October 5: "Clapp's Pond," Birthday, Nobel Prize

Mary Oliver talks about how connection . . .

Clapp's Pond

by:  Mary Oliver

Three miles through the woods

Clapp's Pond sprawls stone gray

among oaks and pines,

the late winter fields

where a pheasant blazes up

lifting his yellow legs

under bronze feathers, opening

bronze wings;

and one doe, dimpling the ground as she touches

its dampness sharply, flares

out of the brush and gallops away.

                         ∞

By evening, rain.

It pours over the roof.  The last

acorns spray over the porch; I toss

one, then two more

logs on the fire.

                         ∞

How sometimes everything

closes up, a painted fan, landscapes and moments

flowing together until the sense of distance--

say, between Clapp's Pond and me--

vanishes, edges slide together

like the feathers of a wing, everything

touches everything.

                         ∞

Later, lying half-asleep under

the blankets, I watch

while the doe, glittering with rain, steps

under the wet slabs of the pines, stretches

her long neck down to drink

                         ∞

from the pond

three miles away.

Everything touches everything else.

That is Oliver's message in tonight's poem.  Clapp's Pond touches the pheasant touches the doe touches the rain touches the acorns touches logs on the fire touches Clapp's Pond again.  Throw the speaker of the poem into that mix, and you truly have everything touching everything else all at once.

Today, I celebrated the start of my 56th trip around the Sun.  Before I even woke up, people were sending me birthday wishes, from as far away as Germany and New Zealand.  And each and every greeting reminded me how lucky I truly am.

Most of us go through our days feeling completely disconnected, as if each of us is a circus of one--ringmaster, lion tamer, clown, trapeze artist, elephant, camel, and Franky the Amazing Dogboy all rolled into one.  When my head hits the pillow at night, I find myself already already thinking about the next day's circus.  

Yet, disconnection is truly just a feeling--it doesn't reflect reality.  At least for me.  I have people all over the globe who care about my welfare.  The disciples of this blog are spread out from Taiwan to Syria to Dunedin.  This little thing called the Internet (you may have heard of it) has managed to shrink the distances (metaphorical and physical) between peoples.  I'm sitting in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and just received a message a little while ago from an acquaintance currently in Rome.  Small world, small tribe.

Now, I'm not deluded enough to think that just because I have a lot of friends on Facebook means that I'm popular or well-liked.  I've said it before:  social media is not a good barometer of reality.  However, when people take a few seconds out of their days to send me birthday greetings, I get the feeling that I've made some small impact on the world and some lives in that world.

That makes me feel pretty darn connected.

No, I didn't win the Nobel Prize in Literature this year (that went to a Norwegian writer this morning--Jon Fosse).  No, I didn't receive a phone call from President Biden wishing me a happy birthday.  And, no, Governor Whitmer didn't sign a proclamation designating today Saint Marty Day in Michigan.  

However, I had seafood risotto and a raspberry chocolate bomb for dinner tonight.  My wife, daughter, and son sang "Happy Birthday" to me.  Then, we played a board game.  When she left to go home, my daughter laid her head on my shoulder and whispered in my ear, "Happy birthday, Daddy!"

For Saint Marty, that was better than a call from the Swedish Academy.

June 30: "How Would You Live Then?", What Ifs, Values

Mary Oliver asks a lot of "what if" questions . . . 

How Would You Live Then?

by:  Mary Oliver

What if a hundred rose-breasted grosbeaks

     flew in circles around your head?  What if

the mockingbird came into the house with you and

     became your advisor?  What if

the bees filled your walls with honey and all

     you needed to do was ask them and they would fill

the bowl?  What if the brook slid downhill just

     past your bedroom window so you could listen

to its slow prayers as you fell asleep?  What if

     the stars began to shout their names, or to run

this way and that way above the clouds?  What if

     you painted a picture of a tree, and the leaves

began to rustle, and a bird cheerfully sang

      from its painted branches?  What if you suddenly saw

that the silver of water was brighter than the silver

     of money?  What if you finally saw

that the sunflowers, turning toward the sun all day

     and every day--who knows how, but they do it--were

more precious, more meaningful than gold?

Of course, all of the questions Oliver asks are pretty amazing exercises in imagination.  They're questions only poets and prophets would probably contemplate.  But the most important question of all resides in the title:  "How Would You Live Then?"  If any or all of these "what ifs" were real, would it change how you interact with the world on a daily basis?  Oliver makes no attempt to answer any of the questions she asks.  Maybe she knows that any answer is simply not going to be as interesting as the question itself.

I think all human beings play this "what if" game because every human being has ideas of what would make the universe better.  For Oliver, it's rose-breasted grosbeaks orbiting her head and an oil painting of a tree suddenly coming to life.  Those are things that Oliver values.  My "what ifs" will be different than Mary Oliver's or Clarence Thomas's, or Mark Zuckerberg's or Pope Francis's.

So, in the spirit of Oliver's poem, I've decided to provide some of my own "what ifs."  No answers, just questions.

What if the sun crowed like a rooster as it climbed into the morning sky?

What if my puppy could speak and tell me exactly where she wanted me to scratch her?

What if Lake Superior sang "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" every time a boat launched into its waters?

What if pizza helped you lose weight?

What if skunks smelled like blooming lilacs?

What is angels walked around like in the Old Testament, knocking on front doors, looking for dinner and a place to spend the night?

What if you replace the word "angels" with "homeless people" in the previous question?

What if the whole world just ignored Donald Trump for the rest of his life?

What if rainbows tasted like fresh homemade bread?

What if everyone made Christmas tapioca instead of Christmas cookies?

What if all the nuclear stockpiles in the world transformed into fruits and vegetables and potable water?

What if I won the Nobel Prize in Literature this year?

What if Bigfoot walked out of the woods and bitch slapped anyone drilling for oil in Alaska?

What if there were term limits for Justices on the United States Supreme Court?

What if all the fossil fuels in the world turned back into fossils?

What if all the fossils in the world turned back into dinosaurs?

What if Jesus stopped by for a visit to tell everyone that love is love is love?

What if people in the United States were just as concerned about guns as they are about drag queens?

What if Elvis really is still alive?

What if the stars at night whispered bedtimes stories from the heavens?

What if poets and artists ran the world?

What if Saint Marty could make the lame walk; the blind see; and Republican politicians become poor, Black, and transgender?

July 24: In Comfort, Big Hurts and Little Hurts, Nobel Prize

Santiago tends to his wound . . . 

The old man would have liked to keep his hand in the salt water longer but he was afraid of another sudden lurch by the fish and he stood up and braced himself and held his hand up against the sun. It was only a line burn that had cut his flesh. But it was in the working part of his hand. He knew he would need his hands before this was over and he did not like to be cut before it started.

"Now," he said, when his hand had dried, "I must eat the small tuna. I can reach him with the gaff and eat him here in comfort."

There are big hurts and little hurts.  Hurts that stay with you forever, and hurts that disappear in a fly's heartbeat.  (Okay, I don't know if flies have hearts, but, if they do, I'm sure those hearts beat pretty damn fast.)  My point is that everyone experiences pain in their lives.  It's inevitable.

I spent the day in Calumet.  I went for a long walk with my wife this morning.  Then I went back to my hotel room and worked on scripts and sketches for the radio variety show I performed in tonight.  While I was working on those scripts, a musician friend messaged me, asking if she could read one of my poems during her set at Hiawatha Music Festival in Marquette, Michigan.  (Of course, I said "yes."  It was an honor to be asked.)  I spent the afternoon in rehearsals (and got a whole bunch of texts from friends attending Hiawatha who heard my poem), and then we had two shows this evening.

When I got back to my hotel room after the performances, I finished binging The Big Bang Theory.  Saw Sheldon and Amy win the Nobel Prize.  Listened to Sheldon honor his friends in his acceptance speech.  Cried like a baby.  Now, I'm sitting in the dark, typing this blog post and feeling slightly . . . bereft.  Because there are no more episodes to watch, and I'm going to miss this group of sitcom friends.  This is one of those little hurts that I was talking about in the first paragraph.

I know that I'm not the easiest person to be around sometimes.  I'm certainly not the easiest blogger to read, either.  For the past couple weeks, all I've been writing about is my current blue funk.  My therapist called it a situational depression.  When I'm like this, I know that I obsess and don't sleep well and bring people down.  I apologize for that.  This is one of those big hurts that I was talking about.  It has been hanging on for quite some time, and it's not showing any signs of moving on.

But I'm am blessed with a huge tribe of friends and loved ones who put up with all of my big and little hurts.  I do this radio variety show with a group of people who have become family to me.  They have seen me through the deaths of my mother, father, and sister.  In fact, I performed in a show two days after my dad died.  I planned my dad's funeral in the morning and headed to Calumet in the afternoon for rehearsals.  When I walked into the theater that day, I was greeted with hugs and support.  They dedicated the two shows that weekend to my father.

Being around these radio show friends this weekend was kind of tonic for me.  It made me forget to be sad for a little while.  Reminded me that I am loved.  

That is Saint Marty's blessing for tonight.

May 20-21: My Selfishness, But Maybe, Possibility

Merton talks about his shortcomings . . . 

It is true I was called to the cloister. That has been made abundantly clear. But the dispositions with which I was now preparing to enter the Franciscan novitiate were much more imperfect than I was able to realize. In choosing the Franciscans, I had followed what was apparently a perfectly legitimate attraction—an attraction which might very well have been a sign of God’s will, even though it was not quite as supernatural as I thought. I had chosen this Order because I thought I would be able to keep its Rule without difficulty, and because I was attracted by the life of teaching and writing which it would offer me, and much more by the surroundings in which I saw I would probably live. God very often accepts dispositions that are no better than these, and even some that are far worse, and turns them into a true vocation in His own time. 

But with me, it was not to be so. I had to be led by a way that I could not understand, and I had to follow a path that was beyond my own choosing. God did not want anything of my natural tastes and fancies and selections until they had been more completely divorced from their old track, their old habits, and directed to Himself, by His own working. My natural choice, my own taste in selecting a mode of life, was altogether untrustworthy. And already my selfishness was asserting itself, and claiming this whole vocation for itself, by investing the future with all kinds of natural pleasures and satisfactions which would fortify and defend my ego against the troubles and worries of life in the world. 

Besides, I was depending almost entirely on my own powers and on my own virtues—as if I had any!—to become a good religious, and to live up to my obligations in the monastery. God does not want that. He does not ask us to leave the world as a favor to Himself.

Ego gets in the way of everything--marriages, friendships, educations.  And, as Merton points out in this passage, ego even gets in the way of God.  Merton has not let go of his own aspirations and dreams.  In a way, he's using God as a shield to "fortify and defend [his] ego against" the slings and arrows of the universe.  He hasn't reached the point of total surrender to God's will.

I pride myself in the teaching I do for the university, the work I do for the library.  I'm not exactly sure if this is ego or simply the work ethic that my parents instilled in me at a very young age.  My dad was a plumber, going out on service calls at all hours of the day and night, for close to 60 years.  My mom was right there beside him, doing the bookwork, paying the bills, making the dinners.  They went to church every weekend, dropped an envelope in the collection plate each time.  They did all this because it was the right thing to do.  Not because they were trying to win a trophy or title.  Thirty years from now, nobody will even remember my parents' names, except their kids and maybe their grandkids.  

I often joke on this blog about winning the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry or the Nobel Prize for Literature.  Writing a bestselling poetry collection (if there is such a thing).  I am kidding, of course.  I know that the chance of my name being spoken in the halls of the Swedish Academy is about as likely as Bigfoot knocking on my door tonight and coming inside for a nightcap.  However, that doesn't stop me from engaging in a little fantasy.  

Is this ego?  Perhaps.  I make these jokes, fully aware that there is a small, niggling voice in the back of my mind whispering, "Yes, but maybe . . ."

Bigfoot is sitting in my living room tonight, sipping a glass of blueberry wine.  He's good company on late nights.  His hairy presence is a reminder that belief in impossible things is half the battle.  There are people out there who've devoted their lives to hunting my hominid houseguest.  Make their livings off his image.  He is as real as wonder and mystery to them.  

I don't want to live in a world where Bigfoot doesn't roam the Pacific Northwest of the imagination.  Where the Nobel Prize doesn't get awarded to a blogger.  Maybe that's ego with size 54 feet, stomping through my backyard.  Or maybe it's just my stubborn belief that the universe is a more interesting place with constellations of possibility in the heavens.  I think that's what kept my kept my father and mother going all those years.

Saint Marty gives thanks for stargazing with Bigfoot tonight.

January 25: My Own Wisdom and Talents, Nobel Prize, Classroom Miracle

 Merton contemplates his vocation as a writer . . . 

In November 1938, I acquired a sudden facility for rough, raw Skeltonic verses—and that lasted about a month, and died. They were not much, but one of them took a prize which it did not deserve. But now I had many kinds of sounds ringing in my ears and they sometimes asked to get on paper. When their rhythms and tones followed Andrew Marvell, the results were best. I always liked Marvell; he did not mean as much to me as Donne or Crashaw (when Crashaw wrote well) but nevertheless there was something about his temper for which I felt a special personal attraction. His moods were more clearly my own than Crashaw’s or even Donne’s. 

When I lived on Perry Street, it was hard to write poems. The lines came slow, and when it was all done, there were very few of them. They were generally rhymed iambic tetrameter, and because I was uneasy with any rhyme that sounded hackneyed, rhyming was awkward and sometimes strange. 

I would get an idea, and walk around the streets, among the warehouses, towards the poultry market at the foot of Twelfth Street, and I would go out on the chicken dock trying to work out four lines of verse in my head, and sit in the sun. And after I had looked at the fireboats and the old empty barges and the other loafers and the Stevens Institute on its bluff across the river in Hoboken, I would write the poem down on a piece of scrap paper and go home and type it out. 

I usually sent it at once to some magazine. How many envelopes I fed to the green mailbox at the corner of Perry Street just before you got to Seventh Avenue! And everything I put in there came back—except for the book reviews. 

The more I failed, the more I was convinced that it was important for me to have my work printed in magazines like the Southern Review or Partisan Review or the New Yorker. My chief concern was now to see myself in print. It was as if I could not be quite satisfied that I was real until I could feed my ambition with these trivial glories, and my ancient selfishness was now matured and concentrated in this desire to see myself externalized in a public and printed and official self which I could admire at my ease. This was what I really believed in: reputation, success. I wanted to live in the eyes and the mouths and the minds of men. I was not so crude that I wanted to be known and admired by the whole world: there was a certain naive satisfaction in the idea of being only appreciated by a particular minority, which gave a special fascination to this urge within me. But when my mind was absorbed in all that, how could I lead a supernatural life, the life to which I was called? How could I love God, when everything I did was done not for Him but for myself, and not trusting in His aid, but relying on my own wisdom and talents? 

Lax rebuked me for all this. His whole attitude about writing was purified of such stupidity, and was steeped in holiness, in charity, in disinterestedness. Characteristically he conceived the function of those who knew how to write, and who had something to say, in terms of the salvation of society. Lax’s picture of America—before which he has stood for twelve years with his hands hanging in helplessness at his sides—is the picture of a country full of people who want to be kind and pleasant and happy and love good things and serve God, but do not know how. And they do not know where to turn to find out. They are surrounded by all kinds of sources of information which only conspire to bewilder them more and more. And Lax’s vision is a vision of the day when they will turn on the radio and somebody will start telling them what they have really been wanting to hear and needing to know. They will find somebody who is capable of telling them of the love of God in language that will no longer sound hackneyed or crazy, but with authority and conviction: the conviction born of sanctity. 

Merton seeks glory through his writing.  Not international acclaim.  He doesn't want to be popular to the masses.  He wants to be admired by the intellectually elite.  Readers of The New Yorker.  Partisan Review.  People who look down on simplicity.  Who devote themselves to self-promotion instead of spiritual devotion.  Merton wants to be a Nobel Prize winner, not a saint.

I understand this version of Merton.  For as long as I can remember, I've been rehearsing my Nobel acceptance speech to deliver in front of the King of Sweden.  Imagined being in the heart of Columbia University, taking home my Pulitzer Prize.  Dreamed of going to my mailbox, finding a royalty check that will pay for a vacation to Disney World.  In short, I have been just as shallow as the young Merton.

I won't say that I've outgrown these ambitions.  They still haunt me, as they do any writer.  Regardless of the popular stereotype of poets, we want to be read and loved.  The idea that we're all Emily Dickinsons, scribbling away in our rooms, sewing our poems into little books that will never be seen by human eyes until after we're dead--well, that notion is pretty much rubbish.  Writing is like holding out a hand on the playground, hoping to find a new friend.  We all want to be King of the Hill, Lord of the Monkey Bars.

But only 117 people have won the Nobel Prize in Literature in its 119-year history.  That makes my chances of being called a Nobel Laureate pretty slim.  And what are titles anyway?  Do they make a person better?  I would say that they just amplify who you are to begin with.  If you were an asshole before winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, you will be a flaming asshole after winning.  Spotlights intensify; they don't purify.

Today, I taught a composition class at the university.  A group of undergraduates who looked about as engaged as parishioners in a church pew on a Sunday morning after a night at the bars.  They didn't want to be there.  Couldn't have cared less about what I was saying, even though I've been Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula for the past four years and have received the Excellence in Part-Time Faculty Teaching Award.  Titles mean nothing to these kids.

I read these students a poem about nature today.  About disconnecting from iPhone screens in order to reconnect with the world.  Then one of my students stood up and read a journal entry he'd written about witnessing a sunrise over Lake Superior, a moment when, just as the sun entered the sky, the entire world exploded with birdsong.  His hands that were holding his notebook were shaking.  I could tell that what he was sharing was important to him.  Earth-shattering.  And it was electric.

For me, that is the greatest gift of being a writer.  Those raw instances of truth.  This student was baring his soul to everyone in that room.  It was real and important and holy.

Saint Marty gives thanks being a witness to that classroom miracle.  It was better than any Nobel Prize ceremony.

July 9: My Heart Ready to Explode, My Daughter, "Arias"

Merton sinks into adolescent depression . . .

Of course the whole family was there on the dock.  But the change as devastating.  With my heart ready to explode with immature emotions I suddenly found myself surrounded by all the cheerful and peaceful and comfortable solicitudes of home.  Everybody wanted to talk.  Their voices were full of questions and information.  They took me for a drive on Long Island and showed me where Mrs. Hearst lived and everything.  But I only hung my head out of the window of the car and watched the green trees go swirling by, and wished that I were dead.

I would not tell anybody what was the matter with me, and this reticence was the beginning of a kind of estrangement between us.  From that time on no one could be sure what I was doing or thinking.  I would go to New York and I would not come home for meals and I would not tell anyone where I had been.

I'm sure we've all been here at some point or other in our lives--a feeling of utter devastation and abandonment because we've lost what we thought were the loves of our lives.  So, what to do with that?  Well, teenagers turn inward, withdraw from all who care about them.  They rebel.  Disappear, physically and/or emotionally.  What Merton describes here is so familiar to me that I could almost have written this passage myself.

It is difficult trying to find your path after someone you care about deeply flits away, a hungry hummingbird looking for better nectar.  It's a little like being in a strange countryside without a map or cell phone or road signs.  You just don't know which way to go, and the night is moonless, starless. 

I've been in this place many times.  I suffer from vertigo occasionally, and the experience is very similar.  Not being able to find stable ground.  But I have had one anchor through most of these moments:  my daughter.  She has kept me going during some pretty difficult days.  She's beautiful, graceful, and empathetic.  She cares about everything and everyone deeply. 

Around my birthday last year, I was experiencing one of these moments of emotional vertigo.  Feeling very lost.  At sea.  My daughter was in the middle of her first semester of college, majoring in pre-med, working her first job.  She was making new friends, engaging in new activities.  It was her first taste of independence, and she was loving it.

But, she also knew that I was struggling.  I try to keep my problems separate from my daughter.  She's had to deal with a lot in her 19 years, and I've been really conscious about letting her be a kid and do kid things.  I don't want her to look back on her childhood and teenage years with melancholy, like Thomas Merton.

A couple weeks past my birthday, I came home from work, and my daughter handed me a wrapped present.  She'd pre-ordered it many weeks prior, and she couldn't wait for me to unwrap it.  I sat down, read the card she had chosen.  That made me cry.  And then I opened the present.  It was a copy of Sharon Olds' newest collection of poems, Arias.  It had just been released.  That made me cry even more.  She knew I wanted the book, but that I didn't want to spend the money on it because we were struggling financially.  So, she took some of her work money and bought it for me.

I was speaking to sister-in-law last week about my daughter, and I said, "I don't know what I did to deserve a kid like her."

I've known my sister-in-law for most of her life.  She's the baby sister I never had.  I'm still struggling with those feelings I was having around my birthday.  My sister-in-law knows this.  She said to me, "I do.  All the love, compassion, and genuine respect for others has boiled over into this additional human.  Too much goodness in one man.  There needed to be an additional human to continue it." 

I said, "She makes me feel like I've succeeded in something.  She's my Nobel Prize."

"Exactly!!!" my sister-in-law said.

I carry Arias with me everywhere.  To work and school.  It's my reminder, when I'm feeling very alone, that I've done something right in my life.  And that I am loved.

And for that miracle, Saint Marty gives thanks.

September 30: Halfway Point, Saeed Jones, "The Blue Dress"

I am at a point in my life right now that I have to admit something:  I have passed the halfway point of my existence on this planet.  I probably passed it a while ago.

That thought is a little sobering.  I've been thinking about the things I have done and the things I still want to do in the time I have left.  I have had, for the most part, a really good life.  Loving but crazy family.  Beautiful wife and kids.  I've done theater.  Taught thousands of kids about writing and literature.  I'm a published writer.  Poetry and essays and fiction.  And I have fantastic friends.

Don't get me wrong.  I've had my struggles and dark times.  Still do.  And there are things I still want to do.  I want to publish more books.  Want to travel to Rome and England.  Want to go back to New York to see some plays.  Want ONE job that allows me to write and teach and write some more.  Want to win the Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize.  Want to see Donald Trump impeached or resign.

Yes, as I approach Saint Marty's Day this year, I'm feeling a little nostalgia, for my childhood and mother and babies and President Obama.  I miss the hope I had in my youth, when I thought I could own the world.  I now know that I can't own the world.  But I can try to make the world a little bit better.

That's something Saint Marty can do with his remaining years.

The Blue Dress

by:  Saeed Jones

Her blue dress is a silk train is a river
is water seeps into the cobblestone streets of my sleep, is still 
          raining
is monsoon brocade, is winter stars stitched into puddles
is good-bye in a flooded, antique room, is good-bye in a room of 
          crystal bowls
and crystal cups, is the ring-ting-ring of water dripping from the 
          mouths
of crystal bowls and crystal cups, is the Mississippi River is a 
          hallway, is leaks
like tears from windowsills of a drowned house, is windows open 
          to waterfalls
is a bed is a small boat is a ship, is a current come to carry me in its 
          arms
through the streets, is me floating in her dress through the streets
is only the moon sees me floating through the streets, is me in a 
          blue dress
out to sea, is my mother is a moon out to sea.

January 17: Famous Writer, Langston Hughes, "Dream Deferred"

We all have dreams.   I dreamed about being a famous writer.  Bestseller Lists.  National Book Awards.  Pulitzer Prizes.  Nobel Prize.  Stay-at-home husband and father.  Distinguished teacher.  Literary diplomat.

And what have I attained?  I'm a writer.  Not quite famous.  No bestsellers or Pulitzer Prizes to my credit.  I'm a professor.  Not quite distinguished.  I've been nominated a few times for Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula.  That doesn't make me a diplomat.

One of my favorite films is It's a Wonderful Life.  It's about a man who had big dreams.  A man who sees those dreams deferred in the service family and friends.  He makes sacrifices, and those sacrifices are what give his life meaning.

Saint Marty may not be William Faulkner or Ernest Hemingway, but, as George Bailey learned, no man is a failure who has friends.

Dream Deferred

by:  Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--
And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

October 30: Wife's Birthday, Carving Pumpkins, Classic Saint Marty

Today was my wife's birthday.  We celebrated it.  Sort of.  We went out to lunch at one of my wife's favorite restaurants.  Carved pumpkins with our kids.  Had dinner at my parents' house.  And I worked.  Finished my lesson plan for Tuesday's class, since tomorrow is Halloween and I will be busy prowling the streets in search of candy with my son in the evening.

Right now, I'm watching a movie with my daughter.  Kolchak:  The Night Stalker.  She's loving it.  Of course, she knows that it is one of my favorite television films and series.  Perhaps she's indulging me a little bit.

By the way, Bob Dylan has finally indulged the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy.  He called her, and they spoke for 15 minutes.  Told her that he was "speechless" over the news of the award.  So, Dylan will be taking a trip to Sweden this December.

And I will be sneaking Milky Ways from my son's Halloween candy tomorrow night.

Today's Classic Saint Marty first aired four years ago.  So much has changed.  So much is still the same.

October 30, 2012:  At This Time, Rolling Year, All Soul's Day

"At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said, "I suffer most.  Why did I walk through crowds of fellow beings with eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode!  Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me?"

I know I have used this passage before, but on this first episode of "Saint of the Week," it is particularly apt to touch upon Marley's penance as a ghost.  Marley wanders the world, seeing all the suffering and anguish he could have helped alleviate while he was living.  It is a terrible eternal punishment, to be in a constant state of regret and mourning.

On November 2, the Catholic Church celebrates All Souls' Day.  On this day, people on this planet can offer prayers and alms for those who have died who are "being purified in the sufferings of purgatory."  By offering these sacrifices, we can help the Marleys of the afterlife pass through the pearly gates and enter heaven.  Now, whether you believe in Purgatory and punishment or not, most Christian churches at this time celebrate those who have died in the past year.  In Mexico, it's a national holiday.  Dia de los Muertos.  That's the day where everybody dresses like skeletons and makes sugar skulls and goes to visit grandma and grandpa at the cemetery, usually bringing them food and drinks.  It's sort of like Halloween, except the trick-or-treaters are dead.

No matter what tradition you celebrate, the end of October and the first days of November are reserved for remembrance, for reflection on those you have lost.  It can be a solemn time, or it can be a time of celebration.  It depends on the culture and traditions.

So, whether you're eating Milky Ways or sugar skulls, or lighting votive candles, I wish you a peaceful All Souls' Day.

Saint Marty will end with a traditional Catholic prayer for this time:  Eternal rest grant to them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.  May they rest in peace.  Amen, Marley, amen.

My son's jack-o'-lantern

My daughter's jack-o'-lantern

October 21: Air of Menace, A Hundred Conversations, Misphonia

Still, the day had an air of menace.  A broken whiskey bottle by the log, the brown tip of a snake's tail disappearing between two rocks on the hill at my back, the rabbit the dog nearly caught, the rabies I knew was in the county, the bees who kept unaccountably fumbling at my forehead with their furred feet.

Dillard has a bad feeling, as if some wall of water is about to roll over her.  She's talking about rains and floods, uprooted trees and washed-out bridges.  While I don't think she's a superstitious person, Dillard is looking around her, seeing all these signs of impending disaster.  Broken bottles.  Snakes.  Rumors of rabid forest creatures.

I have had a trying day.  Eight hours of calling patients.  Over a hundred conversations.  My voice is tired, my brain is tired, and my tolerance is tired.  When I left work, I found myself disliking people.  A lot.  Not because of the people I spoke to.  Because of the number of people I spoke to.

When I feel like this, everybody irritates me.  Right now, my sister is irritating the shit out of me because she's talking so loud.  Hell's Kitchen is on the TV, and Gordon Ramsay's voice is making my skin crawl.  I want to slap people who are chewing or swallowing too loudly.  (In case you're wondering, I do suffer from misphonia, where certain noises trigger irrational anger responses.)

So, there is an air of menace about me this evening.  Invisible bees buzzing around my head.  I have to force myself not to speak, because, if I open my mouth, I will probably yell, scream, or swear for no good reason.  I would look like a crazy person, which I might be.

I think that Bob Dylan suffers from misphonia, as well.  That's why he hasn't said anything about his Nobel Prize.  Either that or he just doesn't give a flying fig, which, again, irritates the shit out of me.

Maybe Saint Marty should just go to bed.

October 17: It's Raining, Wisconsin Dells, Nobel Prize

I hear a roar, a high windy sound more like air than like water, like the run-together whaps of a helicopter's propeller after the engine is off, a high million rushings.  The air smells damp and acrid, like fuel oil, or insecticide.  It's raining.

Dillard is talking about floods and rain.  The power of Nature to redefine the landscape with water.  She has seen Tinker Creek revised by summer storms--trees uprooted, banks washed away, and bridges damaged. 

Just got back from the Wisconsin Dells a little over an hour ago.  The drive was fairly uneventful, but, as we got closer to home, it started to rain.  It's still raining and thundering and lightning.  We got soaked unloading the car.  There weren't any trees down, but the wind was pretty strong.  My Clinton-Kaine yard sign was taking a beating, but so were the Trump-Pence signs down the street.

Tomorrow, I return to my normal life.  At work by 6 a.m.  Teaching until 9:30 p.m.  In between, grading papers and midterm exams.  Plus, I have to prepare for my poetry reading on Thursday.  It's always difficult settling back into routine after several days of non-routine.  Sort of like Bob Dylan giving a concert after winning the Nobel Prize last Thursday morning.  (He performed a concert that night, and so far he has not responded to the news at all.)

So, unless massive floodwaters wash away his car tonight, Saint Marty will be back at it, making the world a better place, one comma splice at a time. 

The Swedish Academy is still blowin' in the wind . . .

October 7: Touch-and-Go, Same Orbit, Nobel Prize, October 13

All this means is that the physical world as we understand it now is more like the touch-and-go creek world I see than it is like the abiding world of which the mountains seem to speak . . .

Dillard is talking about the frustratingly constant fact that the world is not constant.  It is malleable.  Mutable.  Constantly in motion, in a state of change or (dare I say it?) evolution.  Floods happen.  Forest fires and earthquakes.  Species come into being.  Species are snuffed out like candles.  Human beings sometimes have a hand in it, and sometimes it's Nature.

If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you already know that I'm not a great fan of change.  I eat the same breakfast every morning.  An egg.  The same lunch.  Chicken sandwich, apple juice.  My days are pretty structured.  I work the same hours.  Teach the same hours.  Get home at pretty much the same time every day.  If Nature is an instrument of change, I am an instrument of stubborn constancy.  I am a redwood.  A mountain.  The moon.  Always there, in the same place, following the same orbit.

Yesterday, I wrote about the Nobel Prize in Literature.  How, early in the morning on October 13, my name will be announced in the Grand Hall of the Swedish Academy.  The Nobel Prize has been announced in the first weeks of October since the beginning of the twentieth century, with the exception of the years during World War II, when no prizes were awarded.  Thus, the Nobel Prize in Literature is a fairly constant thing, as well.

Next Thursday morning, I will get up at my normal time (4:45 a.m.).  I will shower, get dressed, eat breakfast.  Then I will drive to work.  When I get to work, I will fire up my desktop computer.  I do these things every Thursday.  And then, I will sit and wait for a phone call.  You see, just minutes before the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy announces the recipient of the Nobel Prize, she phones the selected writer to congratulate him or her.  When the phone rings at my desk next Thursday, I will pick it up and have a conversation with someone in Stockholm.

That's the way things always happen on the day the Nobel Prize is announced.  Always.  That's another constant.  And Saint Marty is not about to fly in the face of tradition, although he may take the rest of the day from work after he wins.

Neruda's Nobel diploma . . . He got the call in October

June 15: Willy Wonka, Adonis, "The Beginning of Speech"

I often wonder what I would say to my younger self.  As a kid, I knew I wanted to be a writer.  Of course, I also wanted to be a movie director, Willy Wonka, and Doug Henning (don't laugh--he was a really cool magician).  However, the main dream has never changed.  Publish books.  Maybe win a prize here and there.  An occasional Pulitzer Prize.  I wouldn't turn down the Nobel, either.

I've published a book of poems.  I've been the poetry editor of a national literary journal.  I've been nominated for the Pushcart Prize a couple of times.  No Pulitzer.  No Nobel.  Yet.  I suppose, if I could say something to my younger self, it would be, "Watch out for skunks!"  (I have had a couple very close encounters with skunks that have cost me a good pair of running shoes and an expensive book bag.)

Saint Marty is still dreaming.

The Beginning of Speech

by:  Adonis

The child I was came to me

once,

a strange face

                He said nothing              We walked

each of us glancing at the other in silence, our steps

a strange river running in between

We were brought together by good manners

and these sheets now flying in the wind

then we split,

a forest written by earth

watered by the seasons’ change.

Child who once was, come forth—

What brings us together now,

and what do we have to say?

September 22: Gold Watch, Promotion, Tomas Transtromer, "Kyrie," Adventures of Stickman

On December 29, 1982, there had been a big party in the boardroom, and it was attended by many of the old-timers like Ives himself--Crane, Silverman, Schamberg--and Mr. Mannis, having survived his third open heart operation, made a speech.  They had given Ives a watch--a gold Swiss pocket watch from the 1920s, engraved with his name on the back (to go into a drawer along with the watch he had intended to give to his son long ago at Christmas)--and a plaque.

Ives retires.  After many years at an advertising agency, he is given his gold watch and plaque, thanking him for his decades of faithful service.  Ives started out at the bottom and worked his way up, drawing by drawing, account by account, promotion after promotion.  He is respected and beloved by all of his colleagues and coworkers..

Tomorrow afternoon, I am meeting with the head of the English Department to discuss a promotion.  For the past 17 years, I have held the rank of Contingent Assistant Professor.  I want (and think I deserve) the title of Contingent Professor, which is a jump of two ranks.  After almost 20 years of teaching and a few thousand students, I am hoping that my boss will support my decision.

I am not a person who feels comfortable tooting his own horn.  It's just not something at which I excel.  In my posts, I may sound incredibly confident and self-assured.  I'm not.  I've said it before, and I will probably say it with my dying breath:  I think that I could have done better.  I could have been a better son.  A better brother.  Better husband and father.  A better teacher and writer.  Basically, I could have been a better person every day of my life.

That doesn't mean that I'm Rasputin or Donald Trump.  That means that I've made mistakes, and I acknowledge them.  That doesn't mean I don't deserve that promotion (or a Pulitzer Prize or a MacArthur Genius Grant).  It means that I'm human, with tons of flaws.

Contingent Professor Saint Marty.  Sounds pretty good.

By the way, Tomas Transtromer isn't perfect, either, although he has a Nobel Prize hanging on his wall.

Kyrie

by;  Tomas Transtromer

Sometimes my life opened its eyes in the dark.
A feeling as if crowds drew through the street
in blindness and anxiety on the way towards a miracle,
while I invisibly remain standing.

As the child falls asleep in terror
listening to the heart's heavy tread.
Slowly, slowly until morning puts its rays in the locks
and the doors of darkness open.

Adventures of STICKMAN

April 10: Big Glass Cases, Change, the Future

I'm going to use a passage from The Catcher in the Rye I've used before:

...Certain things they should stay the way they are.  You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.  I know that's impossible, but it's too bad anyway.  Anyway, I kept thinking about all that while I walked.

I love this passage because it captures one of my greatest fears/worries:  change.  Basically, Holden has as much a problem with change as I do.  The only constant in his life has been change.  He's seen his younger brother die.  His older brother moved to California.  He's been expelled from at least three schools that I can recall.  He's tired of change.  That's why he likes museums so much.  Everything is in big glass cases, and nothing changes.

Most people know I'm not a fan of change.  In fact, I would rank change right up there with root canal and colonoscopy.  It's a matter of comfort.  If life is calm and happy, why rock the boat by doing something stupid like taking up sky diving or switching jobs?  I could refine my position on change a little bit:  I welcome change if I am its catalyst.  If I sell my house and get a bigger house, I'd be fine because it's my choice.  If I'm offered a full-time position at the university, I'd say, "Where do I sign?"  These are things I've want.  Things I've actively pursued.

This morning, I went for a walk with a friend of mine who is a nurse.  We started talking about the recent take-over of our hospital by a large healthcare system.  The outpatient surgery center where we work is now owned by a national corporation.  And that national corporation is making big changes.  It's going to take our little family of coworkers and transform it into a huge outpatient surgical facility.  In a couple of years, we're not even going recognize each other, let alone where we work.  Big changes.

As we were walking, I could feel my stomach tensing into a hornet's nest.  Even the thought of change has a physical reaction in my body.  By the end, I had a headache and a serious case of diarrhea.

I know that, like shit, change happens.  There's no way to avoid it.  The future is one big black question mark, and it gives me hives.  Of course, my hope is to have a full-time teaching position at the university before construction is complete on the new surgery center.  That's my hope.

Saint Marty keeps that hope in a big glass case in his Museum of Things to Come, right next to his Pulitzer Prize for poetry and Nobel Prize for Literature.

I would not pay to get into this place

December 22: Never Thinks of Himself

The original Bert and Ernie

"He never thinks about himself, God, that's why he's in trouble."

Ernie Bishop, the cab driver played by Frank Faylen, says this prayer at the beginning of It's A Wonderful Life.  It's one of several prayers that start the film.  The whole town of Bedford Falls, all of the people George Bailey has helped, is praying for George, who has reached the brink of suicide.  Ernie's prayer pretty much sums up George's character.  Selfless.  Generous.  Loving.  He gives and gives, without any thought of himself.

I'd like to say I'm exactly like George Bailey.  That I always think of others.  That I'm never jealous of other people's successes.  That I would take the last dollar in my pocket and give it to a Salvation Army bell ringer.  However, I am not George.  If you're one of my loyal disciples, you already know:  I can be petty, angry, envious, small, stingy, cheap, vindictive.  You name it.

Everyone should be more like George, and everyone should have a George in their lives.  In the last few days, I've been pretty focused on my problems.  It's the time of year when generosity of spirit and wallet are expected.  All I can say about myself is that my spirit is willing, but my wallet is weak.  That's what gets me into trouble.  I would love to buy my sister the laptop computer she has on her Christmas wish list.  She's getting a calendar.  I'd love to give my daughter the cell phone she wants.  She's getting some clothes I got at a clothing resale (and maybe a board game, if it's not too expensive).

If I were a better person, and a better Christian, I wouldn't worry so much about money.  I would put my faith in God, trust that the money for the car loan or the mortgage or the gas bill will be available when I need it.  Instead, I'm worrying about the $350 I wasted on trying to get my mortgage refinanced.  My faith isn't strong enough to let go of my worries.  I have too many control issues.  I don't even like to change what I eat for breakfast.

Of course, George isn't perfect, either.  He gets into a little trouble.  Not because he's cheap or vindictive or petty.  No, George's problem is that he doesn't recognize the treasures of his life.  He's blind to all the goodness of his friends and family.  Clarence helps him with this myopia.  By the end of the film, George doesn't care whether he's in prison or the hospital or Buckingham Palace.  As long as he's surrounded by the people he loves.

I guess being a good George isn't about being perfect.  It's about being the best friend/husband/father I can be.  That's what Ernie's talking about in his conversation with God.  That's why God sends Clarence to help George out.

Now, if only Clarence had a spare Nobel Prize in his pocket for Saint Marty.