May 19: "Mysteries, Yes," Astonishment, Agonal Breathing

Mary Oliver prefers mystery . . . 

Mysteries, Yes

by:  Mary Oliver

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous

     to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the

     mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever

     in allegiance with gravity

          while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds will

     never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the

     scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those

     who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say

     "Look!" and laugh in astonishment

     and bow their heads.

This poem is all about choosing astonishment over answers.  Oliver distrusts people who have the kind of self assurance that leaves no room for mystery.  Think about the first time someone told you that Santa wasn't real.  It may have been your mother or father, but, more likely, it was a friend/classmate/peer who was trying to make you feel childish and stupid.  Who was trying to assert some power over you.

People who have all the answers bore me at the very least and piss me off  in the extreme.  Don't give me the science of light and refractions and atmospheres if I comment on the brilliant blue of the sky.  Tell me that you can see your father's eyes looking down on you from above.  If I'm sitting in a hospital room with my dying sister, I'm not interested in the biology of agonal breathing.  I want to hold her hand and tell her that mom and dad are waiting for her.

Mystery is more comforting.  Mystery helps us live with the unanswerable and frightening.  I think that's why I ended up becoming a poet instead of a computer programmer.  You may be surprised to know that I have undergraduate minors in math and computer science.  Four credits away from a BA in computer science.  I took classes in abstract algebra and calculus, artificial intelligence and computer graphic design.  I could write a line of code with the best of 'em.

However, I finally realized--after about four years of classes and a nervous breakdown (literally)--that I didn't need to know all the answers.  I preferred to be dumbfounded on a midnight beach by Lake Superior under a curtain of auroras than reading about electrically charged particles entering the Earth's thermosphere at very high speeds.  Mystery over the mundane.  Poetry over Pascal.

I have never regretted this decision.  To this day, I prefer moments of breathless wonder versus news about Marjorie Taylor Greene's latest display of stupidity and bigotry.  That's doesn't mean I live in ignorance.  That means my life is made richer when grace enters into the equation.

Poetry does that for me.  Reading poetry.  Writing poetry.  Listening to poetry.  Grace and grace and grace.  For other people, it's music or visual art or theater or novels that do the trick.  Some people even find grace in mathematics.  Here's the thing, though, whatever the source of grace:  it isn't about answering questions.  Grace is about being human in the rubble of the world.

Saint Marty doesn't have all the answers, and he's okay with that, as long as there's a poem by Sharon Olds or Mary Oliver close by.

August 24: Blue was Beating, Father's Eyes, Maggie Nelson

22. Some things do change, however. A membrane can simply rip off your life, like a skin of congealed paint torn off the top of a can. I remember that day very clearly: I had received a phone call. A friend had been in an accident. Perhaps she would not live. She had very little face, and her spine was broken in two places. She had not yet moved; the doctor described her as “a pebble in water.” I walked around Brooklyn and noticed that the faded periwinkle of the abandoned Mobil gas station on the corner was suddenly blooming. In the baby-shit yellow showers at my gym, where snow sometimes fluttered in through the cracked gated windows, I noticed that the yellow paint was peeling in spots, and a decent, industrial blue was trying to creep in. At the bottom of the swimming pool, I watched the white winter light spangle the cloudy blue and I knew together they made God. When I walked into my friend’s hospital room, her eyes were a piercing, pale blue and the only part of her body that could move. I was scared. So was she. The blue was beating.
                    --from "Bluets" by Maggie Nelson

My father's eyes are blue.  Not an easy blue.  More like a hard, cold, steel blue.  He's still in the hospital downstate, asking every now and then when he's going to be able to go home.  He's too far away for any family member to visit him, and he's too angry at us to accept any phone calls.  He refuses to talk to any of us.

That's okay.  I understand.  I have to believe he's a little frightened.  I would be.  He's hundreds of miles away, surrounded by strangers, and he has no idea when or if he's going to be able to return home.  For all he knows, he may live out the rest of his life in that hospital, and I think that's probably his greatest fear.

As I've said before, my father and I have a complicated relationship.  I love him.  I think he loves me.  That's about the only thing we have in common, aside from a pretty strong work ethic and devotion to family.

Saint Marty is his father's son, and he is not his father's son.