February 6: "Life Story," Nature Versus Nurture, Lydia

Mary Oliver gives us her . . .

Life Story

by:  Mary Oliver

When I lived under the black oaks

I felt I was made of leaves.

When I lived by Little Sister Pond,

I dreamed I was the feather of the blue heron

left on the shore;

I was the pond lily, my root delicate as an artery,

my face like a star,

my happiness brimming.

Later I was the footsteps that follow the sea.

I knew the tides, I knew the ingredients of the wrack.

I knew the cider, the red-throated loon

with his uplifted beak and his smart eye.

I felt I was the tip of the wave,

the pearl of water on the eider's glossy back.

No, there's no escaping, nor would I want to escape

this outgo, this foot loosening, this solution

to gravity and a single shape.

Now I am here, later I will be there.

I will be that small cloud, staring down at the water,

the one that stalls, that lifts its white legs, that

     looks like a lamb.

I think we are all products of the places where we live or have lived, just like Oliver.  A person who grows up in a small town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is very different from a person who grows up in Orlando, Florida.  This is the crux of the Nature versus Nurture debate.  Are we products of how, where, and who we grow up with; or are our personalities simply implanted on our genetic makeup?  

I know that who I am has been greatly influenced by my upbringing in the Upper Peninsula.  While I love visiting more urban settings and experiencing their explosions of busy energies, I am a small-town boy at heart.  Given the choice between a crowded dance party throbbing with alcohol and a quiet walk in the woods on an autumn evening, I will always choose the nature hike.

And I have also been influenced by the people in life, as well.  My parents and siblings, friends and coworkers.  I have been very lucky.  In all of my years, I've had an abundant supply of love and support from close family and friends.  These individuals have taught me a lot about myself and the world.

This evening, one of my closest friends of over 30 years, Lydia, led an origami workshop at the library where I work.  She taught us to make paper cranes.  Now, I have always been craft-challenged.  I can't knit or crochet.  I don't make birdhouses or paint oil landscapes.  I'm a decent sketcher, and, of course, I can write.  However, folding pieces of paper into animals is not in my wheelhouse.

Before the workshop, Lydia and I sat in my office and visited.  We don't see each other as much as we used to.  I worked side-by-side with Lydia at an outpatient surgery center for 20-plus years.  On a daily basis, we shared our struggles and joys, celebrations and lamentations together.  Lydia was one of my sister Sally's best friends, as well.  Sally trusted Lydia, and, when Sally got really sick, Lydia helped my family arrange her end-of-life care, to make sure that my sister died with dignity, surrounded by people who loved her.  Lydia was present when Sally took her last breath.  So, when I say that Lydia and I are close friends, that barely scratches the surface of what our friendship is.

My personality was shaped by the time I worked at that surgery center, and by my relationship with Lydia.  Therefore, when Lydia told me I was going to learn how to fold paper cranes, I went along for the ride.  Because I trust her.

I mangled more sheets of paper than I transformed.  Yet, at the end of about an hour-and-a-half of folding and swearing, I was on my way to making a small flock of colorful cranes.

In today's poem, Oliver says she is leaves from black oaks.  A blue heron feather.  A pond lily and footsteps on a beach.  The tip of waves.

Tonight, Saint Marty was a piece of paper, folded into something beautiful by his friend, Lydia.

May 8: Start of Surprise, Bad Surprises, Good Surprises

Ford is about to find out something unexpected . . .

"Er . . . what?" he [Ford] said.

"I said we've met." [said Arthur.]

Zaphod gave an awkward start of surprise and jabbed a gum sharply.

"Hey . . . er, have we?  Hey . . . er . . ."

Ford rounded on Arthur with an angry flash in his eyes.  Now he felt he was back on home ground he suddenly began to resent having lumbered himself with this ignorant primitive who knew as much about the affairs of the Galaxy as an Ilford-based gnat knew about life in Peking.

"What do you mean you've met?" he demanded.  "This is Zaphod Beeblebrox from Betelgeuse Five, you know, not bloody Martin Smith from Croydon."

"I don't care," said Arthur coldly.  "We've met, haven't we, Zaphod Beeblebrox--or should I say . . . Phil?"

"What!" shouted Ford.

"You'll have to remind me," said Zaphod.  "I've a terrible memory for species."

"It was at a party," pursued Arthur.

"Yeah, well, I doubt that," said Zaphod.

"Cool it, will you, Arthur!" demanded Ford.

Arthur would not be deterred.  "A party six months ago.  On Earth . . . England . . ."

Zaphod shook his head with a tight-lipped smile.

"London," insisted Arthur.  "Islington."

"Oh," said Zaphod with a guilty start, "that party."

This wasn't fair on Ford at all.  He looked backward and forward between Arthur and Zaphod.  "What?" he said to Zaphod.  "You don't mean to say you've been on that miserable little planet as well, do you?"

"No, of course not," said Zaphod breeziily.  "Well I may have just dropped in briefly, you know, on my way somewhere . . ."

Ford is a little surprised that Arthur, the most ordinary and boring human being that existed on the face of the Earth (before it was blown up by the Vogons) has met his two-headed cousin from Betelgeuse Five before.  Zaphod is equally surprised.  Or embarrassed.  Or guilty.  Take your pick. 

And tonight I am going to make the case again:  surprises are, generally, not great things.  They discombobulate.  Throw you off your game.  Put you in a tailspin.  In short, they suck.  Rarely have I been surprised by something or someone and enjoyed it.

But, let me provide a list of surprises that I have enjoyed in my lifetime:

1. My wife woke me up early one Friday morning and whisked me off to the airport for a weekend trip to New York City for some Broadway shows.
2. About a month later, we found out that my wife was pregnant with our daughter.
3. Eight years after that, we found out that my wife was pregnant with our son.
4. I received a letter from a publisher one Christmas Eve, telling me that she was going to publish my collection of poems.
5. Last October, my wife threw me a surprise birthday party at a local restaurant with all my family and friends.
6. I was named Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula.  Twice.
7. Just last week, I found out that I was teaching two film classes this fall semester.  

Like I said, there are such things as good surprises.  It's just that, in my experience, the bad surprises outnumber the good ones.

That's it.  That's all I got this evening.  This little exercise in positive thinking has been brought to you by my friend, Lydia, who called me tonight to remind me that she loved me.

Saint Marty is going to take a nap now.  Unexpected naps are good surprises, too.

January 9: Exasperated Whale, Coincidence, My Sister's Best Friend

Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large oil painting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry, you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might not be altogether unwarranted.

But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through.- It's the Black Sea in a midnight gale.- It's the unnatural combat of the four primal elements.- It's a blasted heath.- It's a Hyperborean winter scene.- It's the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time. But last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture's midst. That once found out, and all the rest were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great leviathan himself?

In fact, the artist's design seemed this: a final theory of my own, partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads.

One thing you may have noticed about Moby-Dick since the beginning of the year is that Melville makes use of the second person point of view a lot.  Yes, the book is narrated by Ishmael from the beginning, but Ishmael has a way of saying things like "you found yourself" and "you at last come to the conclusion."  You are Ishmael, and Ishmael is you.

These three paragraphs ponder a sooty painting, one that does not surrender its subject easily.  Melville offers several possibilities, from Time to the Black Sea to a blasted heath.  He settles on the image of a ship being torn apart in a hurricane, and, over the ship, a breaching whale, about to be impaled on one of the ship's towering mast-heads.

Art imitating literature imitating life imitating art.  I find that happens a great deal to me.  For example, a couple months ago, I was talking to a good friend and colleague at the university.  I was wondering aloud what book I should focus on for 2018 in my blog.  We kicked about many possibilities, including Bluets by Maggie Nelson (a favorite book for both of us) and The World According to Garp ("Too mainstream," my friend dismissed).

Then, he looked across his desk, on which sat a huge tome.  He nodded and pushed it toward me.  It was an illustrated, annotated version of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.

I wasn't immediately convinced.  I have had a love/hate relationship with Melville's masterpiece for a very long time.  It's not an easy read.  Full of weirdness and density.  That day, I sort of laughed at my friend, shook my head, and pushed the book back to him.  My way of saying, "Thanks, but I'd rather do Green Eggs and Ham."

Then, through October, November, and December, I kept encountering references to Moby-Dick in things that I read, movies that I watched.  For example, one night, I was watching Citizen Kane and realized that the name "Rosebud" appears in Moby-Dick.  It's a ship the Pequod encounters.  I saw a snippet of Star Trek II:  The Wrath of Khan in early December.  Khan is an Ahab-quoting fanatic.  I saw Moby-Dick references in Family Guy and Jaws, too.

The universe seemed to be sending me some kind of cosmic message, short of a white whale jumping out of Lake Superior and landing on top of my Subaru Impreza.  It was like I was staring at the dirty painting on the wall of The Spouter-Inn, trying to figure out, along with Ishmael, what I was supposed to be seeing.

I never believe in coincidences.  Coincidence is just a way for people who lack faith to explain seemingly miraculous things.  Let me give you an example . . .

My sister, Sally, was the administrator of an outpatient surgery center.  One day, she was interviewing for a circulating nurse in the operating room.  In walked one of my best friends, Lydia.  She had no operating room experience.  Her most recent nursing work had involved hospice care.  Before Lydia went into her interview, I went to my sister's office and told Sally, "I think Lydia would be a perfect fit for this place."

Sally and Lydia had a long interview.  They spoke very little about operating rooms and surgery.  Instead, they spoke about Lydia's work in hospice.  My sister asked Lydia many, many questions about her experiences.  At the end of the interview, Lydia walked out of Sally's office thinking that she wasn't going to get the job.

Lydia got the job, and she became my sister's best friend.

Seventeen years later, Lydia put her hospice knowledge to work when my sister was dying of lymphoma of the brain.  She cared for my sister.  Advocated for her.  Ultimately, Lydia loved her enough to know how to help her die with dignity.

After my sister's funeral, Lydia said to me, "I think God put me in Sally's life for a reason."

I agreed.  No coincidence.  It was the gears of the universe working.

That is why I chose Moby-Dick this year.  Too many white whales crossed by path in the ending months of 2017 for me to ignore.  Just call me Ishmael.

Saint Marty gives thanks for the "coincidences" of his life tonight.