February 16: Big Bronze Gong, "Freak Show," Ballroom

"Here he is, boys," said Weary.  "He don't want to live, but he's gonna live anyway.  When he gets out of this, by God, he's gonna owe his life to the Three Musketeers."  This was the first the scouts had heard that Weary thought of himself and them as the Three Musketeers.

Billy Pilgrim, there in the creekbed, thought he, Billy Pilgrim, was turning to steam painlessly.  If everybody would leave him alone for just a little while, he thought, he wouldn't cause anybody any more trouble.  He would turn to steam and float up among the treetops.

Somewhere the big dog barked again.  With the help of fear and echoes and winter silences, that dog had a voice like a big bronze gong.

Roland Weary, eighteen years old, insinuated himself between the scouts, draped a heavy arm around the shoulder of each.  "So what do the Three Musketeers do now?" he said.

Billy Pilgrim was having a delightful hallucination.  He was wearing dry, warm, white sweatsocks, and he was skating on a ballroom floor.  Thousands cheered.  This wasn't time-travel.  It had the craziness of a dying young man with his shoes full of snow.

Both Roland Weary and Billy Pilgrim are hallucinating.  Roland believes he's a war hero, and that he and the scouts are something like the Magnificent Seven (minus four).  The Dirty Dozen (minus nine).  You get the idea.  Billy is simply hallucinating--freezing cold and on the brink of death.  Having a dream, skating across a ballroom in his stocking feet like Tom Cruise in Risky Business.

I was incredibly tired this morning,  I stayed up late with my daughter watching the last episodes of American Horror Story:  Freak Show.  It was after eleven o'clock when I started blogging, after midnight by the time I finally got to bed.  And then I was up at four o'clock in the morning for work.  By about 3 p.m., I was so tired that I thought I was hallucinating.

It has been kind of a crazy week, what with the announcement of the Poet Laureate on Tuesday and Valentine's Day and teaching.  I am ready for the weekend.  Tomorrow, I have a dentist appointment.  I'm getting a crown put on a tooth.  Then, tomorrow night, I have to go to a basketball game to see my daughter play in the pep band.

I don't know how long I'm going to be able to stay awake tonight.  I'm supposed to do a little house cleaning,  Might not happen.  My energy is at a low ebb.  I may just sit on the couch and dream about skating across a ballroom floor in my sweatsocks.

Yes, this entire post is about being tired.  That's all I got.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for pillows.

February 7: Unstuck in Time, Snowstorm, Hallucinating

Billy Pilgrim had stopped in the forest,  He was leaning against a tree with his eyes closed.  His head was tilted back and his nostrils were flaring.  He was like a poet in the Parthenon.

This was when Billy first came unstuck in time.  His attention began to swing grandly through the full arc of his life, passing into death, which was violet light.  There wasn't anybody else there, or any thing.  There was just violet light--and a hum.

And then Billy swung into life again, going backwards until he was in pre-birth, which was red light and bubbling sounds.  And then he swung into life again and stopped.  He was a little boy taking a shower with his hairy father at Ilium Y.M.C.A.  He smelled chlorine from the swimming pool next door, heard the springboard boom.

Little Billy was terrified, because his father had said Billy was going to learn to swim by the method of sink-or-swim.  His father was going to throw Billy into the deep end, and Billy was going to damn well swim.

It was like an execution.  Billy was numb as his father carried him from the shower room to the pool.  His eyes were closed.  When he opened his eyes, he was on the bottom of the pool, and there was beautiful music everywhere.  He lost consciousness, but the music went on.  He dimly sensed that somebody was rescuing him.  Billy resented that.

Billy is walking through a forest behind enemy lines when he first comes unstuck in time.  I just spent a couple hours digging out from a snowstorm.  By about the hour-and-a-half mark, I think I became unstuck in time.  At the very least I was hallucinating.

I was suddenly back at the first apartment my wife and I shared after we got married.  I had an empty ice cream gallon bucket, and I was scooping snow off my front porch, because I didn't have a shovel.  And the snow just kept on coming.

I closed my eyes and opened them again.  It was four o'clock in the morning, and I was pushing snow when the city plows blew by, burying my car once again.  I stood there, swearing and shaking my head.  And the snow just kept on coming.

I closed my eyes and opened them again.  It was the night my daughter was born, and I was sweeping off my car.  The snow slammed into my face.  I was going home to check on our cocker spaniel.  My wife was in labor, but my daughter was in no hurry to appear.  And the snow just kept on coming.

I closed my eyes and opened them again.  Christmas lights blinked up and down the block.  The snowdrifts glowed green and red and blue.  It was December 24.  My sister was babysitting our newborn son.  It was six years from the time she would get sick.  Seven years from the time she would die.  And the snow just kept on coming.

I closed my eyes and opened them again.  It's the present.  I can hear the plow guy outside my parents' house, pushing the snow into the field.  It sounds like a roaring lion.  And the snow just keeps on coming.

My life seems like a series of snowstorms, interrupted by short reprieves of spring, summer, and fall.

Saint Marty is thankful for snow shovels tonight.