January 7: "The Mohawk Diner, 3 AM," Carrot Cake, Time of Retreat

Billy Collins being (un)observant . . . 

The Mohawk Diner, 3 AM

by:  Billy Collins

Has that revolving cake stand

always been there

or did some men install it

while you and I sat here

at the counter not saying anything?

It is pretty damn easy to be completely oblivious to the world.  Most people go through life with tunnel vision:  focused only on what personally affects them.  The revolving cake stand didn't really interest Collins when he got to the Mohawk Diner, so he ignored it.  For some reason, he suddenly became aware of the stand, perhaps because it held a piece of carrot cake with cream cheese frosting (his favorite).  Presto!  A revolving cake stand materializes before his eyes.

On this, the last day of my vacation and hermithood, I already feel the squeeze of tomorrow.  I will no longer be able to ignore completely the world, as much as I'd like to.  And today seemed like a prelude for what I'm going to encounter this coming week.  I played two church services, shopped for groceries, cleaned and straightened the house, cooked a spinach/artichoke bomb, hosted my book club's monthly meeting/dinner, and then led an online poetry workshop.

Now, I thoroughly enjoyed my time of retreat.  My mind needed the rest.  So did my body.  Today reminded me of how busy my hour-to-hour (sometimes minute-to-minute) existence really is.  I just sat down on my couch after the poetry workshop.  All the lights in the house, save the Christmas tree, are turned off.  As I stare at the ceiling, I'm slipping slowly into madness,  (That's an allusion to Jim Carrey as The Grinch, in case you didn't catch it.)

I'm going to need to conserve my peopling energy this week because I don't even want to be around myself.  Sometimes, I think authors like J. D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon got it right.  Become successful, then disappear from the world, leaving everyone puzzled and hungry for more.  If, or when, another J. D. Salinger book appears, it will be an literary event akin to Harper Lee publishing another novel.  (Of course, Lee's Go Set a Watchman was terrible and sort of soiled her reputation.  She should have stopped at To Kill a Mockingbird.)  

I will be back, full-time, at life tomorrow morning.  If you run into me, tread lightly.  I may just grunt or nod at you.  Possibly smile, depending on how things are going.  Above all else, know that, if I'm acting stand-offish and/or antisocial, it's not you.  It's me.  Give me time and space while I get in touch with my inner extrovert.  (Yes, that's a thing.)

In the mean time, enjoy this pine tree that materialized in front of Saint Marty this morning.  Tall.  Dusted with winter.  Alone under a blue, blue sky.  A happy, little tree, as Bob Ross said.

July 13-14: The Young and Strong, Holden Caulfield, Dreams

Merton returns to England as a teenage American gangster . . .

The truth is that we did have quite a big bar bill, the Bryn Mawr girls and myself, but we were never drunk, because we drank slowly and spent the whole time stuffing ourselves with sardines on toast and all the other dainties which are the stock in trade of English liners.

In any case, I set foot once more on the soil of England dressed up in a gangster suit which Pop had bought me at Wallach's, complete with padded shoulders.  And I had a new, pale grey hat over my eye and walked into England pleased with the consciousness that I had easily acquired a very lurid reputation for myself with scarcely any trouble at all.

The separation of the two generations on board the ship had pleased me.  It had flattered me right down to the soles of my feet.  It was just what I wanted.  It completed my self-confidence, guaranteed my self-assertion.  Anyone older than myself symbolized authority.  And the vulgarity of the detectives and the stupidity of the other middle-aged people who had believed all their stories about us fed me with a pleasantly justifiable sense of contempt for their whole generation.  Therefore I concluded that I was now free of all authority, and that nobody could give me any advice that I had to listen to.  Because advice was only the cloak of hypocrisy or weakness or vulgarity or fear.  Authority was constituted by the old and weak, and had its roots in their envy for the joys and pleasures of the young and strong.

Finally, when I arrived at Oakham several days after the beginning of the term I was convinced that I was the only one in the whole place who knew anything about life, from the Headmaster on down.

I remember that time in my life, when I thought I had everything figured out.  It was wonderfully comforting, knowing that I had all the answers.  And when some authority figure tried to provide guidance or advice, I nodded dutifully, went away, and did exactly the opposite.  My mother told me to study computer science in college.  There was a future in that, she said.  I went to the university and became . . . a poet instead.

Adults always choose the safe path.  Security.  Money.  Employment.  That's not what young adults want.  When I was an undergrad, I was one step away from establishing my own Dead Poets Society.  I was artistic, love-starved, and, a lot of the time, clinically depressed.  In short, I was Holden Caulfield.

Now, as one of those old authority figures that Holden disparages through most of The Catcher in the Rye, I find myself craving safety, security, money, and good employment.  I often wonder if I chose the right path.  Perhaps I should have stuck with computer programming.  I might now have a good-sized 401(k), a nicer house and car, and a vacation home.  If only I had listened to my mother.

Yet, I know that, even with all those luxuries, I probably wouldn't have been very happy.  I mean, John Grisham was a successful lawyer, but he spent his spare time writing novels.  William Carlos Williams was a doctor, scribbling poems on his prescription pads.  Wallace Stevens sold insurance his whole life.  All of these writers had adult jobs to support their writing habits.

That's the real challenge about being a responsible adult--somehow managing to hold on to some part of what excited you as a young person.  The part that spurned all the advice of adults who wanted you to be responsible and boring.  The part that wanted to be Ingmar Bergman or Amelia Earhart or J. D. Salinger or Thomas Merton. 

If you're able to do that, no matter what career you eventually end up pursuing, you'll find happiness, despite all the adult pressures of the real world.

Me?  I work in a medical office and teach at a university.  But I'm also a Nobel Prize-winning poet.  Oscar-winning movie director.  Underground cartoonist.  Mad blogger.  My reality and my dreams.  The day I give up on my dreams is the day I stop believing in miracles. 

This message has been brought to you by Saint Marty, official sponsor of dreams and miracles.

January 12: Bulkington, Age of Social Media, Chewbacca Mask

I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat aloof, and though he seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates by his own sober face, yet upon the whole he refrained from making as much noise as the rest. This man interested me at once; and since the sea-gods had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate (though but a sleeping partner one, so far as this narrative is concerned), I will here venture upon a little description of him. He stood full six feet in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I have seldom seen such brawn in a man. His face was deeply brown and burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast; while in the deep shadows of his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem to give him much joy. His voice at once announced that he was a Southerner, and from his fine stature, I thought he must be one of those tall mountaineers from the Alleghanian Ridge in Virginia. When the revelry of his companions had mounted to its height, this man slipped away unobserved, and I saw no more of him till he became my comrade on the sea. In a few minutes, however, he was missed by his shipmates, and being, it seems, for some reason a huge favorite with them, they raised a cry of "Bulkington! Bulkington! Where's Bulkington?" and darted out of the house in pursuit of him.

It was now about nine o'clock, and the room seeming almost supernaturally quiet after these orgies, I began to congratulate myself upon a little plan that had occurred to me just previous to the entrance of the seamen.

No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you would a good deal rather not sleep with your own brother. I don't know how it is, but people like to be private when they are sleeping. And when it comes to sleeping with an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town, and that stranger a harpooneer, then your objections indefinitely multiply. Nor was there any earthly reason why I as a sailor should sleep two in a bed, more than anybody else; for sailors no more sleep two in a bed at sea, than bachelor Kings do ashore. To be sure they all sleep together in one apartment, but you have your own hammock, and cover yourself with your own blanket, and sleep in your own skin.
The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I abominated the thought of sleeping with him. It was fair to presume that being a harpooneer, his linen or woolen, as the case might be, would not be of the tidiest, certainly none of the finest. I began to twitch all over. Besides, it was getting late, and my decent harpooneer ought to be home and going bedwards. Suppose now, he should tumble in upon me at midnight- how could I tell from what vile hole he had been coming?

"Landlord! I've changed my mind about that harpooneer.- I shan't sleep with him. I'll try the bench here."

"Just as you please; I'm sorry I cant spare ye a tablecloth for a mattress, and it's a plaguy rough board here"- feeling of the knots and notches. "But wait a bit, Skrimshander; I've got a carpenter's plane there in the bar- wait, I say, and I'll make ye snug enough." So saying he procured the plane; and with his old silk handkerchief first dusting the bench, vigorously set to planing away at my bed, the while grinning like an ape. The shavings flew right and left; till at last the plane-iron came bump against an indestructible knot. The landlord was near spraining his wrist, and I told him for heaven's sake to quit- the bed was soft enough to suit me, and I did not know how all the planing in the world could make eider down of a pine plank. So gathering up the shavings with another grin, and throwing them into the great stove in the middle of the room, he went about his business, and left me in a brown study.

Bulkington will soon become of part of Ishmael's life, in all his height and darkness.  Ishmael is intrigued by him, simply because he is different from the rest of the sailors.  While the other whalers are loud and drunken, Bulkington is quiet and reserved, uninterested in cutting loose, despite just returning from a three-year voyage, if my memory serves.  Instead of being swallowed up by the debauch of his crew mates, Bulkington slips away into the night without a word.

I appreciate solitary people.  They intrigue me.  I think the reason J. D. Salinger remained so famous--aside from being a fantastic writer--is that, after publishing The Catcher in the Rye, he chose to disappear from public scrutiny.  Stayed on his little compound in New Hampshire and sued anybody who tried to photograph or write about him.  That kind of mystery attracts interest.  Think about it.  Who would you rather spend time with--Kim Kardashian or Greta Garbo?  Stephen King or Harper Lee?

In the Age of Social Media, privacy is a difficult thing to come by.  Birthdays and anniversaries and concerts are opportunities for Facebook posts, Snaps, and Tweets.  It's almost a way for anyone to somehow become a celebrity.  You don't need talent.  You just need a YouTube video of yourself wearing a Chewbacca mask and cackling like the Joker.

I am just as guilty as the next person.  I post pictures of myself at football games and band concerts.  I write daily blog posts about my life.  I force my kids to hug each other in front of waterfalls, and then I put that image on some kind of social media platform.  My teenage daughter gets pretty annoyed with me.  When she sees me take out my phone, she immediate pulls her hair in front of her face to avoid being photographed.  She is the Bulkington/J. D. Salinger of our family.

As a writer, I sort of crave an audience for my words.  That's the reason why I've written almost four thousand blog posts.  It's my need to connect with other people through language.  Eventually, J. D. Salinger stopped publishing in 1965, fifty-five years before he died.  I guess he didn't feel the same compulsion to share his work.  However, the rumor persists that there's a vault of unpublished Salinger manuscripts.  That he labored throughout his life on various works.  Salinger has been dead seven years, and a new J. D. Salinger book has yet to appear.

People like Salinger and probably Bulkington care very little about public opinion.  Work for work's sake.  Perhaps they find most human beings silly and of no consequence.  I get that.  I prefer people of substance, as well.  People who care about the things that I care about.  Homelessness.  Racism.  Homophobia.  Universal healthcare.  You know--poets and social activists and saints.

Saint Marty is a solitary man.  Until he drinks a few gin and tonics. 

June 15: Publisher Has Failed, Labor in Obscurity, Place of Pain

"I don't think Trout has ever been out of the country," Rosewater went on.  "My God--he writes about Earthlings all the time, and they're all Americans.  Practically nobody on Earth is an American."

"Where does he live?" Valencia asked.

"Nobody knows," Rosewater replied.  "I'm the only person who ever heard of him, as far as I an tell.  No two books have the same publisher, and every time I write him in care of a publisher, the letter comes back because the publisher has failed."

He changed the subject now, congratulated Valencia on her engagement ring.

"Thank you," she said, and held it out so Rosewater could get a close look.  "Billy got that diamond in the war."

"That's the attractive thing about war," said Rosewater.  "Absolutely everybody gets a little something."

So, Kilgore Trout is sort of the Thomas Pynchon or J. D. Salinger of the Slaughterhouse universe, except that Trout really isn't a good writer.  As stated earlier, he has good ideas, but his prose sucks, according to Rosewater.  Maybe that's why all of his publishers fail.

All writers labor in obscurity.  Even Stephen King was living in a trailer when he sold Carrie to a publisher.  Obscurity is a writer's natural habitat.  Not by choice.  I know that if I had the choice between anonymity and fame as a poet/writer, I would choose fame.  The main goal of writing is to communicate.  Connect with people, on some level.

I think that's why I started this blog.  I wanted to somehow know that I had some kind of audience, no matter how big or small.  When I send these posts out into the Internet ether, I wait to see how many views they get.  I sort of gauge the success of a post on that number.

Recently, my page views have dropped off.  I don't know why.  It seems to coincide with the start of summer.  Warm weather means low page views.  People don't want to spend the free time in June, July, and August surfing blogs, I guess.  I don't blame them.  After I'm done typing this post, I plan to go outside, sit on my front steps, and read a good book.

That doesn't mean that I wouldn't kill for a million views.  I would.  Figuratively, of course.  I don't want to be Kilgore Trout.  I want to be Stephen King or J. D. Salinger or Dr. Seuss.  Any writer who says otherwise is a liar. Writers are needy people.  They want to be loved.

Perhaps that's why so many writers are damaged people.  Alcoholic.  Bipolar.  Abused.  Depressed.  Addicted.  I think that most good writing comes from a place of pain.  I know that I'm attracted to poems and books that feel like open wounds.  There's something very honest in work like that.  It helps me through difficult times.  Makes me feel less alone.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for good writing.

January 21: Working, Weaving, and Praying

I'm watching a documentary on PBS about J. D. Salinger at the moment.  The thing that strikes me about him is that he worked all the dime.  Writing was his life.  It gave him meaning, helped him understand who he was.  Salinger stopped publishing in 1965.  But he kept writing.  Every day.  For over 40 years.

I aspire to write daily.  It's one of the reasons I blog.  Blogging is my excuse.  After I've registered surgical patients, after I've taught at the university, after I've gotten my son to bed, I sit down, open up my laptop, and start to type.  I used to blog in the early morning.  Right now, my habit is to work at night, like Charlotte:

Charlotte tore quite a section out of her web, leaving an open space in the middle.  Then she started weaving something to take the place of the threads she had removed.  When Templeton got back from the dump, around midnight, the spider was still at work.

I don't always write things of worth.  In fact, I rarely accomplish more than laying bare my insecurities and worries.  That doesn't always make for compelling reading.  It makes for whining and angst and melancholy.  You know, writerly preoccupations.

I'm not writing whining tonight.  Tonight, I want to offer a little prayer for the work I do.

Dear Lord of Labor,

Bless these words I'm typing.  Let them do the work they need to do.  I don't know who's reading them.  I don't know what impact they're having, if any at all.  But let the work be good.  Let the words be good.  And give me the gift of words again tomorrow.

Your loving child,

Saint Marty

Salinger worked the words

May 29: PRINTING HISTORY, Getting Published, Not Publishing

At the front of my copy of The Catcher in the Rye comes this information:

PRINTING HISTORY

One incident appeared in a different form as

a story in COLLIER'S December 1945

One incident appeared in a different form as a story

in THE NEW YORKER December 1946

Little, Brown edition published July 1951

26 printings through 1968

Book-of-the-Month Club selection July 1951

Grosset & Dunlap edition published June 1952

Modern Library edition published September 1958

Franklin Watts edition published February 1967

Bantam edition / April 1964

52 printings through February 1981

It's a little story in and of itself.  J. D. Salinger's book is one of the most famous novels in the world, beloved by angst-ridden teenagers and assassins alike.  I believe Salinger only published a couple other things after Catcher, and then, like Willy Wonka, closed his factory doors forever.  There has been speculation about a vault of unpublished manuscripts since Salinger died in 2010, but no new J. D. Salinger novel has surfaced as of yet.

The publication history of a book says a lot about the book and the author.  I pick up a collection of poems by Sharon Olds, and its history contains the names of some of the most prestigious journals and magazines in the United States:  Poetry, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Slate, Ploughshares, and The American Poetry Review.  That's pretty friggin' impressive.  Sharon Olds could write and teach any where she wanted.  Salinger, regardless of his anemic publishing history, could have also walked into the English Department at Harvard and landed a tenured position with a six-figure salary.  (I can imagine the conversation with the Department Head:  "Oh, yes, Mr. Salinger.  Right away, Mr. Salinger.  Would you like a coffee enema, Mr. Salinger?")

I have a pretty unimpressive publishing history.  I've managed a couple of good print and online journals, but, for the most part, this blog has been my venue for transmitting my prose and poetry to the world.  I recently sent out a chapbook manuscript to a contest.  One of the requirements of submission was including a list of places where the poems in the collection had already appeared (a history).  I had to skip that page.  I could have made something up.  I've always wanted to publish in Paris Review and The New Yorker.  But some people frown upon that kind of thing.  They think of it as academic fraud.  Whatever.

I worry about publication.  I worry because publication is one of my tickets to full-time employment at the university.  If I won the Iowa Prize for poetry or the National Book Award, I would be offered a tenure-track job tomorrow.  I've thought about pulling a J. D. Salinger.  You know, publishing one really successful book and then disappearing from the public eye.  My fame would grow as I avoided photographers and reporters and Jehovah's Witnesses.  Hey, it worked for Salinger and Thomas Pynchon.

Of course, the hitch in that scenario is that I first have to publish something of real note.  Then I can turn into J. D. Salinger.  My worry is that I can't even get an obituary published right now.  So why would anybody want to hire me as a professor?

Saint Marty needs to publish or perish.  Unfortunately, perishing is a lot easier.

I could do this pose

January 1: The Beginning, David Copperfield Kind of Crap, The Secret Goldfish

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.  In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them.  They’re quite touchy about anything like that, especially my father.  They’re nice and all—I’m not saying that—but they’re also touchy as hell.  Besides, I’m not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything.  I’ll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy.  I mean that’s all I told D. B. about, and he’s my brother and all.  He’s in Hollywood.  That isn’t too far from this crumby place, and he comes over and visits me practically every week end.  He’s going to drive me home when I go home next month maybe.  He just got a Jaguar.  One of those little English jobs that can do around two hundred miles an hour.  It cost him damn near four thousand bucks.  He’s got a lot of dough, now.  He didn’t use to.  He used to be just a regular writer, when he was home.  He wrote this terrific book of short stories, The Secret Goldfish, in case you never heard of him.  The best one in it was “The Secret Goldfish.”  It was about this little kid that wouldn’t let anybody look at his goldfish, because he’d bought it with his own money.  It killed me.  Now he’s out in Hollywood, D. B. Being a prostitute.  If there’s one thing I hate, it’s the movies.  Don’t even mention them to me.

This is the opening paragraph of The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger.  The speaker is Holden Caulfield, a teenaged boy who has just suffered a nervous breakdown (although we don’t find this out until the end of the novel).  Holden is struggling.  He struggles through the entire book.  He’s talented and funny and friendless.  Holden is an outsider, a boy on the fringe.  Holden has many secret goldfish in his life, things he doesn’t want to share with anybody.  Like his parents, Holden is a fairly private person.  His secrets are deep and painful.

The other thing you might notice in this beginning paragraph is that, once again, I have chosen a Christmas book.  While not many people remember this fact, The Catcher in the Rye takes place at the yuletide season, just before Holden returns home for the holidays.  The story is not quite as warm and fuzzy as A Christmas Carol, but it is a story about redemption and healing.  That’s what I want to focus on today, this first day of January in the year 2013.  Healing.

Like Holden, we all carry around private pain, things we simply don’t speak about.  At times, that private pain can be crippling, even make you not want to get out of bed.  Most of the time, that private pain is just a scab or scar, a wound that is at once almost healed and almost ready to burst open again.  That is the nature of being a human.  We lie to ourselves.  We meet a friend in Wal-Mart, and the friend asks, “How are you doing?”  Invariably, our answer is, “I’m fine,” even if we’re just hanging on by the white moons of our fingernails.

In this blog, I always tell the truth, even if I tell it “slant,” as Emily Dickinson said.  I have a feeling that Holden Caulfield is going to force me to be even more truthful.  He’s going to call me out when I’m being a phony.  He’s going to bring about healing.

That’s the best hope anybody can have at the beginning of a new year.

That’s the best hope Saint Marty can have for 2013.

 

We all have secret goldfish we don't talk about

December 27: One Day Left, Holden by a Nose

I have one day left of work for the year 2012.  Less than 24 hours.  I thought for a while, when my wife lost her job last month, I was going to cancel my vacation.  I could get a lot of extra hours in those two weeks.  However, after much deliberation and soul-searching, I decided to keep my time off.  It will make for a tight January, financially, but I need a break before I have to start dealing with college students again.

I’m not going anywhere for my vacation.  I’m not doing anything.  I’m not making any plans.  I want to read.  I want to write.  I want to relax and not worry about anything.  (That last thing is not going to happen.  I will worry.  Can’t help it.  It’s in my DNA.)  However, I will de-stress my life as much as possible without heavy alcohol use.  By this time tomorrow night, I plan to have my feet up, a cup of spiked hot chocolate in my hand, and an episode of The Walking Dead on the DVD player.

By the way, the last time I checked, Holden Caulfield is still ahead by a nose in the 2013 Book Race.  To be honest, I’ve received only one response, but it was from a person whose judgment I trust.  I’m waiting to see if I get any other book suggestions, but, at the moment, it looks like The Catcher in the Rye will be the book of choice for next year.

If you don’t like J. D. Salinger, you better let Saint Marty know pretty soon. 

J. D. Salinger by a nose so far

December 26: Life after "A Christmas Carol," Holden Caulfield, Another Useless Poll

It seems strange not to be starting this post with a quote from A Christmas Carol.  After a year of combing through that novel every day, I sort of feel like I’m bringing my cocker spaniel to the pound and leaving him there, hoping he’ll be adopted by somebody else.  There’s much to be learned from Ebenezer Scrooge, and not just about Christmas spirit and generosity.  I discovered passages that spoke to me when I was worried about finances, concerned for my daughter’s happiness, and anxious over my wife losing her job.  This fall, when I was celebrating getting a raise at the university after ten or so years, I had the Ghost of Christmas Present and Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, to make a toast with me.  And, if I got too wrapped up in my own selfish problems, I was confronted with passages about stark poverty, Tiny Tim with his little crutch.  This book kept me honest on many levels.

Which brings me to my worry for this Worry Wednesday.  Now that I am leaving Charles Dickens and company behind, I’m a little panicked that I may run out of things to write about.  See, another thing A Christmas Carol did for me was provide something to write about every day.  If I came to the blog well and found it dry one day, I could always flip open the book, put my finger on a page, and find a subject.  There was something very comforting about having Scrooge in my corner.

I’m actually considering choosing another book to focus on in the coming year, the way I did with A Christmas Carol.  I’ve been thinking about it for a few days now, but I can’t come up with a book that really appeals to me.  It would have to be a book with which I’m already familiar.  A book my disciples would know a little bit about, too.  I thought about another Dickens novel, but I’m not sure I could spend a year with Oliver Twist or David Copperfield.  Plus, I’m not as familiar with their stories.  I could go down the Mississippi with Huck Finn, but I get seasick really easily.  I thought about a collection of poems from one of my favorite poets, Sharon Olds or Donald Hall or Phil Levine.  None of those ideas really intrigued me enough.

The one book that I know well enough that sort of interests me is J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye.  I’ve been reading that novel since I was a teenager.  Holden Caulfield is one of my favorite characters in literature.  I must admit, my feelings toward him have changed through the years.  When I read the book the first time, I remember responding to his unrequited love for Jane Gallagher.  As a teen, I carried around a lot of unrequited loves.  When I was in college, I loved Salinger’s style of writing, his use of profanity and voice.  A year or so ago, I read the book again.  I found myself a little irritated by Holden.  I wanted him to get his shit together and buckle down.  I think that’s the parent in me now.

I’m still not sold on The Catcher in the Rye.  I would like to ask you, reader, for some other suggestions.  However, I never get much response when I put questions out there.  I tried a poll on favorite Christmas movies a week ago.  Nothing.  I’ve run contests with prizes and gotten no entries.  It’s a little depressing.  But, ever the optimist on this Worry Wednesday, I will ask:

Do you think I should choose a new book to focus on for 2013?  If so, what book do you suggest?

Saint Marty knows he’s not going to get any answers to this query.  He’ll probably end up with Holden Caulfield.  However, he’s open to any and all possibilities, short of a Nicholas Sparks novel.

Do you want to spend a year with this guy?

July 28: Saint Samson

One of my biggest character flaws, not all the time but sometimes, is pride.  It usually manifests itself when I'm reading a particularly bad poem.  (I can't count how many times friends have handed me a poem written by one of their children and gushed, "Isn't it good?")  When I go to an amateur musical or concert, an off-key singer can send me into paroxysms of cringing and whispered profanity.  I tell you this not because I think pride is something to be, well, proud about.  I tell you this to give you a context for today's post.

The saint d'jour is Samson, a fifth century Welsh bishop.  He did a lot of amazing things, but one line in his biography stood out for me:  "As time went on, the gift of miracles, which he already enjoyed, attracted so much attention that his humility could not tolerate it."  So he returns to his homeland and lives "as a hermit on the banks of the Severn."

As a writer, I don't comprehend this retreat from notoriety.  Most writers want fame, crave it.  Even J. D. Salinger, before he became the Bigfoot of the publishing world, was already really, really famous and really, really rich.  Then, he locked himself away and started suing anyone who tried to take a snapshot of him.  Humility is not a natural state for writers.  We act humble, but, in reality, we'd set ourselves on fire to get someone to notice us.

But, God has a way of deflating ego balloons.  That's what an e-mail I got today reminded me.  I don't generally pass on forwarded messages, but this one is too good to ignore.

So, here is the e-mail, corrected and edited a little bit by me (I am a published writer, after all):

THE BRICK

A young and successful executive was traveling down a neighborhood street, going a bit too fast in his new Jaguar. He was watching for kids darting out from between parked cars and slowed down when he thought he saw something. As his car passed, no children appeared. Instead, a brick smashed into the Jag's side door.


He slammed on the brakes and backed the Jag back to the spot where the brick had been thrown. The angry driver then jumped out of the car, grabbed the nearest kid and pushed him up against a parked car, shouting, “What was that all about and who are you? Just what the hell are you doing? That's a new car and that brick you threw is going to cost a lot of money!”


The young boy was apologetic. ”Please, mister... Please. I'm sorry, but I didn't know what else to do.” He pleaded, “I threw the brick because no one else would stop...”  With tears dripping down his face and off his chin, the youth pointed to a spot just around a parked car.  “It's my brother,” he said. “He rolled off the curb and fell out of his wheelchair, and I can't lift him up.”  Now sobbing, the boy asked the stunned executive, “Would you please help me get him back into his wheelchair? He's hurt, and he's too heavy for me.”


Moved beyond words, the driver tried to swallow the rapidly-swelling lump in his throat. He hurriedly lifted the handicapped boy back into the wheelchair, then took out a linen handkerchief and dabbed at the fresh scrapes and cuts. A quick look told him everything was going to be okay.


“Thank you and may God bless you,” the grateful child told the stranger.


Too shook up for words, the man simply watched the boy push his wheelchair-bound brother down the sidewalk toward their home.

It was a long, slow walk back to the Jaguar. The damage was very noticeable, but the driver never bothered to repair the dented side door. He kept the dent there to remind him of this message: “Don't go through life so fast that someone has to throw a brick at you to get your attention!”

God whispers in our souls and speaks to our hearts. Sometimes, when we don't have time to listen, He has to throw a brick at us. It's our choice to listen or not.

Thought for the Day: God didn't promise days without pain, laughter without sorrow, sun without rain, but He did promise strength for the day, comfort for the tears, and light for the way. If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it.