May 17, 2025: "Why My Mother Made Me," Hold On to Things, "Momento Mori"

What makes a person?  It's an interesting question.

Do past traumas?  Old relationships?  Physical challenges?  Movies?  Television shows?  Parents?  Teachers?  I guess it boils down to nature versus nurture.  Are we born with our personalities, or do our personalities develop over time?

Sharon Olds meditates on why she was born . . .  

Why My Mother Made Me

by: Sharon Olds

Maybe I am what she always wanted, 

my father as a woman, 

maybe I am what she wanted to be 

when she first saw him, tall and smart, 

standing there in the college yard with the 

hard male light of 1937 

shining on his slicked hair. She wanted that 

power. She wanted that size. She pulled and 

pulled through him as if he were silky 

bourbon taffy, she pulled and pulled and 

pulled through his body till she drew me out, 

sticky and gleaming, her life after her life. 

Maybe I am the way I am 

because she wanted exactly that, 

wanted there to be a woman 

a lot like her, but who would not hold back, so she 

pressed herself, hard, against him, 

pressed and pressed the clear soft 

ball of herself like a stick of beaten cream 

against his stained sour steel grater 

until I came out the other side of his body, 

a tall woman, stained, sour, sharp, 

but with milk at the center of my nature. 

I lie here now as I once lay 

in the crook of her arm, her creature, 

and I feel her looking down into me the way 

the maker of a sword gazes at his face 

in the steel of the blade.

We all hold onto things--trinkets from the past that seem too important simply to throw away.  I still have a People Magazine from the week River Phoenix died.  I've been keeping diaries and journals since I was in middle school.  I have boxes and boxes of them.  I've been posting on this blog for close to 15 years now.  Well over 5,000 posts.

My poems and posts and stories and journals are my my mementos.  They remind me of who I am, where I come from.  And now this post will be another of those reminders.  Twenty years from now, I may reread these words and not remember a single thing about their composition.  Or I may remember everything.

What I want to remember about today:  my wife and I watched an episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel tonight.  Being happy.  Feeling blessed.  Not wanting the night to end.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for today about all those things that remind us of life . . . and death, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Find an index card and turn it vertically.  Write a poem about something that doesn't last long.  Writing on an index card vertically will result in much shorter lines--see how this added structure changes how you normally write.  For extra credit, turn the index card over and write horizontally about something that lasts a long time.

Memento Mori

by: Martin Achatz

My sister's hospital badge,

from when she was still saving

people's lives.  A polaroid

of a cocker spaniel, blue ball

in his jaws, as if he's waiting

for me to toss it one last time.

My grandfather's wedding ring,

worn smooth as an old tooth.

My grandma didn't want it, 

told me it belonged to his first

wife, as if love was a well

that could run dry.  We all keep

tokens like these in dresser

drawers, closet boxes.  I bet

Mary Todd kept the silver

half-dollars from Lincoln's

eyelids.  Maybe she worried 

them all day until her fingers 

burned, slept with them 

under her cool pillow at night 

until she couldn't remember

the sound of his voice or 

the smell of his 

whiskered cheeks.

June 12: "The English Professor," Love, "Man at Work"

Billy Collins misdiagnoses someone . . . 

The English Professor

by: Billy Collins

When I asked him

if he was in love,

he accused me

of anthropomorphizing him.

Love is a word that gets thrown around a lot.  For example, this afternoon, someone offered me a Twix candy bar, and I said, "I love Twix!"  Other examples:  I've claimed to love, at various times, The Godfather, Tracy Chapman songs, long naps, cheddar bay biscuits from Red Lobster, writing poems, and River Phoenix.

Love, in our present age, has been devalued as a concept, and I'm just as guilty as anyone else.  The word "love" used to be reserved for certain bonds or relationships between living creatures.  "Love" indicates a depth of emotion and devotion that can't really be applied to songs or food or inanimate objects.  I love my kids and would sacrifice my life for them.  I also love Cheetos, but I wouldn't donate a kidney to get a family-size bag of them.  See the difference?

I try to be very aware of how I use the word "love" in my everyday conversations, reserving it for when I'm interacting with honest-to-God loved ones--my wife or kids or siblings or close friends or dog.  (Yes, pets can be loved ones.)  I can say "I love you" to them without feeling disingenuous.  I truly do love them.

This evening, I hosted a concert at the library.  A duo named Flagship Romance that I admire a lot.  (I almost used the "l" word.)  They sang almost all completely original songs with harmonies so close they sounded like one voice.  It was a lovely way to end my day.  (NOTE:  "lovely" is a much more usable word that doesn't require a marriage license or birth control or paternity test.)  These performers are obviously very passionate about what they do.  (Dare I use the "l" word?)  They have been blessed with incredible musical talents.

I have been blessed, I think, with writing talents.  I can't imagine a day going by without me scribbling or typing a poem or short story or essay or blog post.  Writing is a part of who I am.  Do I love writing?  Hmmmmm . . . I guess it depends on how your define the word.

The ancient Greeks identified and defined eight different types of love:

1. Eros:  sexual passion
2. Philia:  deep friendship
3. Ludus:  playful love
4. Agape:  love for everyone
5. Pragma:  longstanding love
6. Philautia:  love of the self
7. Storge:  family love
8. Mania:  obsessive love

My love of poetry and writing borders on mania at times.  If I'm working on a piece of writing, I can be more than a little obsessive.  My love for my kids:  storge.  My love for the music of Flagship Romance tonight:  philautia tinged with mania.  

A popular saying these days is "Love is Love."  It's mostly used to confront homophobes and transphobes (basically any kind of love phobe).  You don't pick who you fall in love with.  Love picks you.  Period.  As long as you don't eros you cocker spaniel.

Saint Marty is now going mania the shit out of a bag of M&Ms. 

Man at Work

by: Martin Achatz

If you spy me sitting

on a bench by a lake,

staring at a paddling duck,

please know that I'm hard at work

writing a poem.

June 5-6: As Close As Possible, a Little Obsessive, Love Your Neighbor

Merton runs into his brother . . . 

It was very hot on Church Street.  The street was torn up, and the dust swirled in the sun like gold around the crawling busses and the trucks and taxis. There were crowds of people on the sidewalks. 

I stood under the relatively cool, white walls of the new post-office building. And then, suddenly, walking in the crowd I saw my brother who was supposed to be at Ithaca. He was coming out of the building, and walking with more of a purpose, more of a swing. He almost ran into me. 

“Oh,” he said, “hello. Are you going out to Douglaston? I’ll give you a ride. I’ve got the car here, just around the corner.” 

“What are you doing here?” I said. 

Under the arching door of the big building were placards about joining the Navy, the Army, the Marines. The only question in my mind was which one he had been trying to join. 

“Did you read about this new Naval Reserve scheme they’ve got?” he said. I knew something about it. That was what he was trying to get into. It was practically settled. 

“You go on a cruise,” he said, “and then you get a commission.” 

“Is it as easy as that?” 

“Well, I guess they’re anxious to get men. Of course, you have to be a college man.” 

When I told him I was not going to enter the novitiate after all, he said: “Why don’t you come in to the Naval Reserve.” 

“No,” I said, “no, thanks.” 

Presently he said: “What’s that package you’ve got under your arm? Buy some books?” 

“Yes.” 

When he had unlocked the car, I ripped the paper off the package, and took out the cardboard box containing the set of four books, bound in black leather, marked in gold. 

I handed him one of the volumes. It was sleek and smelled new. The pages were edged in gold. There were red and green markers.

“What are they?” said John Paul. 

“Breviaries.” 

The four books represented a decision. They said that if I could not live in the monastery, I should try to live in the world as if I were a monk in a monastery. They said that I was going to get as close as possible to the life I was not allowed to lead. If I could not wear the religious habit, I would at least join a Third Order and would try my best to get a job teaching in some Catholic College where I could live under the same roof as the Blessed Sacrament. 

Merton, despite his recent spiritual setbacks, is pretty tenacious.  He feels some sort of calling, and he's going to stick to it, even if it means just being near monastics and emulating their way of life.  Somehow, he will experience the religious life by osmosis and personal practice.  Of course, Merton's younger brother has a singular focus, himself--joining the armed forces at the cusp of World War II.

Believe it or not, I have been known to be a little obsessive.  I know it's hard to envision.  At certain times in my life, I have been obsessed with River Phoenix (still am), poetry (ummm--yeah), the Nobel Prize in Literature (I have a replica of one sitting on my desk), Sharon Olds (attended a poetry workshop led by her in California), fountain pens, Moleskine journals, Bigfoot (almost done with my book of poems), Normal People by Sally Rooney (I've read it seven times), astronomy, Star Wars, Christmas (always), and horror movies.

Since becoming a home owner, I also obsess over snow removal and lawn mowing.  I don't enjoy shoveling snow or pushing a lawnmower.  However, I like a clear driveway and sidewalk in winter and a manicured front and backyard in the summer.  Yesterday, in 90-degree temperatures, I mowed my lawn.  Cuz it was shaggy.

By the time I was done, I was so hot it felt like the skin was going to melt from my face like that guy in Raiders of the Lost Ark who gazes into the Ark of the Covenant, at the power of God, and turns into a puddle of Jell-O.  All I wanted was a cool shower and an M&M ice cream sandwich from my freezer.

I had just returned the lawnmower to my parents' house because I don't own my own.  As I pulled up in front of my house and turned off my car engine, I saw a man coming around my house from the backyard.

He was tall.  Thin as a blade of grass, as my mom used to say.  The kind of thin that looked as if you could cut your finger if you touched him.  He wore dirty jeans and a tee-shirt that hung like an empty grocery bag on him.  His face hadn't seen a razor in weeks.  By my estimation, he was in his 20s.  

I was about to say something like, "What the hell are you doing in my backyard?"  I was still hot and cranky.  But I didn't say that.  Instead, I nodded, smiled, and said, "Hey, how's it going?"

He held out an empty Gatorade bottle to me.  "Do you think you could spare some water?" he said.

And then I remembered the water spigot in my backyard that didn't work.  "Absolutely," I said.  I took his bottle, brought it inside, filled it with ice and water.  Then I went to my freezer, grabbed the last M&M ice cream sandwich.  I went back outside.

I handed the young guy his bottle and the ice cream sandwich.  "Looks like you need to cool down," I said.

The man took the bottle and ice cream.  "God bless you," he said.  He turned and walked up the street, holding that ice cream sandwich in one hand, drinking deeply from the Gatorade bottle.  

Sometimes, God is kind of a showoff.  She likes to put things into perspective in dramatic ways.  A well-kept lawn is not one of the Ten Commandments.  In the Book of Mark, Jesus identifies the two greatest of God's commandments:  "The most important one is this . . . 'Love the Lord your God with your whole heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'  The second is this:  'Love your neighbor as yourself.'  There is no commandment greater than these."

Saint Marty got the hint.   

May 29: Turned Into Grace, Primary Motivation, "A Question About Bigfoot"

Merton experiences major self-doubt . . . 

The blow fell suddenly. 

I was within a few weeks of entering the novitiate. Already I was receiving those last minute letters from the novice-master, with the printed lists of things I was expected to bring with me to the monastery. They were few enough. The only perplexing item on the list was “one umbrella.” 

The list made me happy. I read it over and over. I began to feel the same pleased excitement that used to glow in the pit of my stomach when I was about to start out for camp in the summer, or to go to a new school.... 

Then God asked me a question. He asked me a question about my vocation. 

Rather, God did not have to ask me any questions. He knew all that He needed to know about my vocation. He allowed the devil, as I think, to ask me some questions, not in order that the devil should get any information, but in order that I might learn a thing or two. 

There is a certain kind of humility in hell which is one of the worst things in hell, and which is infinitely far from the humility of the saints, which is peace. The false humility of hell is an unending, burning shame at the inescapable stigma of our sins. The sins of the damned are felt by them as vesture of intolerable insults from which they cannot escape, Nessus shirts that burn them up for ever and which they can never throw off. 

The anguish of this self-knowledge is inescapable even on earth, as long as there is any self-love left in us: because it is pride that feels the burning of that shame. Only when all pride, all self-love has been consumed in our souls by the love of God, are we delivered from the thing which is the subject of those torments. It is only when we have lost all love of our selves for our own sakes that our past sins cease to give us any cause for suffering or for the anguish of shame. 

For the saints, when they remember their sins, do not remember the sins but the mercy of God, and therefore even past evil is turned by them into a present cause of joy and serves to glorify God. 

It is the proud that have to be burned and devoured by the horrible humility of hell.... But as long as we are in this life, even that burning anguish can be turned into a grace, and should be a cause of joy.

Anguish that is transformed into a grace.  A cause of joy.  That's a very Flannery O'Connoresque statement.  It's sort of like the Misfit shooting the grandmother in the head at the end of "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and then saying, "She would have been a good woman . . . if it had been someone there to shoot her every minute of her life."  

Basically, what Merton (and O'Connor) are saying is that most of us go through life pretty self-deluded.  Our primary motivation is not the betterment of our neighbor or neighborhood or city or state or country or planet or universe.  Nope.  Most of us don't want to be bothered with true selflessness.  That would involve sacrifice.  Handing the reins over to something bigger than ourselves.  That's a pretty terrifying notion.

Think about it.  How much of what anyone does in a day could be categorized as selfless?  Yes, there are some vocations that lean in that direction.  Teaching.  Nursing.  Doctoring.  Ministering.  Pastoring.  But my therapist recently pointed something out.  We were talking about a particular life situation that causes me a great deal of heartache, and she said to me, "What do you get out of it?"

"What do you mean?" I said, a little indignant but sensing where the conversation was headed.

"There has to be a reason why you keep doing what you're doing," she replied, "otherwise, you wouldn't continue to do it.  There has to be some kind of payoff."

There it is.  The primary motivation for most people:  reward.  Money.  Prestige.  Power.  Fame.  Self image.  Benefits.  Vacation time.  I've worked jobs I've hated for the paycheck.  I've stayed in positions for the medical insurance.  And I've remained in painful relationships because, somehow, they reinforced certain roles in which I cast myself--victim, supportive friend and partner, selfless caregiver.

What Merton says in the passage above is that, until "all self love has been consumed in our souls by the love of God, are we delivered from the thing which is the subject of those torments."  When does a person become a saint?  When the love of God and nothing else becomes that person's primary motivation.  That's a pretty tall order.  And very few people reach that point in their lives.

Most of us are in the process of becoming something better.  I would say that describes 99.9999% of the inhabitants of this little blue marble we live on.  You can be a vegan animal rights activist and still struggle with drug addiction.  Think River Phoenix.  A devoted disciple and friend and still deny God not once, not twice, but three times.  Think Saint Peter.  A  brilliant comedian and actor and still give into despair.  Think Robin Williams.  A nun who devotes her life to ministering to the poor and still not sense the presence of God.  Think Mother Teresa.

I could go on, but you get the idea.  The human condition is a mysterious thing.  Full of contradiction and impossibility.  One person born into poverty will end up in prison.  Another person born into poverty will become a saint.  And still another person born into poverty will end up in prison and then become a saint.

Tonight, Saint Marty embraces the mystery of being human.

And a poem about mystery . . . 

A Question About Bigfoot

by:  Martin Achatz

Do I believe in Bigfoot?
That’s not easy to answer.
It’s like trying to figure out
love after 25 years of marriage.
Does my wife still love me?
Do I still love her?
Will she meet someone
in the dairy section at Walmart
as they both reach for the same
half gallon of 1% milk and,
in that instant, lose that ineffable
thing that has held us together
this last quarter century? What’s
bound us to each other
like a filament from a spider’s
spinneret? What sets love
in motion then lights it on fire
until it burns down the way
a fuse on a bottle rocket does?
I guess what I’m talking about
here is mystery. I want to
believe in Bigfoot, that love
won’t fuse out, shoot into
heaven, be gone faster
than a startled rabbit. Because
really, what’s life without
mysteries? Just a half gallon
of 1% milk, curdled in the back
of the fridge, three months old.

February 20: I Am Going to Be a Priest, God Talks to Us, River Phoenix

Merton has a quiet revelation . . .

It was the voice of the Church, the Bride of Christ who is in the world yet not of it, whose life transcends and outlives wars and persecutions and revolutions and all the wickedness and cruelty and rapacity and injustice of men. It is truly meet and just always and in all things to give Thee thanks, Holy Lord, omnipotent Father, eternal God: a tremendous prayer that reduces all wars to their real smallness and insignificance in the face of eternity. It is a prayer that opens the door to eternity, that springs from eternity and goes again into eternity, taking our minds with it in its deep and peaceful wisdom. Always and in all things to give Thee thanks, omnipotent Father. Was it thus that she was singing, this Church, this one Body, who had already begun to suffer and to bleed again in another war? 

She was thanking Him in the war, in her suffering: not for the war and for the suffering, but for His love which she knew was protecting her, and us, in this new crisis. And raising up her eyes to Him, she saw the eternal God alone through all these things, was interested in His action alone, not in the bungling cruelty of secondary causes, but only in His love, His wisdom. And to Him the Church, His Bride, gave praise through Christ, through Whom all the angelic hierarchies praise Him... 

I knelt at the altar rail and on this the first day of the Second World War received from the hand of the priest, Christ in the Host, the same Christ Who was being nailed again to the cross by the effect of my sins, and the sins of the whole selfish, stupid, idiotic world of men. 

There was no special joy in that week-end in Virginia. On the Saturday afternoon when we started out from Richmond to go to Urbanna, where Jinny’s family had a boat they were going to sail in a regatta, we got the news about the sinking of the Atbenia, and then, that evening, I suddenly developed a pain in an impacted wisdom tooth. It raged all night and the next day I staggered off to the regatta, worn out with sleeplessness and holding a jaw full of pain. 

Down at the dock where there was a gas-pump for the motor boats and a red tank full of Coca-Cola on ice, we stood out of the sun in the doorway of a big shed smelling of ropes and pitch, and listened to a man talking on the radio from London. 

His voice was reassuring. The city had not yet been bombed. 

We started out of the cove, and passed through the mouth into the open estuary of the Rappahannock, blazing with sun, and everybody was joking about the Bremen. The big German liner had sailed out of New York without warning and had disappeared. Every once in a while some high drawling Southern female voice would cry: 

“There’s the Bremen.” 

I had a bottle of medicine in my pocket, and with a match and a bit of cotton I swabbed the furious impacted tooth. 

Nevertheless, when I got back to New York, it turned out that the war was not going to be so ruthless after all—at least so it seemed. The fighting was fierce in Poland, but in the west there was nothing doing. And now that the awful tension was over, people were quieter and more confident than they had been before the fighting had started. 

I went to a dentist who hammered and chipped at my jaw until he got the wisdom tooth out of my head, and then I went back to Perry Street and lay on my bed and played some ancient records of Bix Beiderbecke, Paul Whiteman’s trumpet player, and swabbed my bleeding mouth with purple disinfectant until the whole place reeked of it. 

I had five stitches in my jaw. 

The days went by. The city was quiet and confident. It even began to get gay again. Whatever happened, it was evident that America was not going to get into the war right away, and a lot of people were saying that it would just go on like this for years, a sort of state of armed waiting and sniping, with the big armies lined up in their impregnable fortified areas. It was as if the world were entering upon a strange new era in which the pretence of peace had defined itself out into what it was, a state of permanent hostility that was nevertheless not quite ready to fight. And some people thought we were just going to stay that way for twenty years. 

For my own part, I did not think anything about it, except that the grim humor of Russia’s position in the war could not help but strike me: for now, after a loud outcry and a great storm of crocodile tears over Chamberlain’s betrayal of Czechoslovakia the year before, the Reds were comfortably allied with Germany and blessing, with a benign smile, the annihilation of Poland, ready themselves to put into effect some small designs of their own regarding the Finns. 

The party line had evolved indeed, and turned itself into many knots since the days of the 1935 Peace Strike and the Oxford Pledge. We had once been led to believe that all wars were wars of aggression and wars of aggression were the direct product of capitalism, masking behind Fascism and all the other movements with colored shirts, and therefore no one should fight at all. It now turned out that the thing to do was support the aggressive war of the Soviets against Finland and approve the Russian support of German aggression in Poland. 

The September days went by, and the first signs of fall were beginning to be seen in the clearing of the bright air. The days of heat were done. It was getting on toward that season of new beginnings, when I would get back to work on my Ph.D., and when I hoped possibly to get some kind of job as an instructor at Columbia, in the College or in Extension. 

These were the things I was thinking about when one night Rice and Bob Gerdy and I were in Nick’s on Sheridan Square, sitting at the curved bar while the room rocked with jazz. Presently Gibney came in with Peggy Wells, who was one of the girls in that show at the Center Theater, the name of which I have forgotten. We all sat together at a table and talked and drank. It was just like all the other nights we spent in those places. It was more or less uninteresting but we couldn’t think of anything else to do and there seemed to be no point in going to bed. 

After Rice and Gerdy went home, Gibney and Peggy and I still sat there. Finally it got to be about four o’clock in the morning. Gibney did not want to go out on Long Island, and Peggy lived uptown in the Eighties. 

They came to Perry Street, which was just around the corner. 

It was nothing unusual for me to sleep on the floor, or in a chair, or on a couch too narrow and too short for comfort—that was the way we lived, and the way thousands of other people like us lived. One stayed up all night, and finally went to sleep wherever there happened to be room for one man to put his tired carcass. 

It is a strange thing that we should have thought nothing of it, when if anyone had suggested sleeping on the floor as a penance, for the love of God, we would have felt that he was trying to insult our intelligence and dignity as men! What a barbarous notion! Making yourself uncomfortable as a penance! And yet we somehow seemed to think it quite logical to sleep that way as part of an evening dedicated to pleasure. It shows how far the wisdom of the world will go in contradicting itself. “From him that hath not, it shall be taken away even that which he hath.” 

I suppose I got some five or six hours of fitful sleep, and at about eleven we were all awake, sitting around dishevelled and half stupefied, talking and smoking and playing records. The thin, ancient, somewhat elegiac cadences of the long dead Beiderbecke sang in the room. From where I sat, on the floor, I could see beyond the roofs to a patch of clear fall sky. 

At about one o’clock in the afternoon I went out to get some breakfast, returning with scrambled eggs and toast and coffee in an armful of cardboard containers, different shapes and sizes, and pockets full of new packs of cigarettes. But I did not feel like smoking. We ate and talked, and finally cleared up all the mess and someone had the idea of going for a walk to the Chicken Dock. So we got ready to go. 

Somewhere in the midst of all this, an idea had come to me, an idea that was startling enough and momentous enough by itself, but much more astonishing in the context. Perhaps many people will not believe what I am saying. 

While we were sitting there on the floor playing records and eating this breakfast the idea came to me: “I am going to be a priest.”

This is how most big ideas come to me:  in quiet, mundane moments.  Between scrambled eggs and jazz, Merton comes to his calling.  It's not one thing.  He doesn't read a want ad from a Trappist monastery.  Doesn't see a billboard in Times Square with the face of Saint Benedict on it.  I suppose that it is simply an accumulation of events and experiences that leads him to this epiphany.  Perhaps it's everything that's happened in his life up to this point.

It is almost midnight on Saturday.  It has been a long day of library work and church musician work and writer's work.  This blog post is the end for me.  After I click the publish tab, I may just stumble off to bed, or I may put a movie in the Blu-ray player and fall asleep on the couch.  I could go grab some chips from the kitchen cupboard, a glass of wine, and a book.  Read into the early Sunday morning hours.  

And somewhere, in the middle of all that, perhaps God will reach down and tap me on the shoulder.  Whisper in my ear.  Place in my mind something astounding.  Maybe I'll wake up in the morning, run to my kitchen table, and start writing a book that will become a bestseller.  Or start scribbling a poem in my journal that will become a viral sensation.  Or apply for an arts residency on Rabbit Island.  Or compose an opera libretto.   

Here's the thing:  I think God talks to us all the time.  We're just too blinded and deafened by life to hear Her.  It's like chasing sleep when the person in bed next to you is snoring so loud that it rattles the windows.  It's impossible to do.  The noise overwhelms the urge for rest, drives it away.  And you lie there, head on the pillow, staring up at the ceiling, thinking about the leftover pizza in the fridge.

Since I'm a poet, I sort of depend on inspiration for a lot of what I do.  Sometimes it's easy.  Last weekend, God put a poem in my head.  I took out my journal and, about three hours later, I had a finished poem.  Sometimes it's difficult, like tonight.  I planned on working on a chapbook manuscript this evening.  Instead, I read a short story.  Had a text conversation with a good friend who had a really terrible day because of a reaction to a medication.  Watched the movie The Family Stone.  Planned a couple poetry workshops.  Answered a couple e-mails.  Took a nap.  Basically, I did everything BUT revise that book.

Now, I want to watch a River Phoenix movie.  Maybe My Own Private Idaho.  I'm not sure if all the things I've done this evening are a prelude to some kind divine artistic revelation, or just stupid indulgences.  Avoidance.  Noise getting in the way of God's work in my life.  And it's getting so late that God may just have to call back tomorrow.  

I'm going to click publish in a minute or so.  Grab a piece of pizza.  Cue up River Phoenix.  Fall asleep on the couch.

That is what Saint Marty is feeling called to do.  Amen.  Hallelujah.  Pass the bottle.

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.

September 27: Longing, Saeed Jones, "Kudzu"

Really tired today.  I'm longing for a quiet night, although I have to teach an evening class.

I love the word "longing."  It stretches itself across sentence, line, page.  It calls to mind the feelings I had as a teenager, when the one person you longed to be with didn't like you "that way."  I remember that girl.  She was beautiful and smart, the object of longing from many people, male and female. 

I've not seen this person since I graduated from high school, many, many years ago.  And maybe that's a good thing.  She remains frozen in that longing, forever young and beautiful, like Marilyn Monroe or James Dean or River Phoenix.

And that's the way Saint Marty prefers to remember her.  Forever.

Kudzu

by:  Saeed Jones

           I won’t be forgiven

for what I’ve made

of myself.

            Soil recoils

from my hooked kisses.

            Pines turn their backs

on me. They know

what I can do

with the wrap of my legs.

            Each summer,

when the air becomes crowded

with want, I set all my tongues

upon you.

            To quiet this body,

you must answer

my tendrilled craving.

            All I’ve ever wanted

was to kiss crevices, pry them open,

and flourish within dew-slick

hollows.

            How you mistake

my affection.

            And if I ever strangled sparrows,

it was only because I dreamed

of better songs.

June 16: Friendless and Despised, Charles Dickens, Imperfections

With  regard to the whereabouts of Kilgore Trout:  he actually lived in Ilium, Billy's hometown, friendless and despised.  Billy would meet him by and by.

Kilgore Trout lives in Billy's home town.  He's not quite a celebrity, despite that fact that he has written a lot of books.  A lot.  And Vonnegut promises that Trout will show up later in Billy's story.

There have been a lot of people I would like to meet in my life.  Stephen King and John Irving, for instance.  Billy Collins.  I've met a few of my idols, as well.  I was twice in the same room as Maya Angelou.  I actually shook Kurt Vonnegut's hand once.  I've talked about poetry with Sharon Olds.  I had a picture taken with Alec Baldwin.

There are also people that I would have liked to meet, but never had the opportunity.  Katherine Hepburn.  Robin Williams.  As a teenager, I always thought that I was going to be friends eventually with River Phoenix.  He was going to read something that I wrote, and he would just call me up or show up at my front door.

There is something about certain public figures that just draw me in.  I have read a thousand-page biography of Charles Dickens not once, not twice, not three times.  I've read it five or six times.  Most of the time, the people who I find the most fascinating--the ones with whom I want to be friends--are really flawed.  People who have a lot of light and dark in them.  I feel a kinship with individuals like this.

I like the idea that people, despite their incredible limitations, can do really great things.  Robin Williams had mental health and addiction issues.  Charles Dickens was most certainly bipolar.  River Phoenix was a heroin addict and alcoholic.  Yet, look at the great things these artists did in their respective fields.

All this gives me hope.  I am not perfect.  I gravitate toward darkness.  Some of my acquaintances may be surprised by this admission.  For the most part, I'm fairly gregarious in public.  I like making people smile and laugh.  Just today, a coworker told me, "You're the most positive person I know."  I appreciate that observation.

Charles Dickens loved throwing lavish parties for his friends, but his temperament was quicksilver.  After he was done writing at night, he would sometimes go for a 20-mile walk.  River Phoenix would sneak up on his friends from behind and engulf them in bear hugs, but he would go on drug-binges for weeks at a time.

Nobody is perfect.  I think that my greatest creative achievements come from my greatest faults.  And, in a way, that's a gift.

Tonight, Saint Marty is thankful for his imperfections.