March 6: "Varanasi," Mystery and the Unknown, Uncertainty

Mary Oliver learns something about holiness at the Ganges . . . 

Varanasi

by:  Mary Oliver

Early in the morning we crossed the ghat,

where fires were still smoldering,

and gazed, with our Western minds, into the Ganges.

A woman was standing in the river up to her waist;

she was lifting handfuls of water and spilling it

over her body, slowly and many times,

as if until there came some moment

of inner satisfaction between her own life and the river's.

Then she dipped a vessel she had brought with her

and carried it filled with water back across the ghat,

no doubt to refresh some shrine near where she lives,

for this is the holy city of Shiva, maker

of the the world, and this is his river.

I can't say much more, except that it all happened

in silence and peaceful simplicity, and something that felt

like the bliss of a certainty and a life lived

in accordance with that certainty.

I must remember this, I thought, as we fly back

to America.

Pray God I remember this.

The phrase that sticks with me in this poem is "the bliss of a certainty and a life lived / in accordance with that certainty."  

I wish I had that kind of certainty in life.  I just returned from Midwest Weirdfest today; I was surrounded all weekend by people who spend a lot of their time focused on the uncertainties of the world.  The paranormal.  Aliens and cryptids, pyramids and numerology.  Art.  These individuals embrace mystery and the unknown.

As a poet, I pretty much do the same thing.  Human experience is not something about which you can ever be certain, in my opinion.  I put my faith in language as a way to grapple with the complexities of the reality, from faith in God to belief in Bigfoot.  Certainty is rarely a factor in this struggle.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again:  life without mystery would be pretty damn boring.  Certainty isn't all that it's cracked up to be.

In my experience, people who live in a "bliss of certainty" are pretty overbearing.  I have been on this planet for over five decades now, and I can say, with absolute certainty, that I am not certain about anything, from spirituality to the best kind of Oreo.  I know people who are very sure of themselves, with confidence oozing from the pores like pheromones.  "Look at me," those pheromones proclaim, "and know my greatness."

Now, a certain level of self-worth is good.  People shouldn't go through life thinking they don't deserve happiness and joy.  That their lives are lessons in abject failure.  However, in my experience, absolute certainty about the superiority of anything--especially when it comes to talent, holiness, race, physical appearance, or children--only leads to trouble.  (Think Nazi Germany, institutional racism, Republicans, and Donald Trump.)

Nothing is certain, whether we're talking about bliss or faith or Bigfoot.  The universe is too vast and unknowable.  Sort of like the mind of God.  It's better to embrace the bliss of uncertainty, because that leaves room for the miraculous.

And Saint Marty is a big fan of miracles.

March 4: "An Old Story," Sue, Bigfoot and Poetry

Mary Oliver tells . . . 

An Old Story

by:  Mary Oliver

Sleep comes its little while.  Then I wake

in the valley of midnight or three a.m.

to the first fragrances of spring

which is coming, all by itself, no matter what.

My heart says, what you thought you have you do not have.

My body says, will this pounding ever stop?

My heart says:  there, there, be a good student.

My body says:  let me up and out, I want to fondle

those soft white flowers, open in the night.

It is that time of year when winter and spring keep trading places.  One day, 50 degrees.  The next, five degrees and winter storm warnings.  I haven't experienced the first fragrances of spring yet, and those soft white flowers are still buried by snow.

I went for a short walk with my family and friends before the Midwest Weirdfest started this afternoon.  The air was crisp, and people were fishing on the Eau Claire River.  Getting away from home for a few days feels good, even if I'm not lounging on a beach in the Bahamas.

Big and Marty premiered this afternoon at the festival.  There was a good-sized audience, and an old friend, Sue, who lives about 15 minutes away from Eau Claire. showed up.  I haven't seen her in over two years, and we had a reunion in the theatre lobby.  It involved long hugs and some tears.  Then we started ribbing each other and exchanging barbs, as if no time had passed.

After the screening and Q & A (during which Sue asked me a question even though I forbade her from doing so before the movie started), we snapped a picture.  I'm looking at it right now as I type these words.  

Sue has been one of my best friends for over 30 years, through some of the happiest and most difficult times of my life.  I think she would say the same about me.  We understand each other.  We both had siblings with Down syndrome.  She grew up in the late 1960s/early 1970s.  I grew up in the 1980s.  We like the same movies and books, and we both share the same political beliefs.  Spiritually, we adhere to the rule of disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed.

So, it was amazing to have her sitting next to me while Bigfoot and Marty premiered on the big screen.  (I will admit that seeing my head as big as King Kong's was a little disconcerting.)  She laughed, shook her head, laughed some more, and paid close attention, as if she was watching Citizen Kane with Bigfoot and poetry.

So, tonight, Saint Marty is telling an old story--friends reunited after a long separation, sitting in a dark theatre, behaving like middle schoolers on a fieldtrip.

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.