August 5: Tree with the Lights, Conjunctivitis, Olympic Opening Ceremony

When her doctor took her bandages off and led her into the garden, the girl who was no longer blind saw “the tree with the lights in it.” It was for this tree I searched through the peach orchards of summer, in the forests of fall and down winter and spring for years. Then one day I was walking along Tinker creek and thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The flood of fire abated, but I’m still spending the power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells un-flamed and disappeared. I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck. I have since only very rarely seen the tree with the lights in it. The vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it, for the moment the mountains open and a new light roars in spate through the crack, and the mountains slam.

Dillard is writing about a girl who was blind.  The girl underwent a surgery which restored her vision.  One of the first things she sees when the bandages are removed from her eyes is a tree "with lights in it."  The girl's perception of light and color was dependent upon her blind life, where she categorized the world in terms of every other sense besides sight.

I use this passage because it has to do with sight, and tonight I found out that my daughter has a case of conjunctivitis, or pink eye.  This comes after my wife and son were diagnosed with conjunctivitis on Thursday.  So, my whole family is walking around with crusty eyeballs.  Tomorrow, my daughter goes to the doctor in the morning to get some eye drops.

My eyes are burning, too.  Not because they are infected.  They're not.  Yet.  My eyes are burning because I just finished five hours of grading.  It feels as though my eyes are about to fall out of their sockets. 

I'm sitting in my living room, watching the Parade of Nations in the Opening Ceremony of the Rio Olympics.  Barely staying awake.  And the torch hasn't even made an appearance. 

Saint Marty is ready for his Olympic event:  sleeping.  He plans to win a gold medal.

Just because it's funny . . . If you know "Star Trek"

August 3: Opening Ceremonies, Kyle Dargan, "Olympic Drive"

Well, in two days the Summer Olympics in Rio kick off with the Opening Ceremonies.

I'm not usually a fan of sports.  I go to high school football games in the fall simply to see my daughter play in the marching band.  I watch the Super Bowl for the commercials.  However, I love watching the Olympics.  I think it has to do with the combination of competition and cultures.  Learning about a country's history and people.

Well, I came across a poem by Kyle Dargan that I thought was about the Olympics.  It's not.  It's about race and poverty and the end of the world.  Another quasi science fiction poem.  It's a great poem, but has little to do with the Olympics.

Saint Marty thinks there should be an Olympic event in poetry.  How about a sonnet slam?  Or a villanelle vault?  Haiku high jump?

Olympic Drive

by:  Kyle Dargan

Across from the gorgeous dog park,

men dream against poodle-pissed trees — 

their pillows made from breath captured

in milk cartons. Only arid, temperate

climate offers respite. Let us suppose

they have tales, here in this city

where filmed stories turn a mint.

All around, one wide screen — the dark hills

due north pixel-pocked with villa lights.

Below, streets hemmed with haggard

brown men — jack-in-the-box bodies

ever unfolding. Who is pitching

this script? Title: “The Child of 1968.”

Voiceover: After the Integration Apocalypse,

one man must find his way in a land

where the sole survivors who look or speak

like him are those rendered disturbed

and indigent. Assume the Motion Picture

Association eager to levy a “Rated R,”

then remember that those who judge

violence never shared your definition

of savagery. A culling is all your eyes

decipher — your herd thinned. No urban

wildlife anywhere to be found,

yet hunger for a hunt remains.

Tagline: A hero must choose — 

between starving or bartering one’s own

skin. Plot: Amidst the solar famine, bio-

electric studies revealed melanin’s subtle

charge — the brown population gone

mad from being sapped like CopperTops.

Imagine The Matrix without the extra-

terrestrial machines. Imagine that among us

there have lived men churning statistics,

devising a human harvest, a brutal method

to subsist off fellow men and leave their bones

for the gnawing of next century’s mutts.