June 20: Pay the Bills, Carve Out Enjoyment, Sally Wen Mao, "Lessons on Lessening," New Cartoon

[Ives said]  "Yes, we'll go.  I'll pay for it, and then you tell me who'll pay the bills a year from now if something should happen to me."

Ives is using finances as an excuse.  He's retired, and his wife wants to travel.  She brings home pamphlets about cheap airfare to the British Isles and Italy.  She desperately wants to rekindle her love for Ives, but he is stuck, unable to move from a place of grief years after their son has been dead.

Ives and Annie are not living paycheck-to-paycheck.  They are not wealthy, but they have a comfortable life.  They don't have to worry about money.  I sort of envy them.  I can't remember a time in my life when money wasn't a concern for me.  Maybe when I was in college, living at home, and had overage checks from my college scholarships.  That's about the only time.

On Thursday, I just signed the papers for a loan to get the roof of my house replaced.  My next paycheck is dedicated to getting my car fixed.  Most of the time, my paychecks are spent on the day that I receive them.  And the bills still pile up.

I know I'm not unusual.  Most families are in this situation.  I do have great fear of what would happen if I suddenly couldn't work for whatever reason (just like Ives).  It would only take a few weeks for the walls of my life to come tumbling down, so to speak.  That's always in the back of my mind.  I try not to dwell on it too much.

I worry too much about the future.  I know that.  I worry not about things that are happening, but things that might happen.  It's not a really healthy way to exist.  It's sort of like standing on a street corner, afraid to cross the street because a car might come screaming through the intersection and kill me.  Living like that precludes any enjoyment at all.

Yes, I have to account for every dime.  Yes, I bring home left-overs from drug rep lunches at work.  Lo mein and lasagna.  Yes, I only go to movies once or twice a year now.  (It used to be once or twice a month.)  Yes, I have house payments and car payments and loan payments coming out of my ass.  Yes, yes, yes.

But I still have to carve out enjoyment.  I'm planning on going to go for a walk today.  I may take a book with me, find some place to sit and read.  Tonight, I will have pizza, maybe watch an episode of The Lawrence Welk Show.  For Father's Day tomorrow, I may read all day long.  It's cheap and relaxing.

Lawrence Welk and walks.  Saint Marty is livin' large.

Lessons on Lessening

by:  Sally Wen Mao

In the rigmarole of lucky living, you tire
of the daily lessons:  Sewing, Yoga, Captivity.
Push the lesson inside the microwave.
Watch it plump and pop and grow larval

with losses.  Watch it shrink like shrikes
when they dodge out of this palatial
doom.  On the sky's torn hemline, this horizon,
make a wish on Buddha's foot.  How to halve,

but not to have--how to spare someone
of suffering, how to throw away the spare
key saved for a lover that you don't
have, save yourself from the burning turret

with the wind of your own smitten hip.
Do you remember how girlhood was--a bore
born inside you, powerless?  How you made
yourself winner by capturing grasshoppers

and skewering them?  You washed a family
of newts in the dry husked summer, wetted
them with cotton swabs before the vivisection.
That's playing God:  to spare or not to spare.

In the end you chose mercy, and dropped
each live body into the slime-dark moat.
Today is a study in being a loser.  The boyfriend
you carved out of lard and left in the refrigerator

overnight between the milk and chicken breasts.
Butcher a bed, sleep in its wet suet for a night.
Joke with a strumpet, save the watermelon
rinds for the maids to fry in their hot saucepans.

Open your blouse and find the ladybugs
sleeping in your navel.  Open your novel
to the chapter where the floe cracks and kills
the cygnet.  Study hard, refute your slayer.

Confessions of Saint Marty

June 19: Did God Will That, Neighborhood Bullies, Clown Fairy Tale, Sally Wen Mao, "The Bullies"

[Ives r]emembered how Robert, coming home in tears after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, had asked him, "Did God will that?"

Ives' son, Robert, asks a question theologians and Christians have wrestled with since Christ was crucified, I think.  In the face of great tragedy, every person of faith eventually runs into crises.  Loved ones who become ill.  Job loss.  School shooting.  Church shootings.  Health scares.  And the inevitable question that arises is, "Did God will that?"

My son is a good kid.  Six years old, he doesn't have a mean bone in his body.  When he goes out on the playground, he thinks everybody is his friend.  When they turn out to be less than friends, he lacks the skills to deal with the rejection.  For example, there is a group of older neighborhood kids who take pleasure in getting him angry.  They taunt him, call him names, throw things at him until he reacts.

I don't know where children learn to be mean to other children.  I have never taught my son to judge other people.  His aunt has Down Syndrome.  He's had friends who were deaf and blind.  He loves everybody.  So where do other kids learn to hate?  It has to come from somewhere.  I want to believe that people, at the core, are good, but, when my son comes to me and says that kids are throwing rocks at him, I tend to have a spiritual crisis.  I want to march over to the kids' houses, pound on their doors, and yell at the first adult who answers, "What the hell are you teaching your children?"

Dylann Roof, the kid who killed nine people in a Charleston church two days ago, wasn't always a racist.  The kids who throw rocks at my son weren't always little shitheads.  Somewhere along the line, Dylann Roof was poisoned.  Ditto the neighborhood bullies.  God doesn't will hatred and cruelty into being.  It happens because the human race is incredibly flawed.  In a perfect world, love and understanding would be the guiding principles.   We don't live in a perfect world.

Once upon a time, a clown named Giggles lived in a town where clowning was against the law.  People hated Giggles.  They ignored him, wouldn't invite him to Thanksgiving dinner or July 4th picnics.

One night, Giggles got drunk, stumbled into the town square, and startled juggling handkerchiefs.  A grim crowd gathered to watch him.  Eventually, the sheriff showed up, beat Giggles with a billy club, and confiscated his red nose.

Giggles crawled home, bloody and bruised.  He crawled into bed and vowed to never clown around again.

Moral of the story:  Clowns suck.

And Saint Marty lived happily ever after.

The Bullies

by:  Sally Wen Mao

In 1997, the days were long, the sun
bloodshot, and Mountain View, CA smelled
like duck shit.  Those days, everyone's mind

was a sex tape on repeat.  Hirsute rumors

clogged the shower drains.  When young girls
disrobed together in a locker room, rancor
smelled like petunias.  The whole stink glowed

with mutant love.  In 1999, tremors erased

my larynx.  Voice mails flooded with cackles,
inboxes sneered.  Late afternoons, my legs
greened Granny Smith-style, and I believed

when they called my leviathan.

Ovoid girl--black hair, burnt skin, snaggletooth
and sexless ruin.  I saw tumors grow the size
of California.  Nobody spat.  Only suggested.

Give this up.  Shucked each desire.

Evenings, when I was finally free, I saw crushed stars
roll into the thistle field.  On that pungent summit

I was a gutter, a bountiful gutter.  I collected
clean rain.  I was a passageway to the open shore.

Where's my fairy wand?

June 18: Bewildered Expression, South Carolina Shooting, Sally Wen Mao, "Hurling a Durian"

And then Ives blinked and found himself standing on the sidewalk beside his wife, across the street from the Church of the Ascension.  On the pavement, just by his feet, was a large piece of canvas, and under it a body, stretched out.  Then the officer lifted off the canvas and shined a flashlight onto the face to reveal the shocked and bewildered expression of his son.

Ives' son is the victim of a violent crime.  He's shot on the steps of his church by a teenage boy named Danny Gomez.  Gomez, raised in poverty by a single mother, is the victim of a society bent on keeping the lower classes as low as possible.  Robert Ives and Danny Gomez both lose their lives because of the world's inequalities.

Last night, in Charleston, South Carolina, a 21-year-old man entered the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and sat down.  He prayed with those gathered for a Bible study.  After about an hour, the man stood up, took out a gun, and began shooting.  He killed nine people and then fled.

The police now have a suspect in custody.  His name is Dylann Roof, and Roof's uncle told reporters that his nephew received a .45-caliber handgun for his last birthday.  But, the uncle added, nobody in the Roof family saw "anything like this coming."

Once again, the President of the United States had to have a press conference, consoling victims and condemning an unspeakable act of violence.  A church.  People praying and reading the Gospels.  Once again, the alleged shooter is a young man scarred by a culture of racism and violence.

Very little leaves me at a loss for words.  Tonight, this tragedy does.  I'm not going to turn this post into a diatribe on gun violence in this country.  I'm not going to talk about a culture that simply can't shake off the chains of racism.  There's too much finger pointing going on right now.

Tonight, I'm going to pray for the victims in Charleston.  I'm going to pray for the victims' families.  I'm going to ask God to bring comfort to members of the Emanuel A.M.E Church, who lost their beloved pastor.  I'm going to pray for my country, that the ugly wounds of poverty and racism may be healed somehow.  And I'm going to pray for Dylann Roof, who obviously needs help.  And forgiveness.

Sally Wen Mao has a little poem about the difficulty of forgiveness.  I'd like to share it with all of you this evening.

Saint Marty needs to believe that forgiveness is possible.  That's what being a Christian is all about.

Hurling a Durian

by:  Sally Wen Mao

This is the fantasy fruit:  it can awaken
desires lodged deep inside a person

                but stuck, like an almond clogging
                the windpipe.  The smell of a durian

may erase a child's immediate memories.
So I am addicted, of course.  Not to eating

               but to sniffing it like glue, my fingers probing
               its dry, spiked surface until they bleed

and I eat.  But the feast disappoints
me because its taste replaces the corpse

               scent with something sweet and eggy,
               a benign tang I flush down with wasabi.

For there is nothing a kid like me
can do except awaken to loss and wish

               for a seven-piece suit of armor.  The deisre
               always returns:  durian as a weapon of truth.

Even if I don't know how to pull a trigger
or whet a knife, it's tempting to imagine

               throwing a dangerous fruit at the head
               of the person who failed you, who hurt you,

who, for all these years, has tried to break
you.  But this desire is lodged deep

               for a reason:  the pull of forgiveness
               like a hopeless gravity, and always I try

to resist.  So I do by taking a spoonful
to my lips, savoring the smear, the din

               of my cleaver hacking the husk, the juice,
               the sweat ripping open the rind.

Hold your nose and eat

June 17: People's Privacy, Favorite Word, Sally Wen Mao, "Capsaicin Eclogue"

He [Ives] ended up giving them [his son and son's friends] a lecture about respecting people's privacy and writing the lady a discreet note, and although she must have known what she was doing in the first place, she kept her window curtains closed from them on.  And Robert?  Trembling, he later approached his father, as Ives sat by his drawing board, saying, "It wasn't my idea, Pop.  I swear it."

Ives catches his son, Robert, and Robert's friends spying on a neighbor girl who has a habit of walking around her bedroom nude, with her window curtains open.  Given the opportunity, a group of teenage boys will watch a naked female, even if it is ethically or morally questionable.  Ives doesn't scream or yell at them.  He makes them feel ashamed.  Shame and disappointment are powerful parental tools.

In the last few days, I have found myself in the difficult position of having to lecture my six-year-old son.  For some reason, he has suddenly developed the vocabulary of a sailor who has been at sea for about ten years.  His favorite word is "fuck," and he uses it in its many permutations:  "fuck you," "fuck off," "fucker."  Its a little disconcerting.  It's like living with a diminutive Robert De Niro.  I half expect him to look at me one night and say, "Are you talkin' to me?"

I have set up some punishment guidelines for my son.  I believe he has been hearing this language in the videos he watches on my iPad.  Therefore, on his first offense, my son will lose his iPad privileges for a day.  Second offense, he will lose his privileges for a week.  Third offense, he will no longer be allowed to watch videos on my iPad.

I told my son how much words can hurt people.  How they can sometimes get a person in a lot of trouble.  I'm not sure if anything I said actually registered in his six-year-old mind.  However, I felt it was my duty to try to make him aware of the fact that, if he says "fuck you" to the wrong person, he might get the crap beat out of him.

I'm not sure if my punishment will be a deterrent for my son.  My pastor friend used to put hot sauce on his son's tongue when he swore or said something unacceptable.  Of course, there's the old standby:  soap.  I used that technique with my daughter once.  It didn't work.  Ketchup sometimes does the trick, as both of my children detest its taste.

Right now, however, I'm just waiting.  I'm sure my son will tell his sister to "fuck off" in the next few days, and I will be forced to lecture him again and inflict punishment.  That's my job as Punisher and Chief of the household.  It's not a position I enjoy.

Sally Wen Mao has a great poem about the Trinidad Scorpion, which is a kind of chili pepper.  A really hot chili pepper.

Maybe Saint Marty needs to go to the grocery store and stock up on a few Scorpions.  The ultimate "fuck" penance.

Capsaicin Eclogue

by:  Sally Wen Mao

The Trinidad Scorpion is shaped like a wrinkled
valentine.  Its taste exudes mudslide, the hurt
of long fortnights--kettle whiplash, Bunsen flame,
red-blooded bullet.  Tongue a piece of tinder.
Driftwood mouth.  Brown tongue, yellow tongue,

miscegenation of burnouts.  Raw white, yolk drains
through gullet, burning spigot.  But the scorpion
doesn't only sting--these seeds cross borders,
travel through sense and tissue, drill into eyeballs,
stampede the remote throat.  Have courage:  swallow.

Dance in all the forest fires of the future:  Tingle--
Tangle--Sweat--Heave--Spin--Break
dance!  Mix the pulp.  Snakes snap their jaws
through stomach lining.  The furniture melts
and outside, the cool evening breaks your legs.

Tag the building with your spit!  Each little devil
fits inside your hand:  Naga Vipers.  Infinity chillies.
Naga Jolokia.  Taste one million Scoville units.
This is how tongues make mistakes.  Your name
in lights, on stranger lips.  Your lips, in red myth.

Words can hurt--they can burn the shit out of your mouth, too

June 16: Building Weeping, Miracles, Sally Wen Mao, "Monstera Deliciosa"

In one slip of a second, anything seemed possible--had the moon risen and started to sing, had pyramids appeared over the Chrysler building weeping, Ives would have been no more surprised.

Ives has just had a near death experience.  As he walks the streets of Manhattan, he starts having visions of God's goodness.  Four colored winds spinning in the sky.  The sun, glowing red and huge.  Car horns sounding like celestial trumpets.  As the above passage says, anything seems possible.

I've been contemplating miracles recently.  Ives thinks of his near-death experiences as some kind of divine vision granted to him.  I'm not so sure that's accurate.  I think most people go through their days with blinders on.  Ives' blinders have simply been removed for a little while.  He's seeing the world from a God's-eye-view. 

I think I'm a lot like the blindered Ives.  Driving to work, talking to patients, eating lunch, walking to my car at the end of the day, I probably miss more miracles than contained in the gospels.  For instance, near the medical center where I work, there's a bike path in the woods.  I know there are albino deer in that forest.  One night, as I was leaving the university after teaching an evening class, I drove by a cemetery.  Near the cemetery fence was a family of deer.  When the headlights of my car spotlighted them, the deer leaped into the darkness, hurdling headstones and hedges like souls racing to heaven.

Everyday miracles.  I need to open my eyes and look around more often.  Maybe I'll see the moon singing or the university clock tower weeping.  Who knows?  The whole world is full of wonder.  Sure, I'm sort of stuck in a swamp of worry right now.  But I know that my very existence--my lungs' habit of breathing, my heart's habit of beating, my pores' habit of sweating--all of the things that keep me alive are impossible miracles of creation.

Sally Wen Mao's poem for tonight is about one of those miracles of nature that most people don't even stop to notice.

Saint Marty is taking some time tonight to give thanks for miracles.

Monstera Deliciosa

by:  Sally Wen Mao

I'm a monster because I poison the children.
They dance around me and my fronds flutter
with holes.  They invite:  Eat my fanged fruit.

Each scale will peel off easy, but if you eat it
unripe, it will steal your voice.  Your gums
will blister little stars.  You'll vomit, swell, tremble.

When ripe, it is sublime.  Better than banana,
soft mango, sweeter than wild yellow rambutan
coated in syrup.  It only takes one year.  Bite.

Bon appetit!

June 15: More Bad News, "Ives" Dip, Poet of the Week, Sally Wen Mao, "Valentine for a Flytrap"

Well, another day and more bad news.

My car isn't going to be fixed until the end of the month.  We had budgeted about $300 for the fix.  It's going to cost about twice as much as that.  I have to wait until my next paycheck at the end of the month.  Then I'll be able to pay for it.  Notice that I didn't say I would be able to afford it, just pay for it.  The mechanic also says I need four new tires.  Not even touching that right now.

Let's see.  What else has gone wrong today?  Ummmm.  We got a note from my daughter's chorus teacher informing us that she didn't get accepted into the high school show choir.  She has been looking forward to getting into that group for four years.  Now, we have to go back to the school and reconsider her entire fall schedule.  My sister is going back to the nursing home tomorrow, and, sometime this week, I have to go to the credit union to sign the papers for a loan to get my roof fixed.

On the flip side, I have a friend who has offered to drive me to work tomorrow.  I will be able to get my roof fixed, and then my kitchen ceiling.  Eventually, my car will be drivable again.  Eventually.  Physically, my sister is doing better.  She needs to do physical therapy now.  Massive physical therapy.

My Ives dip question has to do with my luck:

Is my luck going to change any time soon?

And the answer from Edward Ives is:

In the falling elevator, he [Ives] recalled how stupid and hopeless he had felt that day at the beach, and in his supposed last moments, though the sun loomed through a late-summer haze like a god, he had no thoughts of comfort, and simply wanted to be saved.  If the truth be told, he cried for all his faith, doubting there would be another life ahead of him . . . .

Okay, there's no comfort in that little passage.  Ives trapped in a falling elevator.  Ives nearly drowning at the beach when he was a kid.  Ives doubting his faith, thinking he's going to die.  I guess it's going to be a bumpy summer.

I am pleased to announce Sally Wen Mao is the Poet of the Week.  All the poems you will be reading will be coming from her first collection, titled Mad Honey Symposium.  It's the kind of poem that appeals to me right now.  Cruel.  Vicious.  Beautiful.

Kind of describes Saint Marty's life right now.

Valentine for a Flytrap

by:  Sally Wen Mao

You are a hairy painting.  I belong to your jaw.
Nothing slakes you--no fruit fly, no cricket,
not even tarantula.  You are the caryatid
I want to duel, dew-wet, in tongues.  Luxurious
spider bed, blooming from the ossuaries
of peat moss.  I love how you swindle
the moths!  This is why you were named
for a goddess:  not Botticelli's Venus--
not any soft waif in the Uffizi.  There's voltage
in your flowers--mulch skeins, armory
for cunning loves.  Your mouth pins every stickey
body, swallowing iridescence, digesting
light.  Venus, let me swim in your solarium.
Venus, take me in your summer gown.

Open wide and smile