March 5: "Tides," Light-Footed and Casual, "The Bigfoot Trap"

Mary Oliver on her morning walk . . .

Tides

by:  Mary Oliver

Every day the sea

     blue gray green lavender

pulls away leaving the harbor's

dark-cobbled undercoat

slick and rutted and worm-riddled, the gulls

walk there among old whalebones, the white

     spines of fish blink from the strandy stew

as the hours tick over; and then

far out the faint, sheer

     line turns, rustling over the slack,

the outer bars, over the green-furred flats, over

the clam beds, slipper logs,

barnacle-studded stones, dragging

the shining sheets forward, deepening,

     pushing, wreathing together

wave and seaweed, their piled curvatures

spilling over themselves, lapping

     blue gray green lavender, never

resting, not ever but fashioning shore,

continent, everything.

And here you may find me

on almost any morning

walking along the shore so

     light-footed so casual.

I wish that my mornings could always  start like this--a walk along a beach, watching the blue gray green lavender sea.  The life that I've created for myself doesn't usually allow me anything so leisurely.  When the alarm goes off in the morning, I hit the ground running, my brain already listing and organizing and prioritizing all the tasks of the day.  Nothing light-footed or casual for me.

That's why I've really enjoyed this weekend.  No jobs to worry about.  No church services to play pipe organ for.  No lesson plans or grading.  Pretty much all I've had to do is get up, shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, and plan what movies to watch at Midwest Weirdfest.  Yes, the majority of these past three days have revolved around quirky, artsy, experimental films about UFOs, diabetics, demons, beaver armies, and Bigfoot.  For a person who spent a good portion of his childhood reading Stephen King novels and issues of Starlog and Fangoria and The Weekly Weird News--and watching movies like The Legend of Boggy Creek and miniseries like Salem's Lot--it was a perfect getaway.  (The fact that I was involved with one of the movies premiering at the festival was just a bonus.)

Of course, I head back to my "normal" life tomorrow, with all of its stresses and obligations.  I'm not complaining, mind you.  For the most part, I love what I do.  However, there is something to be said for a day where your biggest worry is making it to a screening of a movie titled The Bigfoot Trap (one of my favorites of the weekend, by the way).

Tonight, however, I played board games with my family and friends when we got back to the hotel.  We talked about our favorite movies of the weekend and ate Oreos.  It was a great way to end this cinematic adventure.

If Saint Marty were Mary Oliver, he would write a poem about Bigfoot walking along a beach by a lavender sea, gobbling hundreds of beavers. 

March 3: "Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness," Midwest Weirdfest, Celebration

Mary Oliver reflects on the need for darkness . . .

Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness

by:  Mary Oliver

Every year we have been

witness to it:  how the

world descends

into a rich mash, in order that

it may resume.

And therefore

who would cry out

to the petals on the ground

to stay,

knowing as we must,

how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?

I don't say

it's easy, but

what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world

be true?

So let us go on, cheerfully enough,

this and every crisping day,

though the sun be swinging east,

and the ponds be cold and black,

and the sweets of the year be doomed.

Mary Oliver embraces darkness in this poem. because she knows that darkness is necessary if the world is to have light.  Every good poet I know walks that line between darkness and light, what was and what will be.  Every breath we take brings us closer to our last breath.  Every minute of autumn closer to the first minute of winter.  Every second of night closer to dawn.

I am writing this post in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.  I've traveled here with my family and close friends to attend the Midwest Weirdfest, an annual festival of dark, strange, paranormal, experimental, and, well, weird films.  I'm here because a documentary in which I'm featured, Bigfoot and Marty, is in competition.  It was made by one of my best friends.

I'm also here because I like weird.  Ya know, I'm a poet.

Tonight, we watched Hundreds of Beavers.  It was a film set in the 19th century about a drunken applejack salesman who takes on an army of supernatural beavers in order to win the hand of the woman he loves.  There was no dialogue and lots of Looney Tunes type physical comedy.  Imagine a live-action Roadrunner cartoon.  It was gloriously strange.

The theatre was practically SRO, packed with fellow aficionados of the dark and bizarre.  Audience members cheered.  Laughed.  Not just polite chuckles.  Big, true belly laughs.  I was surrounded by people who appreciate this doomed life, as Oliver describes it.

Though the world be rich mash, the ponds cold and black, I know that it's just a prelude, interlude, and postlude to another season of sweetness.  Darkness is necessary.

And Saint Marty embraces it.