November 28: Call Me Ishmael, Circling a Runway, Simple Blessings

Call me Ishmael.

Call me exhausted. 

I've been working all day, and now I'll be teaching all night.  It's that time of year when the grading piles up.  I won't be seeing daylight for a while.  It's all red pens and papers for me.  This evening, I'll be listening to student presentations for about three hours.

I have no news to report on the job front.  It feels like I'm in an airplane, circling a runway, waiting for clearance.  I'm not sure what the future holds.  Guess I'm doomed to just keep circling until I either get permission to land or run out of fuel.  Either way, I'll end up on the ground.

I've been thinking a lot about happiness today.  What makes me happy.  What makes me joyful.  What fills me with contentment.  On Monday, I finished an essay that I'd been working on for about a month.  I was happy with the final product.  So was my editor.  That filled my cup to the brim yesterday.  I was overflowing with gratitude.

Tonight, I'll be happy around 9 p.m. when I can walk out to my car, drive home, and put on my pajamas.  Be done with the day.  On the way home, I'll listen to a podcast I recently discovered.  It's called 'Tis the Podcast, and it's about Christmas movies and television specials.  That will bring me a great deal of happiness, as well.

Ultimately, it's the simple blessings in life that really make the difference.

Saint Marty just ate a brownie.  Simple blessing.  Big happiness. 

January 1: Annie Dillard, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek," Partly Cloudies, Edged in Gold

Today is one of those excellent January partly cloudies in which light chooses an unexpected part of the landscape to trick out in gilt, and then shadow sweeps it away.  You know you're alive.  You take huge steps, trying to feel the planet's roundness arc between your feet.  Kazantzakis says that when he was young he had a canary and a globe.  When he freed the canary, it would perch on the globe and sing.  All his life, wandering the earth, he felt as though he had a canary on top of his mind, singing.

Welcome to Tinker Creek.  This year's book will be Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.  It's a book that I read on my honeymoon in Hawaii, on the plane, in hotel rooms, on a beach overlooking a coral cove.  It was a time of hopes and expectations.  The whole world open and fresh, like a fresh-cut lawn or the Pacific Ocean.

I chose Pilgrim because it's a book full of beauty and light.  All kinds of light.  Like the January partly cloudy Dillard describes above.  And I want a year of beauty and light.  There has been too much darkness in my life in the last couple of years.  As I sit here, typing this post, I'm looking out a window.  The sun is setting on the first day of 2016.  The branches of the trees are edged in gold.  That's the kind of year I'm hoping for.  A year edged in gold.

Now, I know it's a fool's dream to hope for an entire year of blessings and goodness.  Life has a way of circumventing those kinds of ambitions.  I will experience hardship in the next 365 days.  Sadness and worry.  The world is a broken place, and brokenness has a way of asserting itself.  But so does light.  Light seeps in through the cracks of a dark room.  Around the window shades.  Under closed doors.  Where there is darkness, there is also light.

So, I am going to be a pilgrim at Tinker Creek, along with Annie Dillard.  You can join us.  The writing is stunning, seeped with spirituality and poetry.  I guarantee you will be inspired.  Taken by surprise.  The world is full of strange creations, things that make you believe in everyday miracles.

As this day draws to a close, I am . . . content.  I guess that's the best word I can come up with.  I'm satisfied.  This evening, I will go home, spend the night reading and watching my daughter and her friend pretend they're just friends.  I could clean my bathroom and straighten up my living room.  But I'm tired.  I want a night of rest.  Of nothing.

Saint Marty just wants to listen to the canary on the top of his head.  It's singing, "This little light of mine..."

Thoughts on New Year's Resolutions

 

September 27: Second Birthday Party, Contentment, Classic Saint Marty, Confessions of Saint Marty

The last day of Pope Francis' visit to the United States.  Also the day of my son's second birthday party, with my wife's family.

I find myself very reflective this afternoon.  My son is in second grade, my daughter in high school.  The days of being the parent of a young child are behind me.  I am at an age where people start seriously thinking about their retirement plans and 401Ks.  I have not been able to set aside money for a trip to Green Bay, let alone my kids' college educations.  That makes me feel a little bit like a failure.

Of course, I know that I've been successful in a lot of other ways.  I'm a published poet.  I'm a college professor (part-time, so I guess that means I'm really happy with my work life part-time).  I have a great family.  I married into a great family.  My kids are loved greatly.  I have a home with a new roof, two cars, and leftover pizza in the refrigerator.  Success, success, success. 

Yet, I'm not feeling very successful today.  I'm feeling a little disappointed, and I don't know why.  I want to feel happier, more content.  I think I'm basing my contentment on pretty superficial things.  Like, if only I had a full-time teaching job at the university, I'd be perfectly content.  Or, if only I could publish that new collection of poems I've finished, I'd be perfectly content.  How about, if only I had a ten-thousand dollar nest egg in the bank, I'd be perfectly content.

Contentment is really not a matter of money or professional success.  It's a matter of looking around and realizing that you have a pretty good life, just as it is.  It's an attitude more than anything else.  So, I'm going to try to practice that attitude for the rest of the day.  I'm going to be content if it kills me.

Today's episode of Classic Saint Marty first aired a year ago, on my son's sixth birthday.

September 26, 2014:  My Son Again, Terry Godbey, "Eight Years Old"

I promise this will be the last post about my son.  You're all probably getting tired of my sentimental musings.  When birthdays and weddings and anniversaries come around, it gets me all maudlin and reflective.  Can't help it.

I'm also pretty darn tired.  It's been a very long week.  And, when I'm this tired, I'm prone to watching movies like It's a Wonderful Life or Stand By Me and crying like a schoolgirl.  I'll snap out of it in a day or so.  But, for tonight, I'm going to wallow a little bit.

Terry Godbey knows what I'm talking about.  The poems she writes about her son are full of the surprise and ache of parenting.  One day, your child is small, weak, and beautiful.  Before you know it, your child is tall, independent, and beautiful.  It happens so fast.

Saint Marty just wants things to slow down a little.

Eight Years Old

by:  Terry Godbey

Even in winter, my son refuses to wear
a pajama top.  When he comes near,
I lean close and brush his skin
or stroke it outright
like bolts of wedding satin,
and something catches in my throat
like undissolved chocolate
in a cup of cocoa.  He is lush,
toes pink and curled
as the pearly hearts of seashells,
voice lifting and plunging,
a heron diving for fish,
his pogo-stick stride,
arms like clock hands gone wild,
the balloons of his cheeks when he grins,
and on his restless legs, faint hairs
pointing in all directions
as if ruffled by wind,
a great storm on the way.

Confessions of Saint Marty