March 5: Young and Strong, WWDD, Heroes

Santiago does a little DiMaggio hero worship . . . 

"Unless sharks come," he said aloud. "If sharks come, God pity him and me."

Do you believe the great DiMaggio would stay with a fish as long as I will stay with this one? he thought. I am sure he would and more since he is young and strong. Also his father was a fisherman. But would the bone spur hurt him too much?

"I do not know," he said aloud. "I never had a bone spur."

Santiago could be wearing a WWDD bracelet in this passage.  What Would DiMaggio Do?  Would his hero be in a boat in the middle of the sea, inextricably linked to a massive fish?  Of course, he has no way to truly know the answer to that question.

Hero worship is a strange thing.  It allows you to imagine a regular person being able to perform superhuman feats of strength or intelligence or skill.  Suddenly, a baseball player can survive on the ocean like wind or current.  Can overcome a sea monster.  And do all that with a bone spur.

I have heroes in my life.  Writers.  Poets.  Artists.  Actors.  Actresses.  Filmmakers.  I just finished watching My Octopus Teacher with my son.  The guy in that movie is a hero of mine.  Last week, I watched a documentary about Kurt Vonnegut.  Hero.  Right now, I'm watching another documentary about Toni Morrison.  Hero.  Flannery O'Connor.  Sharon Olds.  Bruce Springsteen.  Hero, hero, hero.

I have closer heroes.  My sister who just died was one of my heroes.  My son, in all his 13-year-old fierce energy and truth, is my hero.  My daughter, in her intelligence and thoughtful strength.  My sisters-in-law for all the love and support they've given me in my life struggles.  My wife's cousin for her ability to make me laugh in dark times.  My wife for looking into the face of mental illness every day.  All heroes.

I think a hero is a person who teaches you something about yourself.  Who lifts you up.  Who makes you see the world full of light and hope.  That's what my heroes do.  They make me believe in the possibility of God and heaven, because their gifts aren't of this world.  Their gifts are grace.  

I hope that some day someone may think of me as a hero.  In my life, I try to lift people up.  In my work, I try to make my little corner of the universe a tiny bit more beautiful.  Maybe it will be my kids.  Or one of my students.  Or it may be a complete stranger--a person I've never met in my life.

Saint Marty believes that we all can be heroes.  It's just a matter of doing your best.  Day after day.

March 4: Great Birds and Beasts, World Wildlife Day, "Portrait of the Virgin Mary as Skunk"

Santiago admires the birds and beasts . . . 

"If you're not tired, fish," he said aloud, "you must be very strange."

He felt very tired now and he knew the night would come soon and he tried to think of other things. He thought of the Big Leagues, to him they were the Gran Ligas, and he knew that the Yankees of New York were playing the Tigres of Detroit.

This is the second day now that I do not know the result of the juegos, he thought. But I must have confidence and I must be worthy of the great DiMaggio who does all things perfectly even with the pain of the bone spur in his heel. What is a bone spur? he asked himself. Un espuela de hueso. We do not have them. Can it be as painful as the spur of a fighting cock in one's heel? I do not think I could endure that or the loss of the eye and of both eyes and continue to fight as the fighting cocks do. Man is not much beside the great birds and beasts. Still I would rather be that beast down there in the darkness of the sea.

Santiago must be very strange.  Or very normal.  He wants to be the fish down in the dark waters below him.  And roosters fighting each other blind.  Perhaps it has something to do with tenacity and the instinct to fight, despite being in pain and wounded.  That feral instinct that exists in all creatures.

Last night, I led a poetry workshop for World Wildlife Day, which is March 3.  For two hours, everyone got in touch with their spirit animals.  We wrote about mammoths and vaquitas and swans and wolves.  The hairy and feathered and scaled.  Extinct and near extinct.  

My stuff was alive on the page.  A fish fighting on a line.  A porpoise launching itself at the stars.  A black bear fleeing a pack of beagles.  The other writers captured similar creatures.  It was a veritable menagerie of verse.

I was exhausted when the workshop began, but I found energy in those animals.  They gave me second wind.  Life.  Writing often does that for me.  In fact, I think that the only time I'm really alive is when I have a pen in my hand.  It's when I am fully myself.

Right now, typing this post, I grow fur, sprout feathers, breathe fins.  This is me.  Wild.  Untamed.  Each syllable, a lion charging an antelope.  

Can you hear Saint Marty roaring?

A poem from last night . . . 

Portrait of the Virgin Mary as Skunk

by  Martin Achatz

She shambles, slow as a mud puddle,

bright arm of lightning splitting

the night of her body, peacock

plume tail sweeping the ground

behind her, the way, I imagine,

Mary swept sawdust from her floors

after Joseph was done for the day.

And think of that smell, part terror,

part warning.  Mary calling

her son to supper, him ignoring her,

turning stones into toads, leaves 

into salamanders.  When he didn't

answer, Mary unleashed her quiet

wrath until it settled on his godly

skin, pickled him in maternal love.