July 6: "Daisies," Questions and Answers, Kids and Poets

Mary Oliver takes what is given . . .

Daisies

by:  Mary Oliver

It is possible, I suppose, that sometime

     we will learn everything

there is to learn:  what the world is, for example,

     and what it means.  I think this as I am crossing

from one field to another, in summer, and the

     mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either

knows enough already or knows enough to be

     perfectly content not knowing.  Song being born

of quest he knows this:  he must turn silent

     were he suddenly assaulted with answers.  Instead

oh hear his wild, caustic, tender warbling ceaselessly

     unanswered.  At my feet the white-petaled daisies display 

the small suns of their center-piece--their, if you don't

     mind my saying so--their hearts.  Of course

I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and

      narrow and hidden in the roots.  What do I know.

But this:  it is heaven itself to take what is given,

     to see what is plain; what the sun

lights up willingly; for example--I think this

     as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch

the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the

     daisies for the field.

It was a strange day.  Productively busy.  As a programmer for a library and a university professor, I spend most of my daytime hours answering questions, from both library patrons and my students.  That's really all Oliver does in her poems, too:  she grapples with big, big questions about small, small things.  Like daisies.  Notice, I didn't say that Oliver tries to answer those big, big questions.  Nope.  I think she knows that, most of the time, questions are much more interesting than answers.

So, today I designed documents, printed flyers, finalized projects, and prepared for a poetry workshop that I led this evening.  A lot of these tasks was busy work--stuff that didn't require a whole lot of brain power to complete.  Necessary everyday/every month busy work.  It had to get done.

Then, I spent over an hour on the phone with my medical insurance company, trying to clear up problems that I've been experiencing with my new prescription plan.  It was a long conversation, asking lots of questions until I finally got the answers I was looking for.

As you can see, life (or at least my life) is mostly about questions.  Even my approach to poetry is all about questions.  As Oliver says, a poet (herself) is either the one "who knows enough already" or the one who "knows enough to be / perfectly content not knowing."  Poets don't need to know answers.  They just need to ask really interesting questions.  That's it.

The poetry workshop I led tonight was all about summertime.  We wrote poems about fruit picking  and fireflies and bounty.  Everyone has different ideas about summer.  Those ideas are based on personal experiences, most of them from childhood.  Writer Willa Cather once famously said, "Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen."  So, the question that ruled the evening was, "What does summer mean to you?"

And the answers to the question were multitude, each person bringing very different, very personal childhood visions of summertime, from the surreal to the sublime.

Childhood reality is different than adult reality.  As a child, you can accept magic and mystery without question.  Reindeer CAN fly.  There IS something living under your bed.  Fireflies ARE summer fairies.  And you CAN stop rainstorms by chanting "rain, rain, go away, come again some other day."  No science or Google or Wikipedia needed.  

Hence, summer can be a season of questions without answers.  Summer is hot because it is.  Blueberries are blue because they are.  Owls hoot because they do.  The corner house is haunted because it is.  As a kid, I never thought about climate change or blueberry ripeness or owl predation or human tragedy.  As I said before, explanations are just not that interesting.  Mystery--that's where it's at, especially for kids and poets.  I think Oliver would agree with me.

The next time you hear a weird sound in the woods, don't whip out your phone and try to identify it.  It's Bigfoot letting you know he's hungry.  If you find a field of beautiful blue flowers you've never seen before, just lie down in it.  It's a fairy garden.  If a white light streaks across the heavens tonight, make a wish on it.

Saint Marty prefers making wishes to making beds, any day.

The Unknown Creature in my Backyard

after Edward Thomas

by:  Martin Achatz

It gallumphed across the lawn, its hunch

of back swaying the way an elephant

sways as it glides over savanna

grass, full of slow dignity and mission.

We were miles from river 

or lake, but my mind said "beaver," even 

though I knew that was wrong.

That night, and many nights after,

I waited for my visitor to reappear,

waited for my next chance to name

and catalogue and thereby own it.

I never saw it again, except 

in my dreams where it lived 

in an underground kingdom

of warrens and tunnels lined

with daisies and hematite.

Yes, it nodded at me, I am

here, filling the world with

unknowing, forcing you to exist

in a state of mystery, the way

Joseph did every day with Jesus,

not quite sure what to do

with this little piece of God

living under his roof.

July 14: Stupendous Super Computer, Life's Problems, Old School

And now, for all you hyperintelligent pandimensional beings out there . . .

Many many millions of years ago a race of hyperintelligent pandimensional beings (whose physical manifestation in their own pandimensional universe is not dissimilar to our own) got so fed up with the constant bickering about the meaning of life which used to interrupt their favorite pastime of Brockian Ultra Cricket (a curious game which involved suddenly hitting people for no readily apparent reason and then running away) that they decided to sit down and solve their problems once and for all.

And to this end they built themselves a stupendous super computer which was so amazingly intelligent that even before its data banks had been connected up it had started from I think therefore I am and got as far as deducing the existence of rice pudding and income tax before anyone managed to turn it off.

It was the size of a small city.  

If only solving life's problems were as simple as designing a stupendous super computer that could handle the biggies--Why is there suffering in the world?  Is there life after death?  Why do fools fall in love?  If I lived in science fiction universe, it would be as simple as typing in a question and waiting for a printout.  The people at Apple and Google like to think that they have all the answers, but they don't.  So, here I sit on a Sunday afternoon, contemplating a lot of difficult emotions and problems.

First, today would have been my father's 92nd birthday.  He's been gone over a year-and-a-half now, and I still feel his absence.  He and I had a complex relationship, and we didn't see eye-to-eye on, well, anything.  Perhaps the most important thing that I learned from him was the importance of family.  My dad would have done anything for his wife and family.  Anything.  He worked long hours as a plumber, sometimes six and seven days a week.  As a kid, I never had to worry whether there was going to be food on the table or clothes in my closet.  He provided me a very happy childhood for the most part.  I have tried to emulate that same commitment to family in my own marriage and parenthood.

Second, I just dropped my son off at a week-long summer Bible camp.  My wife was working this afternoon, so I had to do it by myself.  In the car on the way to the camp, my son was pretty silent, chewing his nails.  I asked him how he was doing.  He said, "I'm a little nervous."  Now, that's pretty normal.  He hasn't been away from home by himself for extended periods of time ever.  I wanted to pull the car over and hug him.  Instead, I said something like, "Well, it's okay to feel nervous.  That's normal.  But you're going to make a lot of great new friends at camp."  Standard Leave It to Beaver fatherly advice.  As I was leaving the camp after seeing him safely ensconced in his cabin and bunk, I found myself near tears.  He seemed so small and vulnerable, and I couldn't really do anything to make him feel better.  Had to stop on the way home to cry a little bit.

Third, I'm still worrying and praying constantly about my wife's mental health.  As I said in a post recently, she is on the verge of a manic episode (if not already in full-blown mania), and, when she's like this, she becomes very . . . self-centered.  That's the best, kindest way to describe it.  Everything becomes secondary to her own wants and needs.  That's just the nature of the beast that is bipolar disorder.  It's emotionally draining for her, and it's exhausting for the people who love her, as well.  Every day, I go through an inventory of my thoughts and feelings.  Eventually, I always come to the conclusion that I have no power in this situation.  That I need to step aside, offer the support I can, and give my wife's well-being up to God.  That's not always so easy.

Fourth, I have reached that time in the summer when money becomes a huge issue for my family.  For the fall and winter months, I have two paychecks coming in--one from the medical office where I work full-time, the second from the university where I teach part-time.  In the summer months, the university money goes away completely, and we have to survive on my one paycheck plus tax return money.  Come July, the tax return money is pretty much gone, and paying bills is a challenge.  That is my situation at the moment as I sit here trying to figure out how to pay a mortgage and car loan with non-existent balances in savings and checking.

Those are the problems I would punch into a stupendous super computer that could provide all the answers to the problems of my life.  However, that is science fiction, and, in reality, I don't see any immediate solutions forthcoming any time soon.

Perhaps I could go old school . . .

If you see Saint Marty on the street corner, selling lemonade from a stand, stop and buy a couple cups from him.  Give him a generous tip.  Maybe a hug, too. 

May 28: Cars, Mechanically Challenged, Google

...Elwyn [E. B. White] loved cars.  So did the boys' father.  After selling two of his three carriage horses, Samuel bought a Pope-Tribune runabout, which looked sporty with its long, straight-steering shaft and boxy engine bonnet, until he replaced it with a sleek Maxwell roadster whose short running board swooped forward and back to form elegant tire guards like wings.  But Samuel never learned how to drive and left that particular twentieth-century excitement to his children.

White was in love with the horseless carriage, as were his brothers and father.  Typical guys.  They're interested in cars that are fast, elegant, sleek.  I'm sure that if Elwyn were a teenager in the twenty-first century, he'd probably own the newest iPhone.


I've never been into cars.  The only thing I look for in a car is that, when I turn the key in the ignition, it starts.  That is my definition of a good car.  Of course, I like driving new cars.  But I really don't care if I'm driving a station wagon or a Lexus.  If it gets me to where I want to go, I'm satisfied.

I've always been mechanically challenged.  All of my brothers know cars inside and out.  They can do crap like brake jobs and oil changes.  I'm happy if I can change a taillight (and I usually have to ask my brother to help me).  I just don't do car stuff.  However, I can spot a bad metaphor from a mile away.  Give me a bad poem and pencil, and I will turn it into a verbal Corvette.

That's who I am.  I'm not the oily jeans kind of guy.  Sometimes I wish I was.  I could probably save myself a lot of money.  This morning, I heard a story on the radio about Google creating a car that drives itself.  Just enter your destination, and the car does the rest.  If Google invents a vehicle that changes its own oil and fixes its own valves (whatever the hell those are), I am totally sold.

Until then, Saint Marty will continue to put his key in the ignition, say a prayer, and turn it.

If it gets me to work, I'll drive it.

April 22: My Cranky Daughter

I'm not going to spend a lot of time with this second post tonight.  I have a hormonal thirteen-year-old daughter who is waiting to use my laptop.  She has been shifting between giggling mirth and wailing despair for over an hour.

All I can do is laugh, because, no mater what I say, I will never win.  I could tell her to pick up a book and read.  I could tell her to go to bed.  I could tell her that the Internet has been revoked and Google is broken and YouTube is permanently frozen.  All I will receive in return is teenage wrath.

Saint Marty isn't up for the fight.

This guy has nothing on my daughter's wrath

May 30: New Way to Make Money

This post is going to sound totally frivolous and self-centered.

I don't care.

I have found a new way to make money.

You see, every once in a while, just for fun, I Google my name to see what comes up.  Usually, it's nothing exciting or surprising.  For example, I have discovered, doing this, that there is a man in Germany who has a Facebook account with my name.  I have also found that I died in the nineteenth century.  At least that's when the guy underneath the tombstone bearing my name died.  And, surprisingly, I have also discovered that I have no hotness factor on ratemyprofessors.com.  This fact really depresses me.

Well, today, when I Googled my name, I found some bookseller in, I believe, Texas trying to sell an autographed copy of my book of poems (The Mysteries of the Rosary, $10 on Amazon) for a little over $200.  That's a 2000% mark up.  My book, bearing my signature, is being hawked on the Internet for two grand!  Now, I don't know if the bookseller will obtain his asking price, but it does make me wonder how far I can push this.

I've heard that Cormac McCarthy never autographs his books.  I've also heard that he's got a whole bookshelf filled with autographed first editions of The Road in his home.  Sort of like a collectible college fund for his kid.  Every time his son needs to pay for a semester or two of classes, all he has to do is sell one of these copies of The Road.  McCarthy is a pretty smart cookie.  (He also, notoriously, doesn't give a crap about money.  That's one of the luxuries of being wealthy and/or famous.)

Here's my plan.  I've codenamed it Operation Cormac:

Step One:  I'm going to start an Internet rumor that I'm one of the most brilliant and reclusive poets living.  I've been trying to do this for several years, so this step will take a lot of elbow grease.  I'm thinking a Wikipedia page and some well-placed blog posts about my unnatural hygiene habits.  (Hey, it worked for J. D. Salinger!)

Step Two:  After step one is firmly under way, I start another Internet rumor that I've disappeared under mysterious circumstances, possibly the victim of some anti-poetry terrorist organization named the Prose Warriors.

Step Three:  I slowly start selling autographed copies of my book (The Mysteries of the Rosary, $10 on Amazon) at astronomical prices on eBay.  When I top $100,000 in book sales, I start peddling my old journals and papers from high school for even steeper amounts.

Step Four:  After becoming a multimillionaire, I start publishing new collections of poetry under the pseudonym Marty St. Martin until The New Yorker runs an investigative essay on what it calls the "Cult of Saint Marty," revealing my true identity.

Step Five:  I become a poetic legend, winning every literary prize that exists on the planet.

Saint Marty thinks Operation Cormac is foolproof.

Do I hear $2000?  $3000?  How about 25 cents?

February 20: Cliques, Catholics, Cadillacs, and Expectations

"You ought to go to a boys' school sometime.  Try it sometime," I said.  "It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques.  The guys that are on the basketball team stick together, the Catholics stick together, the goddam intellectuals stick together, the guys that play bridge stick together.  Even the guys that belong to the goddam Book-of-the-Month Club stick together.  If you try to have a little intelligent--"

Holden doesn't fit in.   He's not an athlete.  He's not a future entrepreneur of America.  He's not an intellectual (although he is emotionally smart).  He's on the fencing team at Pencey, but he loses the team's foils on the way to a competition.  Although cliques aren't his thing, he seems to have a lot of friends, or people with whom he's friendly.  He's not economically challenged (poor).  He's been kicked out of all the best prep schools on the East Coast.  His brother's a semi-famous writer, and his dad is a lawyer.  Everyone expects Holden to be successful, and he's doing everything he can to not be successful.

I sometimes worry whether I've made wrong choices in my life.  When I started college, I majored in computer science, and I was good at it.  Granted, I wasn't a natural like some of the other people in my programming classes.  There was one guy I knew who wrote computer code for fun.  On a Saturday night, he didn't search for computer porn.  He worked on artificial intelligence.  I didn't fit in with this crowd.  I knew I didn't, but I hung on because my family expected me to be successful.  Graduate and get a mid-level IT job where I spent my time chasing down binary code bugs   I wasn't happy.

In my last semester as an undergraduate, I changed my career plans.  I applied to graduate school in English, and I switched my degree.  Instead of a Bachelor's in computer science, I graduated with a major in English and a minor in computer science and math.  I've never looked back.  Until now.

The last couple weeks of financial worries have made me a little reflective.  I've been playing a game of What-If.  As in, what if I had stuck with computers?  What if I'd moved to California and started programming?  What if I'd created an Internet search engine and called it by some kind of funky name, like "Google"?  What if, what if, what if...

The problem is that I wasn't a natural computer science geek.  I didn't eat, sleep, breathe, and have sex with silicon chips.  My classmates never let poor Rudolph play in any computer games, if you know what I mean.  The girls in my major were only interested in the guys with the biggest...pocket calculators.  I wasn't really interested in being a part of the Turbo Pascal clique.

Writing came naturally to me.  I was good at it.  Other people recognized I was good at it.  Girls read my stories and poems and wanted to talk to me.  English was where I belonged.  And that's where I've stayed.

I wish I could find a way to make more money with my English creds.  About 15 years ago, I had an idea about a series of books about a young orphan boy who attends a school for wizards and battles the most evil wizard who ever lived, but I didn't think anyone would be interested in it.  So here I am, working four jobs, teaching part-time, and cranking out blog posts.

Saint Marty has no regrets, except maybe the wizard book thing.

I don't fit in with any of these people...