November 15: The Whole Roll of Our Order, My Mother, Mother JFK

Nor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alone comprise the whole roll of our order . . . 

Ishmael is writing about whalers in this sentence.  He's trying to convince his readers of their nobility and worth.  Thus, whalers are heroes and holy men, kings and gods.  For Melville, whalers embody all the best qualities of human nature.

For some reason, my mother has been on my mind a lot these last few weeks.  I don't exactly know why.  Perhaps it's the approach of Thanksgiving.  (For those disciples who do not live in the United States, Thanksgiving is a holiday that takes place on the fourth Thursday of every November.  It's a time when friends and family sit down together, eat a huge turkey dinner, and--ideally--feel grateful for the blessings of their lives.)  My mother was an amazing cook and spent two or three days making sides and relishes and breads and Jell-Os for Thanksgiving.

Anyway, last night, in the composition class I'm teaching this semester at the university, I gave my students the following prompt:  Write about a person in your family for whom you are thankful.

This is what I wrote in my journal:

Let me tell you about my mother who gave birth to a baby girl with Down syndrome in 1965.

Let me tell you that the doctor who delivered my sister told my mother about a place where she could drop off her baby, a place for mental defectives and cripples and castoffs who would never be able to walk or talk or go to the bathroom by themselves.  "There's no hope here," he said.

Let me tell you that my mother wrapped her baby in a blanket, walked out of that hospital, and brought her home.

Let me tell you that my mother didn't treat my sister any differently than she treated me when I was born a few years later.

Let me tell you that my mother taught my sister her letters and colors and numbers, how to write her name:  Rosemarie.  Note Rose.  Not Rose Mary.  Rosemarie.  Four consonants.  Five vowels.

Let me tell you that my mother once marched into a school's office, into a principal's office, and told that man with the wide ugly tie, "You WILL find a classroom for my daughter" in a tone that said, "Fuck.  You."

Let me tell you that my mother never, ever, ever pitied my sister or made excuses for her.

Let me tell you that my mother, at my sister's high school graduation, looked like the mother of a President of the United States on Inauguration Day.  Mother JFK, mother FDR, mother Lincoln, mother Obama, you choose.  See her sitting there, back straight as a flagpole, the air cold, drums snapping in the January bright.  My mother, imagining her baby's face on Mount Rushmore.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for his mother.

February 9: Mount Rushmore, Sharon Olds, "His Stillness"

Strange.  I have been looking for pictures of my dad on my cell phone.  I found one, taken at his 90th birthday party this summer.  That's it.

I'm not sure if that is my fault.  He was more than willing to pose for pictures.  Yet, out of over a thousand pictures, I found exactly one good picture of my father.  Maybe I just assumed he was always going to be there, like the Grand Canyon or Mount Rushmore.  Sort of permanent and immovable.

I was wrong.

A poem from Sharon Olds tonight about finding your father in yourself.

Saint Marty is still searching for his father on his phone.

His Stillness

by:  Sharon Olds

The doctor said to my father, "You asked me
to tell you when nothing more could be done.
That's what I'm telling you now."  My father
sat quite still, as he always did,
especially not moving his eyes.  I had thought
he would rave if he understood he would die,
wave his arms and cry out.  He sat up,
thin, and clean, in his clean gown,
like a holy man.  The doctor said,
"There are things we can do which might give you time,
but we cannot cure you."  My father said,
"Thank you."  And he sat, motionless, alone,
with the dignity of a foreign leader.
I sat beside him.  This was my father.
He had known he was mortal.  I had feared they would have
to tie him down.  I had not remembered
he had always held still and kept silent to hear things,
the liquor a way to keep still.  I had not
known him.  My father had dignity.  At the
end of his life his life began
to wake in me.

October 10: Dairy Queen, Joy Harjo, "It's Raining in Honolulu"

It has been a long day of work and student conferences again.  I want a vacation.

England or Greece or Italy sound nice.  I'd even settle for something a little closer--Big Sur or Mount Rushmore or the Grand Canyon.  Heck, I'd even take a trip to Dairy Queen for a Blizzard at the moment. 

On days/weeks like this, I really think back to the time my wife and I spent in Hawaii on our honeymoon.  I remember hiking over a mile of black igneous in Volcano National Park.  It was night, and the stars were like milky clouds of gnats in the sky.  When we reached the edge of a cliff, we looked out across a bay.  Lava was pouring into the Pacific, an orange tongue licking the salt.  And the sound of it hitting the water was deafening.  A Jurassic roar.

Saint Marty needs to go back to Hawaii.

It's Raining in Honolulu

by:  Joy Harjo

There is a small mist at the brow of the mountain,

each leaf of flower, of taro, tree and bush shivers with ecstasy.

And the rain songs of all the flowering ones who have called for the rain

can be found there, flourishing beneath the currents of singing.

Rain opens us, like flowers, or earth that has been thirsty for more than a season.

We stop all of our talking, quit thinking, or blowing sax to drink the mystery.

We listen to the breathing beneath our breathing.

This is how the rain became rain, how we became human.

The wetness saturates everything, including the perpetrators of the second
     overthrow.

We will plant songs where there were curses.

September 4: Poet of the Week, John Ashbery, "My Philosophy of Life"

I just learned this morning that the great poet John Ashbery died yesterday at his home.  He was 90 years old, born the same year as my father. 

Ever since I was infected with the poetry bug, John Ashbery has always been there, like Mount Rushmore or the Grand Canyon.  I know I'm using hyperbole, but he was immense in intellect and poetic beauty.

So, this week, John Ashbery is Poet of the Week.

Saint Marty wishes Ashbery safe travels, and may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. 

My Philosophy of Life

by:  John Ashbery

Just when I thought there wasn't room enough
for another thought in my head, I had this great idea--
call it a philosophy of life, if you will.Briefly,
it involved living the way philosophers live,
according to a set of principles. OK, but which ones?

That was the hardest part, I admit, but I had a
kind of dark foreknowledge of what it would be like.
Everything, from eating watermelon or going to the bathroom
or just standing on a subway platform, lost in thought
for a few minutes, or worrying about rain forests,
would be affected, or more precisely, inflected
by my new attitude.I wouldn't be preachy,
or worry about children and old people, except
in the general way prescribed by our clockwork universe.
Instead I'd sort of let things be what they are
while injecting them with the serum of the new moral climate
I thought I'd stumbled into, as a stranger
accidentally presses against a panel and a bookcase slides back,
revealing a winding staircase with greenish light
somewhere down below, and he automatically steps inside
and the bookcase slides shut, as is customary on such occasions.
At once a fragrance overwhelms him--not saffron, not lavender,
but something in between.He thinks of cushions, like the one
his uncle's Boston bull terrier used to lie on watching him
quizzically, pointed ear-tips folded over. And then the great rush
is on.Not a single idea emerges from it.It's enough
to disgust you with thought.But then you remember something
William James
wrote in some book of his you never read--it was fine, it had the
fineness,
the powder of life dusted over it, by chance, of course, yet
still looking
for evidence of fingerprints. Someone had handled it
even before he formulated it, though the thought was his and
his alone.

It's fine, in summer, to visit the seashore.
There are lots of little trips to be made.
A grove of fledgling aspens welcomes the traveler.Nearby
are the public toilets where weary pilgrims have carved
their names and addresses, and perhaps messages as well,
messages to the world, as they sat
and thought about what they'd do after using the toilet
and washing their hands at the sink, prior to stepping out
into the open again.Had they been coaxed in by principles,
and were their words philosophy, of however crude a sort?
I confess I can move no farther along this train of thought--
something's blocking it.Something I'm
not big enough to see over.Or maybe I'm frankly scared.
What was the matter with how I acted before?
But maybe I can come up with a compromise--I'll let
things be what they are, sort of.In the autumn I'll put up jellies
and preserves, against the winter cold and futility,
and that will be a human thing, and intelligent as well.
I won't be embarrassed by my friends' dumb remarks,
or even my own, though admittedly that's the hardest part,
as when you are in a crowded theater and something you say
riles the spectator in front of you, who doesn't even like the idea
of two people near him talking together. Well he's
got to be flushed out so the hunters can have a crack at him--
this thing works both ways, you know. You can't always
be worrying about others and keeping track of yourself
at the same time.That would be abusive, and about as much fun
as attending the wedding of two people you don't know.
Still, there's a lot of fun to be had in the gaps between ideas.
That's what they're made for!  Now I want you to go out there
and enjoy yourself, and yes, enjoy your philosophy of life, too.
They don't come along every day. Look out!  There's a big one...

February 9: Private Slovik, Freedom of Speech, Coretta Scott King

Billy's antique mother passed out, and Billy was led from the room by a pretty nurse.  The body of an old man covered by a sheet was wheeled by just as Billy entered the corridor.  The man had been a famous marathon runner in his day.  So it goes.  This was before Billy had his head broken in an airplane crash, by the way--before he became so vocal about flying saucers and traveling in time.

Billy sat down in a waiting room.  He wasn't a widower yet.  He sensed something hard under the cushion of his overstuffed chair.  He dug it out, discovered that it was a book, The Execution of Private Slovik, by William Bradford Huie.  It was a true account of the death before an American firing squad of Private Eddie D Slovik, 36896415, the only American soldier to be shot for cowardice since the Civil War.  So it goes. 

Billy read the opinion of a staff judge advocate who reviewed Slovik's case, which ended like this:  He has directly challenged the authority of the government, and future discipline depends upon a resolute reply to this challenge.  If the death penalty is ever to be imposed for desertion, it should be imposed in this case, not as a punitive measure nor as retribution, but to maintain that discipline upon which alone an army can succeed against the enemy.  There was no recommendation for clemency in the case and none is here recommended.  So it goes.

It's a chilling little passage about Private Slovik.  The death penalty imposed not to punish, but to maintain military disciple.  Slovik is killed to be an example, so that other soldiers do not simply walk away from their duties like Slovik.  It's not that he's guilty of a war crime--some violation of the Geneva Convention or something.  Torture or chemical warfare.  Nope.  He just walked away, perhaps out of fear or cowardice.  Or perhaps he just didn't want to kill any more.

Standing up for your beliefs is a difficult thing.  Ask Elizabeth Warren, silenced by her fellow senators for simply wanting to read a letter on the Senate floor.  The letter was written by Coretta Scott King, Civil Rights leader and widow of Martin Luther King, Jr.  She took a stand--the right stand--and she was punished for it.

Freedom of speech is guaranteed to all Americans by the Constitution of the United States.  It's the reason I can sit here in my living room, typing this blog post that questions the legitimacy of the actions of the elected leaders of this country.  I do this without fear of being thrown into prison.  Because that is my right.  For now. 

I'm not saying that any soldier who gets arrested for desertion is a patriot.  I'm also not saying that all opinions are equally valid or correct.  What I am saying is that, whether I agree with your opinion or not, you have the right to express it.  And I also have the right to argue against it.  That's what Senator Elizabeth Warren was doing.  Expressing a point of view.

You may not agree with Senator Warren.  You may think that President Trump's face should be carved into Mount Rushmore.  Write a comment about your beliefs on this blog.  Put it on Facebook.  Tweet about it.  That's your right.

And it's my right to disagree with you, with civility and respect.

Saint Marty gives thanks tonight for freedom of speech.  Keep persisting.