Occtober 13: Starlight Rained, Bob Dylan, 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature

Night risings and fallings filled my mind, free excursions  carried out invisibly while the air swung up and back and the starlight rained . . .



It is night.  I just came back inside after watching the Aurora Borealis ribbon across the moon.  Rising and falling.  Raining starlight and moonlight.  All that poetic jazz that Annie Dillard is talking about. 

Speaking of poetic jazz, at 7 a.m. this morning, I was sitting at my desk, streaming the live feed from the Grand Hall of the Swedish Academy.  At the appointed hour, Permanent Secretary Sara Danius stepped through those great white doors and announced the winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature.  She first spoke in Swedish.  I don't understand Swedish, but I did understand two words she spoke:  "Bob Dylan."

That's right.  Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature this morning.  Not me.  Of course, since the announcement, the Internet has blown up with all kinds of elitist snobbery.  Basically, the premise against Dylan winning the prize is this:  song writing is NOT literature.  The argument in support of Dylan's Nobel:  the Swedish Academy expanded the definition of what is considered literature.

Me?  Of course I'm disappointed that Ms. Danius did not speak my name this morning.  However, since Dylan won this year, broadening the definition of literature, I figure that next year it will be time for a poet blogger with a serious Christ complex to win.

This December, Saint Marty will not be traveling to Stockholm to participate in Nobel week festivities.  Next year, however, Sara Danius will speak those fated words:  "Eeer borshneer deer Sankt Marty."

Eerkin feerkins deerpa Bob Dylan

P. S.  This weekend, Saint Marty is on the road.  Stay tuned for remote blog posts from the Wisconsin Dells starting tomorrow night. 

October 7: Touch-and-Go, Same Orbit, Nobel Prize, October 13

All this means is that the physical world as we understand it now is more like the touch-and-go creek world I see than it is like the abiding world of which the mountains seem to speak . . .

Dillard is talking about the frustratingly constant fact that the world is not constant.  It is malleable.  Mutable.  Constantly in motion, in a state of change or (dare I say it?) evolution.  Floods happen.  Forest fires and earthquakes.  Species come into being.  Species are snuffed out like candles.  Human beings sometimes have a hand in it, and sometimes it's Nature.

If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you already know that I'm not a great fan of change.  I eat the same breakfast every morning.  An egg.  The same lunch.  Chicken sandwich, apple juice.  My days are pretty structured.  I work the same hours.  Teach the same hours.  Get home at pretty much the same time every day.  If Nature is an instrument of change, I am an instrument of stubborn constancy.  I am a redwood.  A mountain.  The moon.  Always there, in the same place, following the same orbit.

Yesterday, I wrote about the Nobel Prize in Literature.  How, early in the morning on October 13, my name will be announced in the Grand Hall of the Swedish Academy.  The Nobel Prize has been announced in the first weeks of October since the beginning of the twentieth century, with the exception of the years during World War II, when no prizes were awarded.  Thus, the Nobel Prize in Literature is a fairly constant thing, as well.

Next Thursday morning, I will get up at my normal time (4:45 a.m.).  I will shower, get dressed, eat breakfast.  Then I will drive to work.  When I get to work, I will fire up my desktop computer.  I do these things every Thursday.  And then, I will sit and wait for a phone call.  You see, just minutes before the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy announces the recipient of the Nobel Prize, she phones the selected writer to congratulate him or her.  When the phone rings at my desk next Thursday, I will pick it up and have a conversation with someone in Stockholm.

That's the way things always happen on the day the Nobel Prize is announced.  Always.  That's another constant.  And Saint Marty is not about to fly in the face of tradition, although he may take the rest of the day from work after he wins.

Neruda's Nobel diploma . . . He got the call in October

October 6: Everything and Anything, Post Saint Marty's Day, 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature

The world is full of creatures that for some reason seem stranger to us than others, and libraries are full of books describing them--hagfish, platypuses, lizardlike pangolins four feet long with bright green, lapped scales like umbrella-tree leaves on a bush hut roof, butterflies emerging from anthills, spiderlings wafting through the air clutching tiny silken balloons, horseshoe crabs . . . the creator creates.  Does he stoop, does he speak, does he save, succor, prevail?  Maybe.  But he creates; he creates everything and anything.

Dillard is writing about God, the creator of everything that crawls and flies and swims and oozes under the sun and moon.  God doesn't get tired of creating.  God is creating.  However, Dillard could just as easily be describing herself or Toni Morrison or William Faulkner or Ernest Hemingway.  Writers create worlds, as well.  They creates stories about ghosts and bear hunts.  An old man battling an immense fish in the middle of a unforgiving ocean.

I am now in the doldrums of post Saint Marty's Day.  The celebrations aren't over.  My family is having a Saint Marty's Day party this Sunday, filled with bratwurst and tapioca pudding and gifts.  As Charles Dickens wrote in A Saint Marty's Day Carol, "I will honor Saint Marty's Day in my heart, and try to keep it all the year."

Always around Saint Marty's Day, another event takes place.  Every year, the Swedish Academy in Stockholm announces the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.  I happen to know that, as the Swedes discuss and debate with each other, they eat bowls of tapioca and sing traditional Saint Marty's Day songs.  Now, some of the greatest writers who ever lived have won the Nobel, all under the influence and grace of Saint Marty.

This year, the prize will be announced on October 13.  Reporters will gather in the Grand Hall of the Swedish Academy at the appointed hour.  The gold and white doors will open, and the Permanent Secretary will step into the camera lights.  Then, speaking in Swedish, she will announce the name of a writer.  One lucky writer. 

It may be my year.  Saint Marty.  Poet.  Teacher.  Blogger.  I'm sure that I have made the short list already many times.  The only reason that I have not won already is that the Swedes are highly superstitious academics.  They don't like mixing religion and literature.  That's what cost Tolstoy the prize.  However, I have a feeling that this year, drunk of their feast of Diet Mountain Dew and tapioca, the Permanent Secretary, in a hushed voice (almost a prayer), will say those words that the entire world has been longing to hear:

"The Swedish Academy is pleased to announce that the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to Saint Marty, who in essays and poetry and blog posts characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential part of spiritual reality." 

The Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, and a big Saint Marty fan