June 7: "When the Roses Speak, I Pay Attention," My Friend, Petals and Thorns

Mary Oliver takes time to listen to and smell the roses . . . 

When the Roses Speak, I Pay Attention

by:  Mary Oliver

"As long as we are able to

be extravagant we will be

hugely and damply

extravagant.  Then we will drop

foil by foil to the ground.  This

is our unalterable task, and we do it

joyfully."

And they went on.  "Listen,

the heart-shackles are not, as you think,

death, illness, pain,

unrequited hope, not loneliness but

lassitude, rue, vainglory, fear, anxiety,

selfishness."

Their fragrance all the while rising

from their blind bodies, making me

spin with joy.

The job of roses:  to be damply, joyfully extravagant in the short time they bloom.  For Oliver, roses are also a reminder of everything that would be considered anti-roses:  lassitude (a state of mental or physical weariness), rue (bitter regret), vainglory (excessive vanity), fear, anxiety and selfishness.  I know I just repeated almost half of the poem in my last couple sentences, but Oliver's message bears repeating.

You send roses to people you love.  You send roses in memory of people who've died.  Roses are put in bridal bouquets and prom corsages.  Bette Midler starred in and sang the theme song to The Rose.  Rose was JFK's mother, and Rose let Jack drown in the movie Titanic.  Then there's Rose who used to tell stories about St. Olaf, and the Rose Bowl Parade every January 1st.  Ethel Merman sang "Everything's Coming Up Roses," and Melania Trump gutted the White House Rose Garden created by Jackie Kennedy.  My sister who died last year was named Rose, and she was the sweetest, most loving person I've known.

Roses have lots of cultural meanings and uses--from the religious (rose is the color for Gaudete and Laetare Sundays) to the medicinal (ingesting rose hip is used to treat osteoarthritis).  And, of course, there are poetic roses (to quote Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions):

Roses are red 

 And ready for plucking, 

You're sixteen, 

And ready for high school. 

In Oliver's poem, there's a huge difference between what the roses say versus what emotion their scent evokes.  Rose words are filled with darkness, pride, and envy.  Rose scents are occasions for joy.  The dichotomy is sort of striking, but also in keeping with the actual flower, which has supple, red petals and biting thorns.  

I had a long conversation with a close friend today.  This friend has been struggling a great deal in the last month or so.  It's not my place to tell my friend's story, and I won't.  But I will say it involves someone my friend loves very much who is currently suffering from severe mental illness.  My friend is in rough shape, shuttling between despair and anger and frustration and devotion.  

Faithful disciples of this blog know that I have a lot of experience dealing with mental illness in people I love.  I understand what my friend is going through, have experienced many of the same feelings over the years.  I wanted to give my friend some hope or solace today, but I know too much of the reality of mental health.  

I told my friend, "The most important thing to do right now is to remember to take care of yourself."  

I know that sounds like pretty selfish advice, but the wrecking ball that is mental illness can destroy everything in its path.  My friend needs to practice selfcare, or else my friend will end up in pieces.  I've been there.  I know.

Roses can make your day spin with joy, or they can leave you bleeding and in pain.  Love can do the same, and my friend is learning this lesson right now.  I'm not saying everyone should shut off their hearts to avoid sorrow and pain.  I'm saying that if you love, you have to be prepared for petals and thorns.

Saint Marty has the scars to prove it.

May 29: "From this River, When I Was a Child, I Used to Drink," Memorial Day, Freedom

Mary Oliver grieves for a dying river . . . 

From this River, When I Was a Child, I Used to Drink

by:  Mary Oliver

But when I came back I found

that the body of the river was drying.

"Did it speak?"

Yes, it sang out the old songs, but faintly.

"What will you do?"

I will grieve of course, but that's nothing.

"What, precisely, will you grieve for?"

For the river.  For myself, my lost

joyfulness.  For the children who will not

know what a river can be--a friend, a

companion, a hint of heaven.

"Isn't this somewhat overplayed?"

I said:  it can be a friend.  A companion.  A

hint of heaven.

I spent a good deal of time this morning and afternoon at cemeteries.  It's Memorial Day in the United States.  That's a day set aside to honor members of the country's armed forces who died in combat.  There are parades and concerts and VFW services all over the land, including my little piece of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

I am well aware that I live a pretty privileged life.  I can write blog posts and poems and essays, freely expressing my opinions about MAGA hat-wearing bigots, pandemic deniers, homophobes, xenophobes, gun rights advocates, and misogynists (in short, Trump supporters).  I don't have to worry about being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night to be shot or thrown in prison for my beliefs.  Because there are individuals who sacrificed their lives to protect my freedom.  

Some people in the United States think that criticizing the government and elected officials is unpatriotic.  I'm here today to say the exact opposite.  When I say we need sensible gun laws in this country--when I speak out against censorship in libraries and schools--when I point out evidence of systemic racism--when I defend the rights of LGTBQIA+ friends and family members--when I call out people as traitors who violently storm the U. S. Capitol--when I want my daughter to be able to make her own decisions about her body and life--when I do any of these things, I am honoring those men and women who fought and died for my independence.

My father was ultra-conservative his whole life.  Staunch Catholic.  John Wayne was his hero.  He was a member of the John Birch Society and thought Joseph McCarthy was a great patriot.  The only Democrat my father ever voted for was John F. Kennedy.  Aside from that, he was a diehard Republican, right down to Donald Trump.

From a pretty young age, I was the exact opposite of my father, politically and socially.  He knew this.  I may have even said to Dad on more than one occasion that Jesus Christ was a socialist, not a capitalist.  We didn't agree on a whole lot of anything.  Yet, my father respected my right to hold opinions that were in direct conflict with his.  (He may have even appreciated me a little bit for disagreeing with him, although he would never admit it.)

So, on this Memorial Day, I want to thank all of the people who fought and died in battle so that I can be a free-thinking, antigun, prochoice, borderline socialist.  John F. Kennedy, my father's favorite president, once said, "As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter the words, but to live by them."

Saint Marty tries to live out this gratitude every day of his life.

January 31: Stephen King Postponed

No Book Club meeting tonight.  We moved it to next week Friday because of the weather.  While the snow has stopped, the wind is brutal.  When I got home, the temperature gauge on my car was reading four degrees.  Factoring in the arctic clipper rattling through the trees, I'm sure the wind chill was well below zero, and it's not supposed to get much warmer tomorrow.  Nobody wanted to brave that kind of weather, not even for Stephen King.

So, our discussion of 11/22/63 has been postponed until next Friday evening.  I'm glad to have a little more time with the book.  I'm still about 200 pages from the ending.  Usually, I read the final chapter of a book first, to avoid surprises.  I don't like surprises.  I'm resisting the urge to read ahead.  I desperately want to know if JFK dies. but I'm trying to follow the rules for once (possibly for the first time in my life).  I knew that Harry Potter died and came back to life before I even looked at page one of The Deathly Hallows.  I knew Mary Magdalene was under the Louvre before I met Robert Langdon in The DaVinci Code.  And I knew the perp of every Nancy Drew mystery before Nancy even had her first clue.

I'm finding little pleasure in not knowing the conclusion of 11/22/63.  In fact, it's causing a great deal of stress and anxiety.  I know most of the enjoyment of books is supposed to come from the twists and turns of the narrative.  That's why authors spend time on things like plot outlines and character development.  It's just not what puts wind in my sails.

Saint Marty prefers something non-chronological.  Something that starts with "and they lived happily ever after" and works its way back to "Once upon a time..."

Let's start here...

March 28: Norma Rae, Jimmy Hoffa, JFK

I didn't mean to go all Norma Rae on you guys this morning.  It's just that I've been doing this adjunct work for so long (close to 20 years), and I really had hopes that this whole union thing was going to make a difference.  At this point, it seems I was wrong.  I should have known better.  In the end, every person looks out for him/herself.  I'm no different in this respect.  I shouldn't expect any form of altruism on the part of full-time faculty.  We adjuncts are like the humpbacked, club-footed, three-breasted stepchildren of the university.  We should feel honored that we're even allowed to stand in a classroom.

OK, I got carried away again.  I'm reeling myself back in.  I promise.  I'm really not the bastard son of Jimmy Hoffa, trying to fight for the "little gal/guy."  I don't know where Jimmy Hoffa is buried.  I don't know who shot JFK on the grassy knoll.

I'll tell you what I do know.  I know that, at the present moment, it appears things aren't really going to change all that much for the adjunct faculty at the university.

That fact depresses Saint Marty.

This isn't me.  Really.