December 23, 2025: “The Protestor,” Illness, “Winter Solstice Haiku”

Merry Christmas Eve eve!

Yes, it is the day before the day before.  It was my intention, once my vacation started, to blog every night.  However, my son decided to bring a particularly nasty bug home from school last Friday, so my entire household has been battling fevers, coughs, runny noses, and exhaustion.  Today is the first day I have felt almost human since Saturday morning.

It was also my intention to do all kinds of Christmas prep over the weekend.  Wrapping presents.  Baking cookies.  Working on my Christmas poem.  Filling out our Christmas cards.  That all went out the window, too.  I am now on my fourth day of illness, and all I have to show for it is a pecan pie and a stack of Christmas cards that went into the mail yesterday. 

Since I’ve had a lot of time to just lay on my couch, I’ve been reflecting a lot on ghosts of Christmas.  People who are no longer a part of my life, by death or design.  I think this time of year lends itself to this kind of nostalgia.  The Christmases of today simply can’t hold a candle to the Christmases of our childhoods, when Dad and Mom and Grandmas and Grandpas made sure we got everything we wanted from Santa.

Sharon Olds gets nostalgic about a person she once knew . . . 

The Protestor

by: Sharon Olds

     (for Bob Stein)

We were driving north, through the snow, you said

you had turned twenty-one during Vietnam, you were

1-A.  The road curved

and curved back, the branches laden,

you said you had decided not to go

to Canada.  Which meant you’d decided to

go to jail, a slender guy of

twenty-one, which meant you’d decided to be

raped rather than to kill, if it was their 

life or your ass, it was your ass.

We drove in silence, such soft snow

so heavy borne-down.  That was when I’d come to

know I loved the land of my birth—

when the men had to leave, they could never come back,

I looked and loved every American

needle on every American tree, I thought

my soul was in it.  But if I were taken and

used, taken and used, I think

my soul would die, I think I’d be easily broken,

the work of my life over.  And you’d said,

This is the word of my life, to say,

with my body itself, You fuckers you cannot

tell me who to kill.  As if there were a

spirit free of the body, safe from it.

After a while, you talked about your family,

not starting as I had, with

husbands and kids, leavening everyone else out—

you started with your grandparents 

and worked your way back, away from yourself,

deeper and deeper into Europe, into

the Middle East, the holy book

buried sometimes in the garden, sometimes

swallowed and carried in the ark of the body itself.

Yes, people shuttle in and out of our lives all the time.  My life has been blessed with loving parents and siblings.  Friends who care deeply, feel deeply.  Over the last few days, as I’ve slept and hallucinated with cold medicine and ibuprofen, I have thought quite a bit about my mother, in particular.  This Christmas season, I will be playing or singing at six church services in the next five days.  My mother is the reason I’m a church organist.  She’s the one who made me take piano lessons for twelve years straight, and she’s also the one who volunteered my keyboard talents to our parish priest over 40 years ago.  The rest, as they say, is history.

So, my mom is haunting me this Christmas, as are all the memories of Christmases past.  Nothing can ever stay the same, except in a photograph or video.  Even poems don’t stay the same.  A poem that I read five years ago (maybe about a mother’s death) has a completely different meaning for me tonight.  I had wonderful Christmases as a kid.  A living room floor literally overtaken with presents.  Tupperware upon Tupperware filled with cookies.  Baked ham and rolls.  I was really lucky.

Those days are long gone now, and I have to accept that.  My business is now making those same kind of treasured memories for my kids.  I want my daughter and son to look back with joy and longing at Christmases with my wife and I.  I think we’re accomplishing that.  Earlier this evening, my daughter phoned me from the road (she’s on her way home with her significant other).  We talked for over 40 minutes, and it was all about all our family traditions, from pumpkin puff pancakes to watching Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas.  

So, I am on the mend, although, when I’m done typing this post, I’m going to go lie on the couch and stay there, probably for the rest of the night.  Tomorrow, it’s gift wrapping, house cleaning, ham baking, and music practicing.  (By the way, I got up this morning at 5:30 a.m. to work on my Christmas poem.  Three hours later, it was drafted and done.). Tomorrow night?  Two church services.  

Tonight, however, I’m just happy that I’m feeling slightly better, and I’m looking forward to some good family time over the next few days.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for the Winter Solstice.  He was just too damn sick to post it.  It’s based (very loosely) on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

In celebration of the winter solstice, write a poem that begins 96% of the universe is made up of the dark and unknown . . .  Your poem might posit what is the other 4% made of or perhaps share (with specific images) why you enjoy (or don’t enjoy) winter.

Winter Solstice Haiku

by: Martin Achatz

snow and wind all day

rabbit tracks in the backyard

winter syllables

moon trapped in branches

pine needles stitch the heavens

embroidered solstice

coughing at midnight

my eyes water with fever

my body blizzards

angel tree topper

face coffee brown like Jesus

ICE storm tomorrow

December 6, 2025: “Cool Breeze,” Missing in Action, “Saturday Afternoon Poetry Reading by MFA Students”

Yes, I have been missing in action for quite some time.  I have no good excuse, aside from exhaustion and shortening days.  Around this time last year, I was sliding into a deep depression that lasted quite a few months.  So I have been keeping pretty close watch on my state of mind and mood.

A lot has happened since my last post.  Just a quick recap:  I got a new car—another Subaru Impreza (an offer from the dealership I couldn’t pass on); Thanksgiving came and went with a raging blizzard that lasted about three days (and about 26 inches); my daughter turned 25 yesterday (hard to believe she’s that old and I haven’t aged at all); and the holiday season is upon us (theme for our front porch this year—A Bigfoot Christmas).

Perhaps the reason I tend to get a little (or a lot) blue this time of year is nostalgia—the sentimental longing for a period, place, or person with wistfully happy associations.  Of course, there’s no way of reclaiming the past, unless you’re Marty McFly or Bill and Ted.  

Sharon Olds gets nostalgic for an old lover . . . 

Cool Breeze

by: Sharon Olds

You talked to me a lot about your kid sister,

Rebecca, a.k.a. Reebabecka,

and you knew me as my sister’s kid sister,

fourteen, and a late bloomer, and homely,

you talked to me about your family,

and your dream of cutting an LP,

and the Juniors and Sophomores you were in love with, or who

were in love with you, or who maybe you had slept with—

they were White, as I was, but you called me Miss Shary

Cobb, Miss Cool Breeze Herself.

You didn’t mind I was in love with you,

you were Senior Class President.

And you would dance with me, astronomer

who pointed out to me the star

bright of the cervix, when we danced it became

exact to me, far inside me

in the night sky.  And you would park with me,

you would draw my hand gently across you, you had

mercy on me, and on yourself.  When you would

slide your hand up under my sweater,

my mouth would open, but I’d stop you, and you would

say, rather fondly, Protecting your sacred

virginity?  And I would say Yes,

I could always tell you the truth.

When the White cops broke up the dance in your neighborhood,

your friends worked to get us out the back

unseen, if the cops saw us together

they would hurt someone.  We crouched behind a hedge,

and I began to understand

you were less safe than me.  Squatting 

and whispering, I understood, as if 

the bending of our bodies was teaching me, 

that everyone was against you—the ones I had called

everyone, the White men

and the White women, the grown-ups, the. blind

and deaf.  And when you died, your LP cut,

and you had married the beauty from your neighborhood,

when you went off the coast road with your White

lover, into the wind off the ocean,

your Jag end over end, catching fire—

I knew that my hands were not free of your

blood, brother—Reebabecka’s brother.

Perhaps I’m reading too much into Olds’ poem, but I do feel a certain sense of nostalgia—the speaker yearning for Reebabecka’s brother and all that he meant.  Sex and race and class and mortality all rolled into one.  Olds, in some way, holds herself responsible for high school lover’s death (“my hands were not free of your / blood”).  

Today at the library, I hosted a reading of MFA poetry students from the local university.  There were about six of them.  All so young and full of hope.  I remember being like them when I was in graduate school—thinking I was going to get a job as a full-time professor, publish a few books, win the Pulitzer Prize, and be set for life.  That’s where they all are right now.  Ready to take on a world that isn’t always that nice to poets.

I found myself getting a little wistful as I sat listening to these grad students share their work.  At the end of my MFA program, my wife had just given birth to our daughter, and I thought I had the world in my hands.  Anything seemed possible.

Then everything came crashing down.  My wife started suffering from serious depressions (she cut her arms and breasts with scissors, leaving scars) and was eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder.  A year or so after that, she fell into a cycle of sexual addiction that almost ended our marriage several times.

In short, I really don’t feel nostalgic for all of that shit.  I wouldn’t want to go back to that period in my life for anything.  Except for this:  holding my infant daughter in my arms as she drifted off to sleep, or braiding her long hair after she took her baths.  I miss being everything to my kids—protector, friend, chauffeur, sage, comedian.  There was a time I walked on water as far as my son and daughter were concerned.

My daughter is in medical school now.  My son will be graduating high school this spring.  He’s already talking about moving out.  The future is bright for both of them.  Me?  I have more years behind now me than I have ahead of me.  That makes me a little sad.  (Just a little.  Don’t worry.)

I know I’m very blessed.  My kids are healthy and smart.  My wife has a job she loves, and she’s been doing well with her mental health and addiction issues.  We are more a team than we’ve ever been.  Blessing after blessing after blessing.

Ten years from now, I’m probably going to be nostalgic about tonight.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for today, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Try writing some haiku that resist being about apple blossoms, insects, or frogs.  Instead use the 5/7/5 syllables in a series of three-line poems that deal with subjects such as bad hair, infectious diseases, or people who’ve never heard of Rumi.

Saturday Afternoon Reading by MFA Poetry Students

by: Martin Achatz

they read earnestly 

shaping words into creatures

feral as blizzards

I sit in the back

listen as they free their tongues

birds, birds, everywhere

they are all so young

ferment full, ripe as apples

I eat and drink them

when I was their age

I swam in Superior

naked, skin on fire

I’m an old sonnet

iambic, without couplet

don’t volta me yet

March 11, 2025: "Bread," Letting Go, "Before and Before"

I spent this afternoon participating in a writing workshop led by one of my best friends.  (I almost typed "best writing friends," but we've known each other for over thirty years, which makes our friendship a little more than acquaintances getting together at a coffee shop once a month to scribble in notebooks.)  He knows me and my struggles pretty intimately.

One of the topics my friend and I always wrestle with is staying fresh in our writing.  Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro once said, “My subject matter doesn't vary so much from book to book. Just the surface does. The settings, etc. I tend to write the same book over and over, or at least, I take the same subject I took last time out and refine it, or do a slightly different take on it.”  

So, yes, all writers have subjects they obsess over.  It's the nature of the beast.  I've written so many poems about my daughter and son that I can't count them all.  (Sharon Olds writes about her kids a lot, so I'm in good company.)  Even when I set out to write about something else, my offspring will sneak into the poem as if they were playing hide-and-seek with the words.

Sharon Olds writes about her daughter making some . . . 

Bread

by: Sharon Olds

When my daughter makes bread, a cloud of flour
hangs in the air like pollen. She sifts and
sifts again, the salt and sugar
close as the grain of her skin. She heats the
water to body temperature
with the sausage lard, fragrant as her scalp
the day before hair-wash, and works them together on a
floured board. Her broad palms
bend the paste toward her and the heel of her hand
presses it away, until the dough
begins to snap, glossy and elastic as the 

torso bending over it,
this ten-year-old girl, random specks of yeast
in her flesh beginning to heat,
her volume doubling every month now, but still
raw and hard. She slaps the dough and it 

crackles under her palm, sleek and
ferocious and still leashed, like her body, no
breasts rising like bubbles of air toward the 

surface of the loaf. She greases the pan, she is
shaped, glazed, and at any moment goes
into the oven, to turn to that porous
warm substance, and then under the
knife to be sliced for the having, the tasting, and the
giving of life.

Olds wrote this when her daughter was still young, full of bubbles of yeast, rising in the pan.  So many of my poems over the last 24 years have been about this process of watching my kids grow older and away from me.  That's what parenting is all about--nurturing, loving, teaching, holding your breath, and letting go.

As many of my faithful disciples know, over the last ten years, I've lost a lot of loved ones--family and friends.  I carry the weight of those losses every day.  I'm not saying I'm in a constant state of mourning, but that grief floats to the surface a lot, especially in my writing.  Tonight, I wasn't planning on writing about the empty nest of my heart again, but here I am.

I think I'm a person who falls in love a lot.  I fall in love with poems, books, movies, music, friends, food, trees, birds, weather.  I'm not talking the casual "oh, I love Lucky Charms" kind of love.  I'm talking strong, visceral attachments.  Because of this habit of love, I frequently find myself experiencing nostalgia for past, better times.  

At the end of this coming summer, my daughter will be moving downstate for medical school.  In a year, my son will be a high school graduate (he's already talking about getting an apartment with a friend).  And I'm thinking about how much I miss reading to my daughter at bedtime and watching bad Bigfoot movies with my son.

They are becoming strong, independent people.  That means I did something right as a parent.  However, that doesn't make the letting go any easier.  I'm going to have to redefine who I am soon.  That's part of letting go:  figuring who you are again and again and again.  It's déjà vu.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about the déjà vu of writing a poem, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Write a poem about a déjà vu experience.  To strengthen that "I've been here before" feeling and allow your reader to experience it with you, repeat words and images from the first stanza in the stanzas that follow.  If you don't know how to begin, start with I walked into a room I had alread walked into before . . . and see where it takes you.

Before and Before

by: Martin Achatz

after Robert Hayden

I have written this poem before and before,

first on the night her final breath

sat in my eardrum like a trapped

moth, battering its wings against

the corners of my skull and brain.

I have written this poem before and before,

next on the eve of her funeral

when I wandered through strawberry

fields, following God's glowing soles

in the eyelid of dusk.

I have written this poem before and before,

on the night I saw her constellation

in the heavens, bright as Orion

in January, each star freckling

the darkness with her face.

I have written this poem on her birth

and death days, sitting in my car

near her grave, when my son became

a teenager and my daughter graduated

from high school then college, before

and before and before and before,

and now I write this poem before

I go to sleep, because a dog

is barking and barking outside, reminding

me of grief's austere and dogged hunger.

December 14, 2024: "Best Fall," Good Ole Days, Golden Light

Today, I found myself full of nostalgia for the "good ole days."  Now, if you ask me what the "good ole days" were, I wouldn't be able to define them all that well.  I suppose it would include me not having to work five jobs; my kids being young enough still to think I was one step away from being a god; all my siblings living and healthy; and the Felon in Chief being just a two-bit real estate hustler with a bad haircut, living off his daddy's fortune. 

Billy Collins gets nostalgic, too . . . 

Best Fall

by: Billy Collins

was what we called a game we played

which had nothing to do

with a favorite autumn,

somebody else’s gorgeous reds and yellows.

no, eleven years old

all we wanted was to be shot

as we charged sacrificially into the fire

of the shooter lying prone behind a hedge,

or even better, to be that shooter

and pick off the others

as they charged the gun

each one stopping in his young tracks

to writhe and twist

aping the contortions of death

from the movies,

clutching our bleeding hearts

holding ourselves

as we lifted—a moment of ballet—

into the air then tumbled

into the grass behind our houses.

and whoever invented that game

made sure it would have

no ending,

for the one who was awarded

best fall by the shooter

got to be the next shooter

and so it went, shooting and being shot,

tearing at our cowboy shirts

trying our best

to make death look good

until it got almost dark

and our mothers called us in.

Of course, nostalgia paints the past in golden light, erasing all the struggles and pains and stresses.  It's not about objective reality.  Rather, it's a Norman Rockwell rendering of reality, wholesome and mostly untrue.  

Yet, most of the day, I was yearning for John Hughes movies and Walkmans, Molly Ringwald and River Phoenix.  My life was seemed much simpler back then.  No mortgages, car payments, or income taxes.  All I worried about was getting someone to take me to see Star Wars:  A New Hope again.  (I saw that film 27 times in the theater when it was first released.)  

I'm sure one or two or five years down the road, I'm going to be thinking back nostalgically on tonight.  Christmas tree glowing in the corner of the room.  Puppy snoring and moaning in her cage.  A full moon glowing in tree branches outside.  And Joe Biden serving as President of the United States.  (Come January 20, 2025, when the Felon in Chief takes the oath of office, the past four years are going to seem like a trip to Oz on the back of a flying monkey named Ozzie.)

Nostalgia is a retreat from unpleasant or painful presents.  An escape hatch, if you will.  The 1980s were far from perfect (Ronald Reagan was President of the United States, for God's sake!), but we had the best music.  The past four years weren't utopian, but we didn't have a person with the IQ of a rabbit in charge of the nuclear codes.  

For me, thinking backward is a retreat from the darkness I'm currently experiencing.  I remember lying on my bed, listening to the local Top 40 station, recording a hit mix of songs with my cassette player.  Billy Joel's "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" and Yes's "Owner of a Lonely Heart."  And that was the most important thing I had to do.

Saint Marty will return to reality tomorrow.  Tonight, he's going to watch bad Hallmark holiday movies and dream of white Christmases, just like the ones he used to know.  Without global warming, convicted rapists in the Oval Office, and Fox News.

June 23: "Medieval Photography," Cut That Shit Out, "Sea of Galilee"

Billy Collins believes a memory is worth a thousand pictures . . . 

Medieval Photography

by: Billy Collins

Nothing came out very well.

People thought sitting still was odd.

Black-and-white had yet to be conceived,

even though many days were grey

with low clouds and unpredictable rain.

You remembered someone by closing your eyes.

I miss the days when my kids were kids, before puberty and peer pressure and all the shit that goes along with growing up.  Life was a lot simpler before we had to navigate all the mine fields of angst and hormone-driven anger.  I close my eyes and remember those nights when my daughter was eight, holding her infant brother in her lap like he was the best birthday/Christmas present she'd ever received.

This weekend, I listened to four separate sermons on the Gospel story of Jesus and his disciples crossing the Sea of Galilee when I storm blows in.  You know what happens.  Jesus is napping, and the disciples wake him up because they're afraid the boat is going to founder and capsize, killing them all.  Jesus basically says, "Cut that shit out," and the wind and waves calm down.

The gist of all of the sermons was pretty simple--trust in God when you encounter storms in your life.  Easy to say.  Hard to do.  Yeah, I know that's what faith is all about--trust and belief, blah blah blah.  Yet, when a storm in screaming in your face and you think you're going to drown, it's pretty damn difficult to think, "Oh, no worries.  God's got my back."

So nostalgia kicks in, and you start rationalizing, "Wow, things were so much better five, six, seven, ten, or 20 years ago."  Of course, that's a load of crap, too.  Being a human being pretty much guarantees that life is going to be imperfect.  We're all fuckups, from the moment we enter crying to the moment we exit dying.  That means that all of our little boats are going to be tossed and swamped every day. 

If you're trying to read subtext in this post, forget it.  Yes, something shitty happened today.  No, I'm not going to discuss it.  You will just have to be satisfied knowing that I'm angry and sad tonight.  I'm trying to work through it, but the storm is still raging.  And I can't wake Jesus up to fix things miraculously.  (God hasn't worked like that for a long, long time.)

Instead, Saint Marty's just going to keep paddling and hoping he reaches the shore before his lungs fill with water.

Sea of Galilee

by: Martin Achatz

Sure, Jesus was napping

while the waves howled--

he remembered to take

his Dramamine.

May 9: "Tom Thumb's Thumb," Son's Middle College, ""Luke S."

Billy Collins contemplates . . .

Tom Thumb's Thumb

by:  Billy Collins

was so small

it failed to get the attention

of passing cars and trucks.

And what was he doing

out there anyway,

hitchhiking all by himself?

There's something almost paternal in this poem, Billy Collins worrying about Tom Thumb's fate at the hands of strangers.  Another way of phrasing his question is, "Where the hell were his parents?"

We live in a world where children are exposed to adult situations and problems at younger and younger ages.  My son and daughter know a lot more about this weird world than I did at their ages.  My biggest worry when I was a kid was whether or not I had collected the entire series of bubblegum Star Wars trading cards.  In summer, I could disappear from the house after breakfast and not come back until dusk, and nobody worried about me.

I never really appreciated the breadth of freedom I had when I was younger.  It was only when I started working, bought a house and car, became a husband and father that I developed nostalgia for those long July days filled with the buzz saw of insects.

But that's the truth about any life experience.  It's only in memory that it becomes poignant and wonderful  Childhood (for most people) takes on the gold tint of a daguerreotype.

I've been thinking a lot about my kids today.  (I use the term "kids," even though my daughter is 24 years old and my son is 15.)  Their young childhoods have taken on the patina of nostalgia for me now.  It seems like just yesterday they were staggering around in their diapers.  This afternoon, my son found out that he was accepted into middle college for next year.  That means, by the time he graduates from high school, he will have earned an associate's degree, with all of his expenses (tuition and books) paid for.

My little boy ain't so little any more.

And Saint Marty couldn't be prouder of him.

Luke S.

by:  Martin Achatz

If I was him,

I'd have stayed put,

drank my blue milk,

picked sand out of my ears,

written poems

about twin suns

opening like lizard

eyes on the horizon.

January 20: "Blueberries," Nostalgia, COVID-Positive

Mary Oliver picks blueberries . . . 

Blueberries

by:  Mary Oliver

I'm living in a warm place now, where

you can purchase fresh blueberries all

year long.  Labor free.  From various

countries in South America.  They're

as sweet as any, and compared with the

berries I used to pick in the fields

outside of Provincetown, they're

enormous.  But berries are berries.  They

don't speak any language I can't

understand.  Neither do I find ticks or

small spiders crawling among them.  So,

generally speaking, I'm very satisfied.

There are limits, however.  What they

don't have is the field.  The field they

belonged to and through the years I

began to feel I belonged to.  Well,

there's life and then there's later.

Maybe it's myself that I miss.  The

field, and the sparrow singing at the 

edge of the woods.  And the doe that one

morning came upon me unaware, all

tense and gorgeous.  She stamped her hoof

as you would to any intruder:  Then gave

me a long look, as if to say, Okay, you

stay in your patch, I'll stay in mine.

Which is what we did.  Try packing that

up, South America.

Mary Oliver is dealing with nostalgia here.  The blueberries she buys remind her of the blueberries she used to pick in a field near her home in Provincetown.  But Oliver doesn't stop there.  Because the poem isn't really just about blueberries.  It's about the whole blueberry-picking experience:  the sun on her back, the sparrow in a nearby woods, and a beautifully skittish, diffident doe.  Mary Oliver can't buy any of that at the market where she's shopping.

Nostalgia is a strange thing.  (I know I've written about this subject before, but humor me.)  Nostalgia is the human mind's way of taking any experience and whitewashing away all of the pain and grief and annoyances, leaving only a sepia-tinged daguerreotype of what actually happened.  That's how we can page through our old high school yearbooks and get all moony over pictures of ourselves in calculus class or with the cross country team.  Because our minds have erased all of the struggles--the late night study sessions and bruised bones, heartbreaking crushes and bullies.  Nostalgia is the reason women have more than one baby, because who in their right would reenlist for the pain of childbirth again?  They do it because they remember the first time the held their newborns instead of the effort of pushing a watermelon out of their bodies.

This morning, I tested positive for COVID.  My faithful disciples may remember that, at the beginning of January 2022, I got COVID.  What I recall of that time now is being at home and just watching movie after movie.  Going on walks with my wife, who was also COVID-positive.  And ordering pizza.  In short, I remember it as a pretty good winter vacation.

Of course, what I don't recall clearly from my first bout of COVID is what I'm experiencing right now--headache, runny nose, incessant cough, fever, nausea, and exhaustion.  Real exhaustion.  After I'm done typing this blog post, I'm going to take another nap.  That will be the fourth one today, I believe.  I'm sure I had all those symptoms last time, but it's just a blank wall in my mind.  

So, I'm like Mary Oliver right now, eating blueberries and not remembering the ticks and spiders of the field.

It's time for Saint Marty take a nap.

April 13, 14, 15, 16: Grace of Those Days, Class of 2020, Senior Pictures

Merton indulges in some serious nostalgia . . .

In the last moments in which I had an opportunity to do so, I tasted the ferocious delights of exultant gloating over the companions I was about to leave.  They stood around me in the sun, with their hands hanging at their sides, wearing their black smocks and their berets, and laughing and sharing my excitement, not without envy.

And then I was riding down the quiet street in a carriage, with my luggage beside me, and Father talking about what we were going to do.  How lightly the cab-horse's hoofs rang out in the hard, white dirt of the street!  How gaily they echoed along the pale smug walls of the dusty houses!  "Liberty!" they said, "liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty," all down the street.

We passed the big polygonal barn of a post-office, covered with the tatters of ancient posters, and entered under the dappled shadow of the plane trees.  I looked ahead, up the long street to Villenouvelle station, where I had taken the train so many times in the small hours of the morning, on my way home to spend the Sunday in St. Antonin.

When we got on the little train, and traveled the way we had first come to the Aveyron alley, I did indeed feel my heart tighten at the loss of my thirteenth century:  but oh, it had long ceased to belong to us.  We had not been able to hold on, for very long, to the St. Antonin of the first year:  and the bitter lyre of the Lycee had burned all its goodness out of me again, and I was cauterized against it, and had become somewhat insensitive to it:  not so much so, however, that I did not feel a little sad leaving it for ever.

It is sad, too, that we never lived in the house that Father built.  But never mind!  The grace of those days has not been altogether lost, by any means.

I think this sheltering in place makes everyone feel the way young Merton feels here--sad for the things we had or might have had.  I'm sure the high school seniors are experiencing this melancholy in a much different way than most.  In the blink of an executive order, they lost the last three months of their time together.  Prom, gone.  Senior skip day, gone.  Graduation ceremony, gone.  All night grad party, gone.  All those last laughs, last classes, last moments of shared irony.  Gone.

On Facebook right now, I've noticed a particular movement--posting your senior pictures in honor of the Class of 2020.  While I understand the sentiment behind it, I'm not sure if displaying my 1980s clothes and haircut necessarily makes today's high school seniors feel consoled or better in any way.  I think it's simply a way for middle-aged people to post embarrassing pictures of themselves to make fun of.  And I hate to say it, but I don't think the impulse to do this is truly motivated by thoughts of these young people who've lost so much.  It's more about nostalgia than anything else.

Don't get me wrong.  I've laughed at many of those senior pictures that have come through my Facebook feed.  Enjoyed the bad hairstyles and unfortunate outfits that were cool once.  They have brought good memories back for me.  But my point is that I HAVE those memories.  I can recall the warm June night I paraded out of my high school for the last time.  I can hear the songs that were played at the all night grad party (to this day, hearing Simple Minds' "Don't You (Forget About Me)" will immediately take me back to the Elks Club at 2 a.m. in the mid-80s.)  I was able to say goodbye to that part of my life in a profound and meaningful way.

The seniors of 2020 will never have the opportunity to be nostalgic about their last year of high school.  How can you be nostalgic about isolating in your home for months?  Or face masks?  Or economic recession/depression?  Death counts?  That's the stuff of a Stephen King novel, not your senior yearbook.  My heart breaks for these young people, because this time in their lives ended with a fever instead of "Pomp and Circumstance."

So, I will not be posting my senior picture on Facebook in support of the Class of 2020.  (Nobody wants to see that anyway.).  While, for me, that photo is a reminder of everything I had back then, for the graduating class of 2020, it's reminder of everything they have lost right now.

Instead, Saint Marty will post a picture of his puppy, because a cute puppy is more of a consolation to high school seniors right now than mullets and parachute pants.

March 30-31: Most Remarkable People, Doublespeak, Nostalgia

Merton writes about the Christmas of 1926 with some remarkable people . . .

In the winter of 1926 Father went to Murat.  Murat is in the Cantal, the old Province of Auvergne, a Catholic province.  It is in the mountains of central France, green mountains, old volcanoes.  The valleys are full of rich pastures and the mountains are heavy with fir trees or raise their green domes into the sky, bare of woods, covered with grass.  The people of this land are Celts, mostly.  The Auvergnats have been more or less laughed at, in French tradition, for their simplicity and rusticity.  They are very stolid people, but very good people.

At Murat, Father boarded with a family who had a little house, a sort of a small farm on the slope of one of the steep hills outside the town, and I went up there to spend the Christmas holidays, that year.

Murat was a wonderful place.  It was deep in snow, and the houses with their snow-covered roofs relieved the grey and blue and slate-dark patter of the buildings crowded together on the sides of these hills.  The town huddled at the foot of a rock crowned by a colossal statue of the Immaculate Conception, which seemed to me, at the time, to be too big, and to bespeak too much religious enthusiasm.  By now I realize that it did not indicate any religious excess at all.  These people wanted to say in a very obvious way that they loved Our Lady, who should indeed be loved and revered, as a Queen of great power and a Lady of immense goodness and mercy, mighty in her intercession for us before the throne of God, tremendous in the glory of her sanctity and her fullness of grace as Mother of God.  For she loves the children of God, who are born into the world with the image of God in their souls, and her powerful love is forgotten, and it is not understood, in the blindness and foolishness of the world.

However, I did not bring up the subject of Murat in in order to talk about the statue, but about M. and Mme. Privat.  They were the people with whom we boarded, and long before we got to Murat, when the train was climbing up the snowy valley, from Aurillac, on the other side of the Puy du Cantal, Father was telling me.  "Wait until you see the Privats."

In a way, they were to be among the most remarkable people I ever knew.  

Any person who knows me knows that Christmas is my jam.  Therefore, I love Merton's description of Murat in deep snow during the yuletide season.  And the huge statue of the Virgin Mary towering over the entire town.  It speaks to my Catholic childhood, where the walls were adorned with pictures of the Sacred Heart and a statue of the Blessed Mother looked down on family dinners from her perch on top of the china cabinet.

In this time of pandemic, I find my mind retreating to these simpler times, when life wasn't a daily struggle.  Even before Covid-19 entered the global consciousness, my life had become difficult in many ways.  Now, facing a kind of plague of Biblical proportions, I feel like everything that I thought was important and consequential is being stripped away.  Each day brings one less thing, one less comfort.

This morning, when I got to the hospital to report to work, I had to stand in line.  At the front of the line, I had to answer a series of questions ("Have you been experiencing fever or respiratory symptoms in the past week?" and "Have you traveled outside the Upper Peninsula in the past two weeks?" and "Have you been in contact with anyone who has been outside of the Upper Peninsula in the past two weeks?")  And then entered another line to have my temperature taken.  Only after passing this screening was I able to get my badge scanned and enter the building.

It was surreal, as if I was living in some kind of police state.  Now, I know that all this is being done in the interest of public safety, but that knowledge doesn't make this newest change any easier.  And a new (or old) language has entered the public domain, one that Orwell identified in 1948:  doublespeak.  Messages layered in double-negatives.  Announcements made and then minutes later retracted, rescinded, revised, or revoked.  This is the new normal.

That is why I allow myself to indulge in nostalgia these days.  Yes, the old days were not all sunshine and rainbows.  There was still poverty and racial injustice and homophobia and xenophobia and war and pestilences.  There hasn't been a time since Adam and Eve walked out of the Garden (metaphorically or literally, depending on your belief system) that human history hasn't been rife with these plagues, physical and existential. 

For tonight, however, I hold onto memories, like Christmases of the past.  My daughter's first Christmas.  She was twenty days old.  Fit into my elbow and slept there like a beautiful gift.  I hold moments like that close to me right now.  Dip into it like fresh water from a cold well.

Saint Marty wishes you all beauty and rest.

November 16: Time is an Illusion, Breakfast with Friends, Small Things

The man next to Ford grinned and nodded happily.  Ford ignored him.  He said, "Time is an illusion.  Lunchtime doubly so."

Time is an illusion.  So is memory.  Memory has a way of reordering itself, making itself look better than it actually was.  That's what the brain does.  Keeps the good.  Jettisons the bad.

Had breakfast with some good friends this morning.  I worked with most of these people for 15 to 20 years.  One of my best friends (who recently moved to Wisconsin) was there, too.  After a few minutes of awkward catching-up questions, the talk became like the talks we used to have at the Surgery Center where I used to work--casual, serious, joking, earnest--all at the same time.  At one point, I counted four different conversations going on at the same time.

It was good to be with these women (yes, they were all women).  They sort of defined one part of my life for close to two decades.  And it was really good to see my best friend who now lives in the Green Bay Packer state.  She has seen me through some difficult times in my personal life.  For the last two years at the Surgery Center, she kept me sane.  When I walked out of that place on the last day, she was right by my side.  We went out for drinks and fries afterward.  Cried in our beers, as country music songs go.

I miss that time a lot now.  As things usually go in life, I never realized how good I had it until it was gone.  I wish I could go back about five or six years, to when my sister was still alive and running the Surgery Center, and I was surrounded by these friends.  Yes, we got under each other's skins.  Yes, we fought and argued.  It wasn't perfect, but, in my mind, it's a time gilded with gold now.

We all have moments in our lives that we wish we could return to.  Weddings.  Children's births.  Graduations.  Moments when, for a few fleeting hours or days or weeks, everything seemed happy and perfect.  Of course, they weren't perfect.  There was struggle and pain and heartache.  Yet, the human mind has a way of whitewashing those negative feelings so that all that floats to the surface is the cream.  (I'm mixing metaphors, I know.  Stick with me.)  I like cream.

I've been indulging in nostalgia a lot these 'ber months (September, October, November).  I'm sure that I'll be doing the same in December.  As my tiny part of the world goes fallow and takes its long winter's nap--and things change for worse or better--I will continue to think about past times with friends and family.  The holidays always do that for me.  I think of bygone Halloweens and Thanksgivings and Christmases.  Old costumes.  People who no longer are at the table, eating turkey.  Christmas presents I no longer have to buy.

I think that nostalgia can be dangerous.  You can get stuck in the past.  You take inventory of all of the blessings you've received over the years.  'Tis the season.  Fa-la-la-la-la.  I need to keep reminding myself that God always has something up His sleeve.  Prayers that will be answered.  Gift-wrapped graces under the tree.  I may look back on this time in a few years and think to myself, "Jesus, that was a good time."  That's the power of memory.

Think about that as you go through your day tomorrow.  Those pancakes you have for breakfast may be the best pancakes you've every had.  That song you sing in church may become your favorite song.  That Christmas tree you decorate may be the prettiest ever.  Don't take the small things for granted.

This morning, Saint Marty had the best breakfast with his friends.

• 

May 20: Barren Grayness, Nostalgia, Abortion Bans

A little bit about dead planets and ghosts . . .

After a fairly shaky start to the day, Arthur's mind was beginning to reassemble itself from the shell-shocked fragments the previous day had left him with.  He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.  The way it functioned was very interesting.  When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centers of the subject's brain to see what was likely to go down well.  However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.  The Nutri-Matic was designed and manufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation whose complaints department now covers all the major landmasses of the first three planets in the Sirius Tau Star system. 

Arthur drank the liquid and found it reviving.  He glanced up at the screens again and watched a few more hundred miles of barren grayness slide past.  It suddenly occurred to him to ask a question that had been bothering him.

"Is it safe?" he said.

"Magrathea's been dead for five million years," said Zaphod; "of course it's safe.  Even the ghosts will have settled down and raised families by now."

Such an interesting passage, full of memory and ghosts.  The ghost of tea for Arthur.  The ghostly barren grayness of the "dead" Magrathea, and the ghosts and their families who live on its surface.  Imagine visiting the Colosseum in Rome and meeting the shades of some gladiators or senators or emperors.  It's all about the past crashing into the present.

As I've said before, I don't believe dwelling on the past is really a healthy practice for most people.  Nostalgia is always tinged with sadness and regret over things we've lost or didn't do.  It doesn't make living in the present easy, and it makes the future seem empty and sad.  Nostalgia hearkens back to a quieter simpler time that, in reality, didn't exist.

I have refrained from talking about the abortion ban laws that have been passed recently, led by the state of Alabama.  I try to stay away from truly divisive subjects in this blog.  My goal, when I sit down to type a post, is to try to be funny, entertaining, and maybe a little profound (a mark I more than frequently miss).  However, this topic has been weighing on my mind a lot.

Like everyone else, I fall victim to nostalgia.  When I reflect on my childhood, I think of it as a kind of golden time--no worries, simple pleasures (nothing was better than The Bionic Woman on TV), and lots of dreams about the future.  Of course, that's the way nostalgia works.  It makes you yearn for the "good ole days," whatever those were.

The "good ole days" when women stayed at home and raised children and cooked and cleaned and made dinner for their husbands didn't really exist.  Back in those good ole days, women were being abused, raped, and treated as property.  And they couldn't do anything about it.  I can't get nostalgic about that.

Connected to that, abortion was kind of a taboo topic when I was a kid.  When Bea Arthur tackled the subject on the sitcom Maude, my parents banned the show from the house.  (Years later, both my mom and dad loved The Golden Girls AND Bea Arthur.  Go figure.)  Coming from a Catholic family, I was raised to believe in the sanctity of life.  All life.

I still hold to that belief.  I believe that when immigrants come knocking on the door because of war or famine or natural disaster or man-made disaster, we should open that door and invite them in.  That's what my church tells me to do.  That's what my conscience tells me to do.  I believe that all human beings (man, woman, child, gay, straight, transgender, African, Asian, Native American, Mexican, Caucasian, mentally ill, imprisoned) deserve love, compassion, and mercy.  That's what my church tells me to do.  That's what my conscience tells me to do.  All lives are sacred.

It is easy to advocate for the unborn because they don't cost us anything.  We don't have to pay for their medical care.  Don't have to feed them or clothe them or house them.  We don't have to educate them.  All we have to do is let them be born.  Pretty simple.

After that, however, the American system fails.  Once unborn children become a born children, they become burdens on society.  Suddenly, all those people who were advocating for their right to exist start complaining about social programs like Medicaid and food stamps.  They want to take money away from public schools.  And they saddle young people with crushing educational debt.  In short, the job of caring for the unborn stops when the unborn start breathing on their own.

I am a man.  I will never have to make the choice of whether to carry a child or terminate a pregnancy, for whatever reason.  Frankly, I can't imagine having to face a decision like that.  It's incredibly personal,  Incredibly difficult.  And it's none of my business.

I will say that I am pro-life.  To me, that means that I believe in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, welcoming the immigrants, lifting up the poor, comforting the mentally ill, and holding everyone as worthy to be loved, no matter what.  Jesus taught me that last bit in Sunday school a long time ago.  He didn't teach me to judge or condemn people.  It was all about love and compassion and understanding.

What has been happening in Alabama and other states has nothing to do with Christian love or compassion or understanding.  Make no mistake about that.  Jesus Christ had very little respect for the politicians of his day.  In fact, He called those men "vipers," I believe.  And it was those politicians who eventually killed him.

There is no easy way to end this post.  I'm not going to change anyone's mind with my words.  I am just adding my male voice to the discussion, in support of all the women in my life whom I cherish and respect.  These women make difficult decisions every day of their lives.

Saint Marty loves and honors them for those difficult decisions.

May 13: What You Came to Look For, Doris Day, Car Accident

Zaphod and Trillian sharing a moment aboard the stolen Heart of Gold . . .

There was a tap at Zaphod's door.  It slid open.

"Zaphod . . .?"

"Yeah?"

Trillian stood outlines in an oval of light.

"I think we just found what you came to look for."

"Hey, yeah?"

Unlike Zaphod and Trillian, I don't know what I'm looking for tonight.  

I think I was looking forward to some peace after a long Monday.  This morning, I sat in my car, looking at the medical office building where I work, thinking, "I don't want to do this today."  A short while after I clocked in, I got a text from my sister-in-law, informing that Doris Day had died earlier in the morning.  That sort of took more wind out of my sails.

I grew up listening to Doris Day's singing.  She was one of my mother's favorites.  We watched her movies when they showed up on television.  (I can probably still sing all the songs to Calamity Jane by heart.)  It felt sort of like losing another part of my mother.  As I sit typing this post, I have a Doris Day album playing in the background on my laptop.  I still know all the words.

Shortly after I got home this afternoon, I got a phone call from my wife.  My three sisters and mother were in a car accident.  The brakes failed on my sister's car, and they had rear-ended the vehicle in front of them.  Nobody was hurt, but I had to go pick them up and drive them home.  I got to the scene of the accident before the police arrived.  I loaded my mother and two sisters into my Subaru and drove them home,  Then I went back to pick up my sister who had been driving the car.  She was still talking to the police as the tow truck was hauling away van.

I got back home again about 6 p.m.  I would say there's a good five thousand dollars in damage to my sister's car, but the important thing is that all of them were not injured.  My mother and sister, Rose, didn't even seem to remember the accident when I dropped them off.  Both of them were more focused on getting back into the familiar ground of their home.

And now, Doris Day is singing me into the evening.  I can remember my mother putting her Doris Day records on her stereo when she wanted me to take a nap.  Many an afternoon, I fell asleep to my mother's and Doris Day's voices dueting in long pillars of sunlight.  Even now, on this May evening in the year 2019, I can hear the ghost of my mother's voice singing with Doris Day.  It fills me with both warmth and melancholy.

It doesn't really help anything to dwell on the past.  I know that.  Nostalgia can be a trap.  You get stuck in memories, thinking everything used to be so much better.  Sometimes, you play the game of "what if?"--as in, "What if I had asked my mother more questions?  Found out more about her childhood?"  (I've beat myself up over that one quite a bit.)  The time for that is gone, however.

I have to hold on to the present, not brood over the past or worry about the future.  Try to build happiness out of the everyday.  Minute by minute.  Laugh a lot.  Say "I love you" a lot.  Maybe sing a few Doris Day songs to my kids.

Join Saint Marty:  "Once, I had a secret loooove, who lived within the heart of meeeeee . . ."

November 24: Watery Part of the World, Water Essay, Nostalgia

Call me Ishmael.  Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.

Saturday morning.  Rainy and gross.  The snow has been melting pretty quickly the last couple days in the Upper Peninsula.  I'm down to bare pavement and driveway at my house.

Usually, I avoid writing about weather in my blog.  I think it reflects an inability to come up with anything interesting to discuss, or that I'm avoiding a subject.  I've used both of those tactics in the past.  Saint Marty is not a weather blog.  I'm not an amateur meteorologist, and, generally, the only time weather preoccupies me is when I have to shovel it.

Today, however, I will be preoccupied with Nature and weather.  I'm working on an essay about water that focuses quite a bit on weather, so it's unavoidable.  I've been struggling a little with this project because it's writing that was solicited from me, and I'm feeling like a high school student trying to finish a term paper by deadline.  It's not something that encourages creativity in me.

In fact, I have three separate writing projects that need to be completed in the next few weeks.  The water essay.  A Christmas essay.  My annual Christmas poem.  Plus, I have teaching and grading and all the uncertainty at work.  AND I don't know what I'm teaching next semester at the university yet.  (That is the life of a contingent professor.  Classes based on student enrollment.  I will get classes.  I know that.  I'm just not sure if I'm going to be teaching composition, film, good books, mythology, or a combination of these subjects.  It's a little frustrating, considering I've been teaching in the department longer than all but two of the full-timers.)

If I didn't have all these other worries pressing in on my mind, I'd be gold right now.  I'd just disappear into my writing study (yes, I'd have a writing study) and pound out these pieces of writing.  That is not my life, though.  My times to write are smuggled in between one job and the next, carved out of the time before I go to bed, and stolen from grading time/reading time/teaching time/medical officing time.  That is how I've lived a majority of my writing life.

When I was in graduate school, working as a teaching assistant, I never really realized how lucky I was to be paid to simply teach, take classes, and write.  The hours I had to sit in my office with my journal and pen, plucking poems and stories and essays out of the air.  Even then, I felt stressed and rushed.  There was never enough time to get everything done.  I was always running a race.  I wish I had realized then how lucky I was.

In a few years, I'll probably be looking back at these minutes spent blogging and essaying and poeming with nostalgia, as well.  That's the way nostalgia works.  It makes you feel wistful for moments that weren't necessarily but are now gilded with gold because they are in the past, have been lived.  In retrospect, they seem better and happier and easier.  They weren't, though.  They were filled with sadness and anger and frustration, as well.

I'm not Marcel Proust, nibbling on a cookie that launches me into writing a multi-volume reflection on my life.  I'm just a little Upper Peninsula poet, staring out my window, trying to keep my head above water (or snow).

Call me Saint Marty.  Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sit down and write about the watery part of the world . . .

June 13: Kenneth Rexroth, "The Bad Old Days," Nostalgia

The Bad Old Days

by:  Kenneth Rexroth

The summer of nineteen eighteen   

I read The Jungle and The

Research Magnificent. That fall   

My father died and my aunt   

Took me to Chicago to live.   

The first thing I did was to take   

A streetcar to the stockyards.   

In the winter afternoon,   

Gritty and fetid, I walked

Through the filthy snow, through the   

Squalid streets, looking shyly   

Into the people’s faces,

Those who were home in the daytime.   

Debauched and exhausted faces,   

Starved and looted brains, faces   

Like the faces in the senile   

And insane wards of charity   

Hospitals. Predatory

Faces of little children.

Then as the soiled twilight darkened,   

Under the green gas lamps, and the   

Sputtering purple arc lamps,   

The faces of the men coming

Home from work, some still alive with   

The last pulse of hope or courage,   

Some sly and bitter, some smart and   

Silly, most of them already   

Broken and empty, no life,   

Only blinding tiredness, worse   

Than any tired animal.   

The sour smells of a thousand   

Suppers of fried potatoes and   

Fried cabbage bled into the street.   

I was giddy and sick, and out   

Of my misery I felt rising   

A terrible anger and out

Of the anger, an absolute vow.   

Today the evil is clean

And prosperous, but it is   

Everywhere, you don’t have to   

Take a streetcar to find it,

And it is the same evil.

And the misery, and the

Anger, and the vow are the same.

__________________________

Nostalgia can be a very comforting thing.  Thinking of days gone by with a sort of wistful longing.  Marcel Proust wrote several books about the subject.  I've been thinking a lot about my time in high school these last few weeks.  I'm not sure if "wistful" is the correct adjective here. 

I did have a pretty good high school experience.  Lots of friends.  Lots of interests--drama, cross country, English, creative writing, girls.  I wouldn't say I was a popular kid, but there wasn't a whole lot of bullying in my life.  Either that, or I just didn't really pay attention to whoever was trying to bully me.

In reality, I suppose, the good old days probably weren't all that good at times.  I had health struggles.  Between my freshman and sophomore years, I ended up in a diabetic coma for a while.  A few days in intensive care, followed by a week-long hospital stay.  Not fun.  Money was always a worry.  I always put pressure on myself to be the best at everything.  The summer after I graduated from high school, I ended up in a months-long depression due to the death of someone very close to me.

Nostalgia sort of whitewashes all that shit I went through.  That's the unhealthy part of it.

Saint Marty is trying not to be nostalgic tonight.  That means not watching The Breakfast Club or Ferris Bueller's Day Off or Stand By Me.

June 1: Rehearse That Now, Stories Within Stories, "Stand By Me"

"It was at this point, gentlemen, that enraged by the defection of seven of his former associates, and stung by the mocking voice that had last hailed him, and maddened by his long entombment in a place as black as the bowels of despair; it was then that Steelkilt proposed to the two Canallers, thus far apparently of mind with him, to burst out of their hole at the next summoning of the garrison; and armed with their keen mincing knives (long, crescentic, heavy implements with a handle at each end) run amuck from the bowsprit to the taffrail; and if by any devilishness of desperation possible, seize the ship. For himself, he would do this, he said, whether they joined him or not. That was the last night he should spend in that den. But the scheme met with no opposition on the part of the other two; they swore they were ready for that, or for any other mad thing, for anything in short but a surrender. And what was more, they each insisted upon being the first man on deck, when the time to make the rush should come. But to this their leader as fiercely objected, reserving that priority for himself; particularly as his two comrades would not yield, the one to the other, in the matter; and both of them could not be first, for the ladder would but admit one man at a time. And here, gentlemen, the foul play of these miscreants must come out.

"Upon hearing the frantic project of their leader, each in his own separate soul had suddenly lighted, it would seem, upon the same piece of treachery, namely: to be the foremost in breaking out, in order to be the first of the three, though the last of the ten, to surrender; and thereby secure whatever small chance of pardon such conduct might merit. But when Steelkilt made known his determination still to lead them to the last, they in some way, by some subtle chemistry of villany, mixed their before secret treacheries together; and when their leader fell into a doze, verbally opened their souls to each other in three sentences; and bound the sleeper with cords, and gagged him with cords; and shrieked out for the Captain at midnight.

"Thinking murder at hand, and smelling in the dark for the blood, he and all his armed mates and harpooneers rushed for the forecastle. In a few minutes the scuttle was opened, and, bound hand and foot, the still struggling ringleader was shoved up into the air by his perfidious allies, who at once claimed the honor of securing a man who had been fully ripe for murder. But all these were collared, and dragged along the deck like dead cattle; and, side by side, were seized up into the mizzen rigging, like three quarters of meat, and there they hung till morning. 'Damn ye,' cried the Captain, pacing to and fro before them, 'the vultures would not touch ye, ye villains!'

"At sunrise he summoned all hands; and separating those who had rebelled from those who had taken no part in the mutiny, he told the former he had a good mind to flog them all round- thought, upon the while, he would do so- he ought to- justice demanded it; but for the present, considering their timely surrender, he would let them go with a reprimand, which he accordingly administered in the vernacular.

"'But as for you, ye carrion rogues,' turning to the three men in the rigging- 'for you, I mean to mince ye up for the try-pots;' and, seizing a rope, he applied it with all his might to the backs of the two traitors, till they yelled no more, but lifelessly hung their heads sideways, as the two crucified thieves are drawn.

"'My wrist is sprained with ye!' he cried, at last; 'but there is still rope enough left for you, my fine bantam, that wouldn't give up. Take that gag from his mouth, and let us hear what he can say for himself.'

"For a moment the exhausted mutineer made a tremulous motion of his cramped jaws, and then painfully twisting round his head, said in a sort of hiss, 'What I say is this- and mind it well- if you flog me, I murder you!'

"'Say ye so? then see how ye frighten me'- and the Captain drew off with the rope to strike.

"'Best not,' hissed the Lakeman.

"'But I must,'- and the rope was once more drawn back for the stroke.

"Steelkilt here hissed out something, inaudible to all but the Captain; who, to the amazement of all hands, started back, paced the deck rapidly two or three times, and then suddenly throwing down his rope, said, 'I won't do it- let him go- cut him down: d'ye hear?'

But as the junior mates were hurrying to execute the order, a pale man, with a bandaged head, arrested them- Radney the chief mate. Ever since the blow, he had lain in his berth; but that morning, hearing the tumult on the deck, he had crept out, and thus far had watched the whole scene. Such was the state of his mouth, that he could hardly speak; but mumbling something about his being willing and able to do what the captain dared not attempt, he snatched the rope and advanced to his pinioned foe.

"'You are a coward!' hissed the Lakeman.

"'So I am, but take that.' The mate was in the very act of striking, when another hiss stayed his uplifted arm. He paused: and then pausing no more, made good his word, spite of Steelkilt's threat, whatever that might have been. The three men were then cut down, all hands were turned to, and, sullenly worked by the moody seamen, the iron pumps clanged as before.

"Just after dark that day, when one watch had retired below, a clamor was heard in the forecastle; and the two trembling traitors running up, besieged the cabin door, saying they durst not consort with the crew. Entreaties, cuffs, and kicks could not drive them back, so at their own instance they were put down in the ship's run for salvation. Still, no sign of mutiny reappeared among the rest. On the contrary, it seemed, that mainly at Steelkilt's instigation, they had resolved to maintain the strictest peacefulness, obey all orders to the last, and, when the ship reached port, desert her in a body. But in order to insure the speediest end to the voyage, they all agreed to another thing- namely, not to sing out for whales, in case any should be discovered. For, spite her leak, and spite of all her other perils, the Town-Ho still maintained her mast-heads, and her captain was just as willing to lower for a fish that moment, as on the day his craft struck the cruising ground; and Radney the mate was quite as ready to change his berth for a boat, and with his bandaged mouth seek to gag in death the vital jaw of the whale.

"But though the Lakeman had induced the seamen to adopt this sort of passiveness in their conduct, he kept his own counsel (at least till all was over) concerning his own proper and private revenge upon the man who had stung him in the ventricles of his heart. He was in Radney the chief mate's watch; and as if the infatuated man sought to run more than half way to meet his doom, after the scene at the rigging, he insisted, against the express counsel of the captain, upon resuming the head of his watch at night. Upon this, and one or two other circumstances, Steelkilt systematically built the plan of his revenge.

"During the night, Radney had an unseaman-like way of sitting on the bulwarks of the quarterdeck, and leaning his arm upon the gunwale of the boat which was hoisted up there, a little above the ship's side. In this attitude, it was well known, he sometimes dozed. There was a considerable vacancy between the boat and the ship, and down between this was the sea. Steelkilt calculated his time, and found that his next trick at the helm would come round at two o'clock, in the morning of the third day from that in which he had been betrayed. At his leisure, he employed the interval in braiding something very carefully in his watches below.

"'What are you making there?' said a shipmate.

"'What do you think? what does it look like?'

"'Like a lanyard for your bag; but it's an odd one, seems to me.'

'Yes, rather oddish,' said the Lakeman, holding it at arm's length before him; 'but I think it will answer. Shipmate, I haven't enough twine,- have you any?'

"But there was none in the forecastle.

"'Then I must get some from old Rad;' and he rose to go aft.

"'You don't mean to go a begging to him!' said a sailor.

"'Why not? Do you think he won't do me a turn, when it's to help himself in the end, shipmate?' and going to the mate, he looked at him quietly, and asked him for some twine to mend his hammock. It was given him- neither twine nor lanyard were seen again; but the next night an iron ball, closely netted, partly rolled from the pocket of the Lakeman's monkey jacket, as he was tucking the coat into his hammock for a pillow. Twenty-four hours after, his trick at the silent helm- nigh to the man who was apt to doze over the grave always ready dug to the seaman's hand- that fatal hour was then to come; and in the fore-ordaining soul of Steelkilt, the mate was already stark and stretched as a corpse, with his forehead crushed in.

"But, gentlemen, a fool saved the would-be murderer from the bloody deed he had planned. Yet complete revenge he had, and without being the avenger. For by a mysterious fatality, Heaven itself seemed to step in to take out of his hands into its own the damning thing he would have done.

"It was just between daybreak and sunrise of the morning of the second day, when they were washing down the decks, that a stupid Teneriffe man, drawing water in the main-chains, all at once shouted out, 'There she rolls! there she rolls!' Jesu, what a whale! It was Moby Dick.

"'Moby Dick!' cried Don Sebastian; 'St. Dominic! Sir sailor, but do whales have christenings? Whom call you Moby Dick?'

"'A very white, and famous, and most deadly immortal monster, Don;- but that would be too long a story.'

"'How? how?' cried all the young Spaniards, crowding.

"'Nay, Dons, Dons- nay, nay! I cannot rehearse that now. Let me get more into the air, Sirs.'

"'The chicha! the chicha!' cried Don Pedro; 'our vigorous friend faint;- fill up his empty glass!'

Ishmael is holding his audience spellbound with this tale of mutiny and murder.  The Spaniards are sitting in the bar, hanging on his every word.  And he drags the story out, braiding in details and suspense.  Now, almost at the end, Moby Dick makes an appearance, and the narrative ramps up in suspense.

This little narrative-within-a-narrative is a trick that writers have been using forever.  Melville is following the lead of Homer and Virgil and Ovid and Cervantes.  Yesterday, I went to a showing of the film Stand By Me at a local theater.  It was throwback Thursday, where older films are shown at a lower price.  I couldn't resist seeing River Phoenix as Chris Chambers on the big screen again.
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Of course, there are stories within stories in Stand By Me.  There's the pie-eating contest, with its climax of blueberry vomit.  It was my nine-year-old son's favorite part.  And then there's the little stories that are told along the way.  Teddy's ear being burned on a stove by his father.  Vern's quest to find his buried jar of pennies.  Gordy's brother being killed in a car wreck.  And Chris being stabbed in the throat at the end of the movie and dying.

I first saw Stand By Me at the end of the summer I graduated from high school, so I have a lot of memories attached to it.  The movie makes me happy and sad at the same time.  It came into my life at an end and a beginning.  Saying goodbye to my high school posse of friends.  Meeting a whole other posse.  It was a terrifying time.  As Gordy says in the movie, "Friends come in and out of our lives like busboys in a restaurant."

Seeing the movie again put me right back at that moment in my life.  I was only three years older than River Phoenix when the movie first came out.  I always think of my high school friends when I watch Stand By Me.  In fact, for many years, any time I saw a River Phoenix film, it was like being back in school again for me.  He was like a classmate.

I know that sounds strange.  Every once in a while, I sort of go on a River Phoenix movie binge, watching most of his films, including the more obscure ones.  Stand By Me, The Mosquito Coast, My Own Private Idaho, Dark Blood, and The Thing Called Love.  I know that nostalgia is a dangerous thing.  It doesn't allow for a person to focus on the present or future if you're constantly pining for days gone by.  Generally, I keep my eyes forward.  However, it may be time for a few River movies in the next week or so.

Saint Marty always gets like this when cap and gown season rolls around.