May 26: "The Orchard," Memorial Day Weekend, Ambition

Mary Oliver on apples and time and ambition . . . 

The Orchard

by:  Mary Oliver

I have dreamed

of accomplishment.

I have fed

ambition.

I have traded

nights of sleep

for a length of work.

Lo, and I have discovered

how soft bloom

turns to green fruit

which turns to sweet fruit.

Lo, and I have discovered

all winds blow cold

at last,

and the leaves,

so pretty, so many,

vanish

in the great, black

packet of time,

in the great, black

packet of ambition,

and the ripeness

of the apple

is its downfall.

This season is all about accomplishment, time, and ambition.  Young people graduate from grade school to middle school, middle school to high school, high school to college, and college to whatever awaits.  Outside, the trees graduate from bare to green, and everything begins to open and become sweet.  You can taste ripeness with every deep breath.

It is the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, which, in the United States anyway, marks the beginning of the summer season.  For my international disciples, Memorial Day celebrates and honors members of the armed forces who sacrificed their lives in battle.  It's a national holiday in the U.S., although the majority of people overlook or forget its true significance.

I always find this weekend a little melancholy, because it's wrapped up so much in farewells and closing doors and remembrances.  Many tears are shed this time of year.  Perhaps I'm too sensitive, but I can't help it.  I'm a poet and spend a good deal of my time reflecting on shit like this.  

This afternoon, I screened Steven Spielberg's film The Fabelmans at the library where I work.  I first watched this movie in January of this year, when I was stuck at home with COVID.  It's a beautiful piece of art.  Sort of a love letter to cinema and family and growing up and pursuing your dreams.  In short, a perfect celluloid metaphor for what I'm talking about tonight.

Having ambition is a good thing.  Accomplishments are wonderful.  In the larger picture, however, they are also very temporary.  When I graduated from high school, I was voted "Most Likely to Succeed," but nobody defined that success.  When I stepped outside that high school auditorium in my cap and gown, I wanted to be a bestselling author.  Pulitzer Prize winner.  Nobel laureate.  People Magazine's Sexiest Writer Alive.  That was the definition of success.  (By the way, I would have settled for the Pulitzer and the Nobel.)

Tonight, I sit here on the cusp of another summer, and success looks very different to me.  Making enough money to pay all my bills.  Having healthy, happy children.  Writing a new poem every now and then.  Finishing this blog post tonight.  Feeling happy.  Laughing a lot.  That's all success.

As I've gotten older, my ambitions have just become more . . . realistic.  As Oliver says, the riper the apple, the sooner its downfall.  I don't think my apple is ready to fall just yet.  I have a few more things to learn, a little fuel left in my tank.  Every once in a while, I still write something that's not terrible, and eventually I'd like to finish reading Finnegans Wake (although that may be shooting too high).

So, if anybody from the Swedish Academy or Nobel Foundation is reading this blog post, Saint Marty is alive and kicking and waiting for that phone call.

May 23: Memorial Day Weekend, My Son, Poem from "Kyrie"

It is Memorial Day weekend in the United States.  That's sort of the unofficial beginning of summer in my country.

In usual times, people would be flocking to campgrounds and beaches and summer tourist destinations.  Bumper-to-bumper traffic on the interstates and highways.  Hotels would be at capacity, and the smell of barbecues and campfires would fill the air.

This Memorial Day weekend, the first of the pandemic, people are flocking to campgrounds and beaches and summer tourist destinations in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  There was an eight-mile traffic backup at the Mackinac Bridge yesterday.  Hotels are full, and barbecues and campfires are fired up.

People are going to do what they want, regardless of Covid-19 or CDC warnings.  And there will be more infections and deaths, regardless of your political or religious affiliations.  Simple facts.  I've heard more than one person recently say, "I can't live in fear."  That's true.  Living in fear is never good.  I agree.  However, living in reckless disregard of proven ways to slow the spread of the virus is a whole other ball of wax.

I'm hoping that my worries are baseless, that I will be proven wrong in three or four weeks.  I'll be the first to lift a glass of wine in celebration if I'm full of shit.  Until then, I give you this miracle . . .

I just heard my son singing a lullaby to our puppy.  Hush, little baby, don't say a word.  I went to the living room, and he was sitting next to her, petting her head.  My son looked up at me and said, "Sometimes she gets nervous, and I have to calm her down."  Then he went back to singing.

I have a son who understands about anxiety and worry.  A son who is full of compassion and love.

And for that, Saint Marty gives thanks.

poem from Kyrie

by:  Ellen Bryant Voigt

Oh yes I used to pray.  I prayed for the baby,
I prayed for my mortal soul as it contracted,
I prayed a gun would happen into my hand.
I prayed the way our nearest neighbors prayed,
head down, hands wrung, knees on the hard floor.
They all were sick and prayed to the Merciful Father
to send an angel, and my Henry came.
The least of these my brethren, Henry said.
Wherefore by my fruits, Henry said.
All of them survived--and do you think
they're still praying, thank you Lord for Henry?
She was so tiny, we kept her in a shoebox
on the cookstove, like a kitten.

May 25: The Goney, Flying Dutchman, Memorial Day Weekend

South-eastward from the Cape, off the distant Crozetts, a good cruising ground for Right Whalemen, a sail loomed ahead, the Goney (Albatross) by name. As she slowly drew nigh, from my lofty perch at the fore-mast-head, I had a good view of that sight so remarkable to a tyro in the far ocean fisheries- a whaler at sea, and long absent from home.

As if the waves had been fullers, this craft was bleached like the skeleton of a stranded walrus. All down her sides, this spectral appearance was traced with long channels of reddened rust, while all her spars and her rigging were like the thick branches of trees furred over with hoar-frost. Only her lower sails were set. A wild sight it was to see her long-bearded look-outs at those three mast-heads. They seemed clad in the skins of beasts, so torn and bepatched the raiment that had survived nearly four years of cruising. Standing in iron hoops nailed to the mast, they swayed and swung over a fathomless sea; and though, when the ship slowly glided close under our stern, we six men in the air came so nigh to each other that we might almost have leaped from the mast-heads of one ship to those of the other; yet, those forlorn-looking fishermen, mildly eyeing us as they passed, said not one word to our own look-outs, while the quarter-deck hail was being heard from below.

"Ship ahoy! Have ye seen the White Whale?"

But as the strange captain, leaning over the pallid bulwarks, was in the act of putting his trumpet to his mouth, it somehow fell from his hand into the sea; and the wind now rising amain, he in vain strove to make himself heard without it. Meantime his ship was still increasing the distance between us. While in various silent ways the seamen of the Pequod were evincing their observance of this ominous incident at the first mere mention of the White Whale's name to another ship, Ahab for a moment paused; it almost seemed as though he would have lowered a boat to board the stranger, had not the threatening wind forbade. But taking advantage of his windward position, he again seized his trumpet, and knowing by her aspect that the stranger vessel was a Nantucketer and shortly bound home, he loudly hailed- "Ahoy there! This is the Pequod, bound round the world! Tell them to address all future letters to the Pacific ocean! and this time three years, if I am not at home, tell them to address them to-"

At that moment the two wakes were fairly crossed, and instantly, then, in accordance with their singular ways, shoals of small harmless fish, that for some days before had been placidly swimming by our side, darted away with what seemed shuddering fins, and ranged themselves fore and aft with the stranger's flanks. Though in the course of his continual voyagings Ahab must often before have noticed a similar sight, yet, to any monomaniac man, the veriest trifles capriciously carry meanings.

"Swim away from me, do ye?" murmured Ahab, gazing over into the water. There seemed but little in the words, but the tone conveyed more of deep helpless sadness than the insane old man had ever before evinced. But turning to the steersman, who thus far had been holding the ship in the wind to diminish her headway, he cried out in his old lion voice,- "Up helm! Keep her off round the world!"

Round the world! There is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings; but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only through numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where those that we left behind secure, were all the time before us.

Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of the demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed.

There is not much that is pleasant in this little chapter.  The Pequod pulls abreast of the Albatross, and the Pequod crew observes the sailors of the other ship.  The Albatross is wild and rusting, barnacled and pounded by its long voyage.  Its crew is in pretty much the same state--more ghosts than men, bound for their distant home.  It's as if the Flying Dutchman is gliding by in warning.  To bring in another writer's words:  Abandon hope all ye who enter here!  Of course, Melville is doing a lot of stage setting,  Building up the sense of dread and doom for Ishmael and his companions.  It's all foreshadowing of what is to come.

It is Friday night, the beginning of Memorial Day weekend.  The school year is almost over.  Summer is upon the Upper Peninsula, finally.  Seventy-five degrees today.  The lilacs aren't is full bloom yet, but they are starting to bud.  In another week or so, weather permitting, my house will be surrounded by the scent of lilac.  Ever since I was small, that smell always signaled the beginning of the long days and short nights of June, July, and August.

Since this chapter from Moby-Dick is all about the future, in a way, I will make a few predictions for what is to come for me this weekend.  Tomorrow, breakfast at McDonald's with my family, as usual.  Church tomorrow night.  Sunday morning, I am filling in for the organist at my wife's church.  Therefore, I have to practice some music tomorrow afternoon in preparation.  Sunday morning, church again.  Then, getting ready for my book club meeting in the evening.  Monday morning, sleeping in a little.  Then, a parade and cemetery service.  In the afternoon, a barbecue at my mother's house.  Somewhere in those days, I hope to squeeze in the new Star Wars movie.

That's right, I have my whole weekend already planned out.  I like it that way.  Of course, things won't go as planned,  The crew members of the Pequod, when they boarded in Nantucket, certainly didn't anticipate chasing a white whale around the world.  Nor did they bargain for a half-crazed commander.  Yet, that is where the crew seems to be headed.  They are on a direct collision course with Moby Dick.

Most of you know that I am a creature of habit.  Don't like surprises.  Never have.  I know that there are good kinds of surprises, although, for the life of me, I can't think of any at the moment.  I suppose a nice surprise would be a hundred dollar bill arriving in my mailbox.  Or a literary agent discovering my blog and contacting me.  Or Donald Trump resigning tomorrow morning.  All of those would be wonderful surprises this weekend.

Unfortunately, the surprises that I'm accustomed to involve major car problems, illness, and death.  Sometimes all three at the same time.  Hence, my aversion to surprise.  That's why I have my entire weekend already planned out.  While I can't completely eradicate surprises from my life, I can certainly steer my Pequod in the direction I want it to go and hope for empty seas.  No ghostly whale spouts or ships.

Tonight, I will be going out for dinner with my family.  I already know what I'm going to get to drink and for dinner.   That is a perfect way to start the holiday weekend.  No Flying Dutchman on the horizon.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for the luxury of a quiet, uneventful night.

May 26: A Broken Kite, PTSD, Honor and Respect

Hold on.  This is a longer passage from Slaughterhouse:

There was silence now, as the Englishmen looked in astonishment at the frowsy creatures they had so lustily waltzed inside.  One of the Englishmen saw that Billy was on fire.  "You're on fire, lad!" he said, and he got Billy away from the stove and beat out the sparks with his hands.

When Billy made no comment on this, the Englishman touched him exploratorily here and there, filled with pity.  "My God--what have they done to you, lad?  This isn't a man.  It's a broken kite."

"Are you really an American?" said the Englishman.

"Yes," said Billy.

"And your rank?"

"Private."

"What became of your boots, lad?"

"I don't remember."

"Is that coat a joke?"

"Sir?"

"Where did you get such a thing?"

Billy had to think hard about that.  "They gave it to me," he said at last.

"Jerry gave it to you?"

"Who?"

"The Germans gave it to you?"

"Yes."

Billy didn't like the questions.  They were fatiguing.

"Ohhhh--Yank, Yank, Yank--" said the Englishman, "that coat was an insult."

"Sir?"

"It was a deliberate attempt to humiliate you.  You mustn't let Jerry do things like that."

Billy Pilgrim swooned.

Billy came to on a chair facing the stage.  He had somehow eaten, and now he was watching Cinderella.  Some part of him had evidently been enjoying the performance for quite a while.  Billy was laughing hard.

The women in the play were really men, of course.  The clock had just struck midnight, and Cinderella was lamenting:

          "Goodness me, the clock has struck-- 
            Alackday, and fuck my luck."

Billy found the couplet so comical that he not only laughed--he shrieked.  He went on shrieking until he was carried out of the shed and into another, where the hospital was.  It was a six-bed hospital.  There weren't any other patients there.

Whew.  That was a long one.  Billy is teetering on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  He blacks out.  Eats.  Sits and watched the entertainment that the Englishmen provide.  Then, he falls into the canyon of mental illness, shrieking with laughter.  It is probably PTSD, after the long train ride without sleep and the German delousing shower/gas chamber.

At the beginning of Memorial Day weekend, I think this passage is fairly important.  There are so many combat veterans in the United States who suffer from PTSD.  Just this past Sunday, a friend from church (and a veteran) told me that he is going away for six weeks of treatment for PTSD.  For this man, the firecrackers of the Fourth of July are triggers for panic attacks and flashbacks.  Instead of going to parades and picnics, he spends most of the holiday at home, in the dark, teetering like Billy.

I often forget to be thankful for the freedoms I have in this country.  I can criticize the President of the United States and government, peacefully demonstrate, hold unpopular opinions.  I can do all this without fear for my life or safety.  Those rights are guaranteed to me by the United States Constitution (regardless of what Donald Trump says), and that Constitution has been defended and protected over and over, through the centuries, by brave men and women who were/are willing to risk their lives to preserve it.

I am not getting all nationalistic here.  I think nationalism is dangerous.  What I am saying is that there are people who have sacrificed greatly so that I can say what I want to say, live the way I want to live.  And those people deserve honor and respect, whether they are living or dead.

Tonight, Saint Marty is thankful for those who have defended his freedom.