and to absorb the spirit of those places like young students.  They were happy, buoyant--"ghosts," as it were, finally, it seemed, to be left behind them.

Ives, near the end of his life, finally tries to move forward, to break away from his haunted past.  The spirit of Charles Dickens guides the trip, as they visit museums and stores, gawk at architecture and art.  For lovers of literary and art, it's a perfect trip, filled with the ghosts of Ebenezer Scrooge and Samuel Pickwick.  It makes them feel young again.  Passionate for each other and for life again.

Last night, my daughter's friend who's a boy arrived at our home.  After a relaxing day of presents and food and cookies, we settled into our couch and watched It's A Wonderful Life, which neither my daughter or her friend had ever seen completely.  It was a lovely way to end Christmas, with one of my favorite movies on the television and two young people sitting next to me, texting and laughing.  After the kind of haunted year I've had, yesterday felt normal.  Grounded and joyful.

I'm sitting at McDonald's right now, staring out the windows.  There's supposed to be snow coming our way.  From the different reports I've read, my little corner of the Upper Peninsula might be receiving anywhere from one to six inches of white Christmas.  In a couple of hours, I'm going to head to the local Target to buy Christmas cards for next year.  I used to do that every year with my sister who recently passed.  She would load up on Christmas wrapping paper and cards and holiday candy.  Then we'd sometimes go to Red Lobster for lunch.

It's difficult shaking off the ghosts of the past.  Every corner I turn, every song I hear, every cookie I eat calls to mind memories of Christmases past.  It's inevitable this time of year.  Impossible to avoid.  I find some comfort in these memories.  But they also make me a little sad.  Like the lyrics to Irving Berlin's "White Christmas," when the snow starts falling, I dream of ones I used to know.  That melancholy is as much a part of the holiday experience as Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman.

Over the next week, I will be thinking a lot about ghosts.  Come December 31, when the balloons and crepe paper are hanging, they will be all around me, waving their arms, blowing their horns.

On New Year's Eve, Saint Marty will raise a glass to these phantoms.  Drink a little with them.  Thank them for the happy times of the past.  And look forward to the happy times of the future.

Christmas 1963

by:  Joseph Brodsky

The magi had come. The infant soundly slept.
The star shone brightly from the vaulted sky.
A cold wind swept the snow up into drifts.
The sand rustled. A bonfire crackled nearby.
Smoke plumed skyward. Flames hooked and writhed.
The shadows cast by the fire grew now shorter,
now suddenly longer. No one there yet realized
that on that very night life’s count had started.
The magi had come. The infant soundly slept.
Steep arches loomed above the manger.
Snow swirled about. White steam rose in wisps.
With gifts piled near him, the child slept like an angel.

Confessions of Saint Marty

December 5: A Good Son, Daughter's Fifteenth Birthday, Peter Thabit Jones, "Birthday Walk," Confessions of Saint Marty

He prayed for a good son, and when he was born named him Robert, after his adoptive father.

Ives lives for his family.  Nothing is more important to him.  His wife, Annie.  His son and daughter, Robert and Caroline.  They give his life meaning and joy.  His favorite times are going on walks with his kids, holding their hands at busy intersections.  Jumping in the car and taking day trips to upstate New York, sight-seeing and dreaming of homes with gabled roofs and gardens.  Ives starts planning for his happily-ever-after the day his son is born.

Today is my daughter's fifteenth birthday.  A decade and a half ago, at 7:29 a.m., she came screaming into this world, pink as a summer sunrise.  Up to that moment, I wasn't sure about being a father.  I thought of myself as a basically selfish person, unwilling to give up my late evenings with friends, movies every weekend, short and long trips with my wife.  No strings tying me down.

And then I held my daughter for the first time, and I felt my heart cracking open like the San Andreas Fault.  I had no idea that my life had been missing something.  She was beautiful, smiling and calm, for the most part.  I didn't mind changing her diapers.  At bath time, we would sing songs and splash each other.  Halloween was candier.  Christmas was brighter.  The world was, somehow, larger and smaller at the same time.

So, today, I celebrate my daughter.  Fifteen years young.  Dancer.  Flutist.  Singer.  Gamer.  Sulker.  Eye-roller.  Early Christmas present.  My wife will be battling the bell ringers and Christmas crowds this afternoon to finish our birthday shopping.  Tomorrow afternoon, we will have cake and ice cream after church.

Now, if Saint Marty could just get her to make her bed...

Birthday Walk

by:  Peter Thabit Jones

Walking the dazzling rim
Of the Pacific,
The Grecian-blue sea
And mythological rocks,
I feel the mortal
And sense the eternal.

I am a child
At the window of wonder,
A man spellbound
By a living prayer.

To begin
To imagine
Just one breath of God
Is to attempt
To place a tiger
On the back of an ant.

I stand and I watch
The ocean
Making love
To the humbled bay.

Confessions of Saint Marty

November 29: Book Club, Classic Saint Marty, Confessions of Saint Marty

This evening, my book club is meeting at my house.  Our Thanksgiving read was Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio.  My wife is at home, making a cream cheese pumpkin pie for the occasion.  Yesterday afternoon, I vacuumed, swept, and mopped the floors.  Cleaned the bathroom last night.  I think we'll be in pretty good shape by 6 p.m.

It has been a dreary day, in keeping with my general mood.  Tomorrow, I go back to work and teaching.  The next two weeks are going to be a whirlwind of grading and school programs and concerts.  Next Saturday is my daughter's fifteenth birthday.  Then, next Sunday, I am performing in a Christmas benefit concert with my band.  We are selling our Christmas CD and raising money for a local homeless shelter.  If I reach the end of the semester without going insane, it will be a yuletide miracle.

At the beginning of the holidays every year, I tell myself that I'm not going to let myself get stressed and anxious.  That I'm going to take some time to relax, enjoy Christmas and New Years without the usual array of anger and worry.  I have never kept that oath.  Ever.

So, on this First Sunday of Advent, I once again make a vow to relax a little.  Bake some cookies, not because I have to, but because I want to.  Not go crazy with gift buying.  Find Christmas presents with meaning versus Christmas meaning with presents.  That is my goal this year.  I don't expect to meet it, though.

Today's episode of Classic Saint Marty first aired one year ago, at a time when I was mourning the loss of a very good friend.

November 29, 2014:  Her Old Web, Joy Harjo, "Perhaps the World Ends Here"

In the days that followed, he was very happy.  He grew to a great size.  He no longer worried about being killed, for he knew that Mr. Zuckerman would keep him as long as he lived.  Wilbur often thought of Charlotte.  A few strands of her old web still hung in the doorway.  Every day Wilbur would stand and look at the torn, empty web, and a lump would come to his throat.  No one had ever had such a friend--so affectionate, so loyal, and so skillful.

Overcoming grief is a gradual process.  Wilbur learns this fact.  He returns from the Fair brokenhearted, and, over the months that follow, he gradually adjusts to the rhythms of barn life without his friend, Charlotte.  Eventually, he is able to experience happiness again.  It takes time, like all healing.

Today, for the first time since Thanksgiving night, I have not felt overwhelming sadness all day.  It overcame me at times, but I was able to have extended moments of grace, where I had pleasant, happy memories of my friend, Ray.  And that's the way that he would want it.  I know that for a fact.  Ray was not a maudlin person.  He always looked for the humor in any situation.

For example, earlier this fall, I was sitting next to him at a poetry reading.  He was speaking to me about his weeping feet.  That is a medical term.  It means his feet were swollen and, basically, leaking blood.  It's very serious, but he laughed and said, "I thought it was stigmata, but then I remembered that starts at the opposite end."  I laughed and said, "Saint Ray of the Weeping Feet."  "You bet your ass," he said.

That was Ray.  In the days and weeks to come, those happy memories will replace the sorrow of his absence.  Healing will take place.  That's what Ray would want, too.  The quicker the better.

I have a sort-of Thanksgiving poem from Joy Harjo tonight.  It's a poem about love and grief, pain and healing.  She gets it right.  Those big things of life really do start in small places like the kitchen table.

So Saint Marty will meet you in the kitchen in a few minutes.  Get out the cheesecake, and we'll have a Golden Girls moment.

Perhaps the World Ends Here

by:  Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

Confessions of Saint Marty

November 28: God Bless You, Worries and Cares, Maya Angelou, "A Prayer for Thanksgiving," Confessions of Saint Marty

But it was Christmas, and so to restore a mood of holiday congeniality, Ives made a toast and declared, "To heck with our troubles, Tom.  To our friendship.  And as the Spaniards say, Salud!  Que Dios te bendiga!  May God bless you!"

Father Tom is one of Ives' oldest friends.  They meet at a restaurant for a pre-Christmas visit.  Ives is still struggling with the darkness of grief, unable to bring himself to forgive the man who killed his son decades earlier.  Yet, he lifts his glass, salutes Tom, and offers a blessing.

I am in a frenzy of end-of-semester grading and preparation.  Yesterday, I finished my Christmas essay, and I typed it up this morning.  Once I am done writing this post, I will dive into grading again.  It's a never-ending stack of papers and tests.  Tomorrow evening, my book club meets at my house.  That means I have to clean tonight.

Despite all of these worries and cares, like Ives, I want to lift my glass today (or in my case, Diet Coke) and say how thankful I am for all the readers of Saint Marty.  Some days, the only moments of sanity I have are when I am sitting with my laptop, blogging.  It's therapy.  It's writing practice.  It's my way of feeling connected with the world.

So, thank you all for being loyal disciples, especially through the dark times of this past year.

Saint Marty is humbled and grateful.

A Prayer for Thanksgiving

by:  Maya Angelou

Father, Mother, God
Thank you for your presence
During the hard and mean days.
For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence
During the bright and sunny days
For then we can share that which we have
With those who have less.

And thank you for your presence
During the Holy Days, for then we are able
To celebrate you and our families
And our friends.

For those who have no voice,
We ask you to speak.
For those who feel unworthy,
We ask you to pour your love out
In waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain,
We ask you to bathe them
In the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask
You to keep them company.

For those who are depressed,
We ask you to shower upon them
The light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless
Sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the
World that which we need most — Peace.

Confessions of Saint Marty

November 22: Ravioli, Robin Williams, Classic Saint Marty, Confessions of Saint Marty

Dinner at my parents' house tonight.  Ravioli.  I can feel the heat from the water on the stove.  Dead Poets Society is on the television--one of my favorite movies.  Pretty soon, we will be eating.

I don't have much more to say about today.  I spent most of the afternoon putting up Christmas decorations at church.  Up and down ladders and stairs.  Stringing garland and lights.  Hanging ornaments.  As usual, most church members left before the work began, so the bulk of the decking of the halls fell upon the usual suspects, die-hard parishioners with a sense of duty.

Tonight, I will watch a holiday baking competition on the Food Network.  My wife and daughter will join me, and we will yell at the TV and make fun of the contestants.  It's my household's version of watching Sunday Night Football, except with buttercream frosting and fondant.

Tonight, I am thankful for Christmas decorations.  Die-hard parishioners.  Ravioli.  Robin Williams.

And I'm thankful for an episode of Classic Saint Marty that aired exactly one year ago. 

November 22, 2014:  The Big Christmas Tree, Decorating Weekend, Fairy Tale

While I was walking, I passed these two guys that were unloading this big Christmas tree off a truck.  One guy kept saying to the other guy, "Hold the sonuvabitch up!  Hold it up, for Chrissake!"  It certainly was a gorgeous way to talk about a Christmas tree...

Most people forget that Catcher is a Christmas book.  It's the end of the semester at Pencey Prep.  Christmas break is starting.  Holden's sister, Phoebe, is in a Christmas play called A Christmas Pageant for Americans.  And Holden borrows Phoebe's Christmas money at the end of the novel.  Not to mention the little Christmas tree scene above.


It's going to be a weekend of Christmas decorating for me.  Tomorrow, I'm in charge of decorating at my wife's church.  Tomorrow night, I'm putting up our Christmas tree at home.  On Monday morning, I'm finishing my decorating at work.  Then I will be D-O-N-E with decking the halls.

I prefer to have all that busy Christmas work finished before Thanksgiving.  There's less pressure the rest of the holiday season then.  I can actually sit back with a cup of eggnog and relax some evenings.  Of course, there's shopping to do, presents to wrap, cookies to bake.  All that yuletide crap.  But the big part, for me, has already been completed.

Which reminds me, I went to the radio station this afternoon and recorded my Christmas essay.  That's another big cookie off my Christmas plate.  Now, I can concentrate on one of the things I love doing the most this time of year:  writing my Christmas poem.  I started it a while ago (back in August).  It's a matter of going back and reworking, revising, possibly throwing stuff out or starting over.  Whatever it takes.  I love the writing process, no matter how crazy it makes me.

Which reminds me of a little story...

Once upon a time, an elf named Holden lived at the North Pole with his parents.  Ever since he was a small elf...Well, all elves are small, but young elves are so small they sometimes get mistaken for animal crackers by Santa's reindeer.

Anyway, ever since Holden was young, his parents groomed him to be a part of Santa's toy team, which is the most important job in all of North Poledom, next to driving the sleigh and delivering the presents.  But Holden had no interest in making toys.  In fact, he wasn't very good with his hands.  He couldn't even pound in a nail without bending it sideways.

What Holden wanted to do, more than anything else, was be a Christmas poet, but his parents wouldn't even let him talk to Santa about such a job.

"If you mention this poet thing to Mr. Claus," his father fumed, "I will be kicked out of the elf union and lose my seniority and pension."

"Not to mention what all the other elf mothers would say to me if my son turned into a poet," his mother said.  "Why couldn't you have been gay?"

Holden went to toy school.  He learned how to make toy cars and toy kitchens.  He studied how to create apps for iPhones. But, at night, after his parents went to bed, Holden sat in his bedroom, writing elf sonnets and elf haiku.

Finally, one day, Holden worked up the courage to approach Santa.  "Please, sir," Holden stammered.  "I don't want to be a toy elf.  My dream is to be the first poet laureate of the North Pole."

Santa looked down at Holden, with a twinkle in his blue eyes.  "Ho, ho, ho," Saint Nicholas chuckled, "you've got to be joking.  Get back to work, or I'll have you shoveling reindeer crap for the rest of your life."

Dejected, Holden went back to toy school, graduated near the bottom of his class, and went to work in Santa's toy sweatshop, making knock-off iPads and Kindles.  Holden never wrote another poem.

Moral of the story:  Santa Claus is kind of an asshole.

And Saint Marty lived happily ever after.

Confessions of Saint Marty

November 21: Italian Cold Cuts, Happy Chaos, Issa, Two Haiku, Confessions of Saint Marty

Earlier in the day Ives had walked over from the office to Ninth Avenue during lunchtime, to buy boxes of Italian cold cuts and pastries, and these were set out on a table as a buffet...

To prepare for his annual Christmas tree decorating party, Ives buys food.  A lot of food.  Ham and salami and pastrami and cannolis.  Family and friends gather in his apartment, listen to Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney on the record player, and the kids decorate the tree with ornaments and fire-hazard lights that bubble and blink.  It's happy chaos.

I think that's the best way to describe holiday family gatherings.  Happy chaos.  This coming week is going to be filled with that kind of craziness.  On Monday or Tuesday, I'll bake my pecan pies.  My wife will throw together her double-layer cream cheese pumpkin pies.  On Thursday, pies in hand, we will attend two turkey dinners--one in the early afternoon, one in the evening.  There will be joking and tension, laughter and resentments.  That's family.

And I am thankful for this happy chaos.  Everyday life is too crammed with worry and stress.  It seems, some days, that I just move from crisis to crisis.  At night, when I climb into bed with my wife, I'm just happy that I've survived without landing in the hospital or worse. 

I used to thrive on the hectic quality of my life--two jobs, church organist duties, the publish or perish mentality of the university.  Now, I find it a little exhausting.  Given the choice between a quiet night at home watching the Food Network and performing in a Christmas concert, I would probably end up on my couch with a bag of chips.  Peace over turmoil.

I know this coming holiday week will not be without it share of drama.  But it's a different, more relaxed kind of drama.  Certainly, this first Thanksgiving since my sister's death will not be easy.  However, there will be the happy chaos of children and family, crowded into the kitchen, fighting over hot dinner rolls and mashed potatoes.  A blessing of busyness to combat sadness.

Saint Marty will be in the kitchen, knocking people out of the way to get his share of turkey skin.

Two Haiku

by:  Issa

     Windy fall--
these are the scarlet flowers
     she liked to pick.


     The pheasant cries
as if it just noticed
     the mountains.

Confessions of Saint Marty

November 15: Robot Grandchild, Classic Saint Marty, Confessions of Saint Marty

My Christmas tree is up and fully decorated.  It is fifty degrees outside, and the lawns are still green.  Tonight, when I get home, I will turn on the tree lights, sit on my couch, and relax for the first time this weekend.  Then I will start grading papers and making lesson plans. Work never ends.

In about an hour, I will be going to a dance show in which my daughter is performing.  She's not very excited about it, but my wife and I will enjoy it.  Something different from the routine.  My daughter is simply tired.

My daughter has been watching a "robot" baby all weekend.  It's for her Child Development class.  This baby cries when it's hungry or needs to be changed.  It coos when it's happy.  Sometimes it simply wants to be held and rocked.  And it does this at all hours of the day and night.  Last night, she was up at least three times to feed, burp, and change the baby.  So she's pretty beat.

Plus, she had a friend over for most of the weekend.  This friend happened to be a boy.  A good kid whom she met at Bible camp this summer.  Last night, he slept over.  On the living room floor.  With two rooms, two parents, and a robot baby in between them.  I like this kid a lot.  He's funny and polite, and he goes to church.

Tonight, I am thankful for my robot grandchild, one of the greatest forms of birth control I know for a teenage girl and boy.

Tonight's episode of Classic Saint Marty first aired a year ago on this date.  So much has changed since then, but so much has also stayed the same.

November 15, 2014:  My Masterpiece, Christmas Essay, Maya Angelou, "On the Pulse of Morning"

"I'll tell you in the morning," [Charlotte] said.  "When the first light comes into the sky and the sparrows stir and the cows rattle their chains, when the rooster crows and the stars fade, when early cars whisper along the highway, you look up here and I'll show you something.  I will show you my masterpiece."

Charlotte does some pretty amazing things.  She creates webs that sparkle with dew and mystify human beings.  Single-handedly, she saves her friend's life.  And, in the end, she chooses to die alone, content with the knowledge that she has made a huge difference in the world.  Her masterpiece?  An egg sac, containing 514 eggs.  Her lasting legacy.

It is the time of year where I once again must write my Christmas essay for the local National Public Radio station.  I know my subject.  I've even done the necessary research.  I know what I want to say.  It's a matter now of figuring out how I want to say it.  And I sort of have that figured out, as well.  Now comes the fun part:  writing it.  That's what I'm going to be doing this evening.

I'm not sure I'm working on my masterpiece.  Every time I sit down to write something--a blog post, poem, short story, essay--I always have this feeling that it's going to be the last thing I'm ever going to write.  It's crazy.  I wait to see if I've hit the bottom of my well.  I fully expect to send down my bucket one day and come up dry.  Not tonight, though.

My favorite Maya Angelou poem--her masterpiece among lots of masterpieces--is the poem she read at President Clinton's first inauguration.  I was a grad student at the time, and I remember crowding around a TV screen in the basement of the university library, watching and listening to Dr. Angelou read her poem.  Some of the people standing next to me were crying.  Some of the people on the television were crying.  It was an incredible moment.  We were all united.  Part of something huge.  A fellow traveler on a road of hope.  I will never forget it.  When she was done reading, I actually thought to myself, "I will do that some day."

Of course, that's like me thinking, "I will win the Nobel Prize in Literature" or "I will suddenly grow wings and fly to Crete."  A dream.  A hope.  That's what writing is about.  Every time I sit down to put my thoughts on paper, it's an act of hope.  For something better.

And Saint Marty is full of hope tonight.

On the Pulse of Morning

by:  Maya Angelou

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon.
The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.

I will give you no more hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.

Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.

The Rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.

Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.

Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.

Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,

Clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the stone were one.

Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.

The River sings and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.

So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.

Today, the first and last of every Tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the River.

Plant yourself beside me, here beside the River.

Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveller, has been paid for.

You, who gave me my first name, you
Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet, left me to the employment of
Other seekers- desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.

You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot...
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought
Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.

Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am the Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.

I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours- your Passages have been paid.

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.

Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.

Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.

Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.

No less to Midas than the mendicant.

No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

Confessions of Saint Marty