July 9: "Theme," Day Off, Dark Meditation

Billy Collins writes of age and decline . . . 

Theme

by: Billy Collins

It's a sunny weekday in early May

and after a ham sandwich

and a cold bottle of beer on the brick terrace,

I am consumed by the wish

to add something

to one of the ancient themes--

youth dancing with his eyes closed, 

for example, 

in the shadows of corruption and death,

or the rise and fall of illustrious men

strapped to the turning

wheel of mischance and disaster.

There is a slight breeze,

just enough to bend

the yellow tulips on their stems,

but that hardly helps me

echo the longing for immortality

despite the roaring juggernaut of time,

or the painful motif

of Nature's cyclical return

versus man's blind rush to the grave.

I could loosen my shirt

and lie down in the soft grass,

sweet now after its first cutting,

but that would not produce

a record of the pursuit

of the moth of eternal beauty

or the despondency that attends

the eventful dribble

of the once gurgling fountain of creativity.

So, as far as the great topics go,

that seems to leave only

the fall from exuberant maturity

into sudden, headlong decline--

a subject that fills me with silence

and leaves me with no choice

but to spend the rest of the day

sniffing the jasmine vine

and surrendering to the ivory governance

of the piano by picking out

with my index finger

the melody of "Easy to Love," 

a song in which Cole Porter expresses,

with put-on nonchalance,

the hopelessness of a love

brimming with desire

and a hunger for affection,

but met only and always with frosty disregard.

I think all poets dream of adding to the pantheon of great themes, whether it's love or death or lust or eternal beauty or headlong decline.  The difficulty is finding something new and surprising to say about any of those topics.  Otherwise, the poet risks sounding like a Robert Frost or William Shakespeare cover band.

I took today off work.  Shocking, I know.  You see, I really enjoy my job at the library, so, a lot of the time, work doesn't seem like work.  However, I've accrued quite a bit of PTO and need to use it or, literally, lose it.  So, I used some of it today.

A good portion of the morning and afternoon I spent revising poems.  I also sat at McDonald's reading and, eventually, went for a walk along the shores of Lake Superior with my wife.  It was a perfect Upper Peninsula July day, not too hot and with a robin's-egg blue sky.  The beaches were packed, and tourists were out in force.  I don't particularly care for large crowds, so I avoided the densest areas of activity.

And I did a lot of thinking about love and aging and time.  The biggies, as Collins writes.  I'm not sure any of my meditations were earth-shattering or revelatory.  They were, however, honest.  I know that I have experienced lots of love and loss in my life.  I know that my daughter, youth and hope personified, is on the cusp of leaving my close proximity to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor.  My son won't be far behind her--just a couple more years.  And I know that I've become one of the "elders" at family gatherings, even though I still feel like a teenager who knows nothing about the ways of the world.

That is what having time off does to me--it makes me contemplate the inevitability of change and my own mortality.  I know, I know.  Most people spend their days off doing fun things, like swimming or taking in a movie or having lunch with a friend.  That's not the way my mind works.  I tend to gravitate to dark meditation when I have time to kill.  What can I say?  I'm a poet.

And what has this day taught me?  I need to have a better plan for my vacation days.  Or a strong antidepressant.  Probably both.

Saint Marty is now going to watch a movie--Dead Man Walking or Terms of Endearment.  You know, something uplifting.

June 13: Vast Corpse, Serial Killer, Being Alive

If to Starbuck the apparition of the Squid was a thing of portents, to Queequeg it was quite a different object.

"When you see him 'quid," said the savage, honing his harpoon in the bow of his hoisted boat, "then you quick see him 'parm whale."

The next day was exceedingly still and sultry, and with nothing special to engage them, the Pequod's crew could hardly resist the spell of sleep induced by such a vacant sea. For this part of the Indian Ocean through which we then were voyaging is not what whalemen call a lively ground; that is, it affords fewer glimpses of porpoises, dolphins, flying-fish, and other vivacious denizens of more stirring waters, than those off the Rio de la Plata, or the in-shore ground off Peru.

It was my turn to stand at the foremast-head; and with my shoulders leaning against the slackened royal shrouds, to and fro I idly swayed in what seemed an enchanted air. No resolution could withstand it; in that dreamy mood losing all consciousness, at last my soul went out of my body; though my body still continued to sway as a pendulum will, long after the power which first moved it is withdrawn.

Ere forgetfulness altogether came over me, I had noticed that the seamen at the main and mizzen mast-heads were already drowsy. So that at last all three of us lifelessly swung from the spars, and for every swing that we made there was a nod from below from the slumbering helmsman. The waves, too, nodded their indolent crests; and across the wide trance of the sea, east nodded to west, and the sun over all.

Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closed eyes; like vices my hands grasped the shrouds; some invisible, gracious agency preserved me; with a shock I came back to life. And lo! close under our lee, not forty fathoms off, a gigantic Sperm Whale lay rolling in the water like the capsized hull of a frigate, his broad, glossy back, of an Ethiopian hue, glistening in the sun's rays like a mirror. But lazily undulating in the trough of the sea, and ever and anon tranquilly spouting his vapory jet, the whale looked like a portly burgher smoking his pipe of a warm afternoon. But that pipe, poor whale, was thy last. As if struck by some enchanter's wand, the sleepy ship and every sleeper in it all at once started into wakefulness; and more than a score of voices from all parts of the vessel, simultaneously with the three notes from aloft, shouted forth the accustomed cry, as the great fish slowly and regularly spouted the sparkling brine into the air.

"Clear away the boats! Luff!" cried Ahab. And obeying his own order, he dashed the helm down before the helmsman could handle the spokes.

The sudden exclamations of the crew must have alarmed the whale; and ere the boats were down, majestically turning, he swam away to the leeward, but with such a steady tranquillity, and making so few ripples as he swam, that thinking after all he might not as yet be alarmed, Ahab gave orders that not an oar should be used, and no man must speak but in whispers. So seated like Ontario Indians on the gunwales of the boats, we swiftly but silently paddled along; the calm not admitting of the noiseless sails being set. Presently, as we thus glided in chase, the monster perpendicularly flitted his tail forty feet into the air, and then sank out of sight like a tower swallowed up.

"There go flukes!" was the cry, an announcement immediately followed by Stubb's producing his match and igniting his pipe, for now a respite was granted. After the full interval of his sounding had elapsed, the whale rose again, and being now in advance of the smoker's boat, and much nearer to it than to any of the others, Stubb counted upon the honor of the capture. It was obvious, now, that the whale had at length become aware of his pursuers. All silence of cautiousness was therefore no longer of use. Paddles were dropped, and oars came loudly into play. And still puffing at his pipe, Stubb cheered on his crew to the assault.

Yes, a mighty change had come over the fish. All alive to his jeopardy, he was going "head out"; that part obliquely projecting from the mad yeast which he brewed.*

*It will be seen in some other place of what a very light substance the entire interior of the sperm whale's enormous head consists. Though apparently the most massive, it is by far the most buoyant part about him. So that with ease he elevates it in the air, and invariably does so when going at his utmost speed. Besides, such is the breadth of the upper part of the front of his head, and such the tapering cut-water formation of the lower part, that by obliquely elevating his head, he thereby may be said to transform himself from a bluff-bowed sluggish galliot into a sharppointed New York pilot-boat.

"Start her, start her, my men! Don't hurry yourselves; take plenty of time- but start her; start her like thunder-claps, that's all," cried Stubb, spluttering out the smoke as he spoke. "Start her, now; give 'em the long and strong stroke, Tashtego. Start her, Tash, my boy- start her, all; but keep cool, keep cool- cucumbers is the word- easy, easy- only start her like grim death and grinning devils, and raise the buried dead perpendicular out of their graves, boys- that's all. Start her!"

"Woo-hoo! Wa-hee!" screamed the Gay-Header in reply, raising some old war-whoop to the skies; as every oarsman in the strained boat involuntarily bounced forward with the one tremendous leading stroke which the eager Indian gave.

But his wild screams were answered by others quite as wild. "Kee-hee! Kee-hee!" yelled Daggoo, straining forwards and backwards on his seat, like a pacing tiger in his cage.

"Ka-la! Koo-loo!" howled Queequeg, as if smacking his lips over a mouthful of Grenadier's steak. And thus with oars and yells the keels cut the sea. Meanwhile, Stubb, retaining his place in the van, still encouraged his men to the onset, all the while puffing the smoke from his mouth. Like desperadoes they tugged and they strained, till the welcome cry was heard- "Stand up, Tashtego!- give it to him!" The harpoon was hurled. "Stern all!" The oarsmen backed water; the same moment something went hot and hissing along every one of their wrists. It was the magical line. An instant before, Stubb had swiftly caught two additional turns with it round the loggerhead, whence, by reason of its increased rapid circlings, a hempen blue smoke now jetted up and mingled with the steady fumes from his pipe. As the line passed round and round the loggerhead; so also, just before reaching that point, it blisteringly passed through and through both of Stubb's hands, from which the hand-cloths, or squares of quilted canvas sometimes worn at these times, had accidentally dropped. It was like holding an enemy's sharp two-edged sword by the blade, and that enemy all the time striving to wrest it out of your clutch.

"Wet the line! wet the line!" cried Stubb to the tub oarsman (him seated by the tub) who, snatching off his hat, dashed sea-water into it.* More turns were taken, so that the line began holding its place. The boat now flew through the boiling water like a shark all fins. Stubb and Tashtego here changed places- stem for stern- a staggering business truly in that rocking commotion.

*Partly to show the indispensableness of this act, it may here be stated, that, in the old Dutch fishery, a mop was used to dash the running line with water; in many other ships, a wooden piggin, or bailer, is set apart for that purpose. Your hat, however, is the most convenient.

From the vibrating line extending the entire length of the upper part of the boat, and from its now being more tight than a harpstring, you would have thought the craft had two keels- one cleaving the water, the other the air- as the boat churned on through both opposing elements at once. A continual cascade played at the bows; a ceaseless whirling eddy in her wake; and, at the slightest motion from within, even but of a little finger, the vibrating, cracking craft canted over her spasmodic gunwale into the sea. Thus they rushed; each man with might and main clinging to his seat, to prevent being tossed to the foam; and the tall form of Tashtego at the steering oar crouching almost double, in order to bring down his centre of gravity. Whole Atlantics and Pacifics seemed passed as they shot on their way, till at length the whale somewhat slackened his flight.

"Haul in- haul in!" cried Stubb to the bowsman! and, facing round towards the whale, all hands began pulling the boat up to him, while yet the boat was being towed on. Soon ranging up by his flank, Stubb, firmly planting his knee in the clumsy cleat, darted dart after dart into the flying fish; at the word of command, the boat alternately sterning out of the way of the whale's horrible wallow, and then ranging up for another fling.

The red tide now poured from all sides of the monster like brooks down a hill. His tormented body rolled not in brine but in blood, which bubbled and seethed for furlongs behind in their wake. The slanting sun playing upon their crimson pond in the sea, sent back its reflection into every face, so that they all glowed to each other like red men. And all the while, jet after jet of white smoke was agonizingly shot from the spiracle of the whale, and vehement puff after puff from the mouth of the excited headsman; as at every dart, hauling in upon his crooked lance (by the line attached to it), Stubb straightened it again and again, by a few rapid blows against the gunwale, then again and again sent it into the whale.

"Pull up- pull up!" he now cried to the bowsman, as the waning whale relaxed in his wrath. "Pull up!- close to!" and the boat ranged along the fish's flank. When reaching far over the bow, Stubb slowly churned his long sharp lance into the fish, and kept it there, carefully churning and churning, as if cautiously seeking to feel after some gold watch that the whale might have swallowed, and which he was fearful of breaking ere he could hook it out. But that gold watch he sought was the innermost life of the fish. And now it is struck; for, starting from his trance into that unspeakable thing called his "flurry," the monster horribly wallowed in his blood, overwrapped himself in impenetrable, mad, boiling spray, so that the imperilled craft, instantly dropping astern, had much ado blindly to struggle out from that phrensied twilight into the clear air of the day.

And now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled out into view! surging from side to side; spasmodically dilating and contracting his spout-hole, with sharp, cracking, agonized respirations. At last, gush after gush of clotted red gore, as if it had been the purple lees of red wine, shot into the frightened air; and falling back again, ran dripping down his motionless flanks into the sea. His heart had burst!

"He's dead, Mr. Stubb," said Daggoo.

"Yes; both pipes smoked out!" and withdrawing his own from his mouth, Stubb scattered the dead ashes over the water; and, for a moment, stood thoughtfully eyeing the vast corpse he had made.

Yes, this is a fairly long chapter from the book, but it reads quickly.  I was going to break it into two pieces, but I couldn't find a natural place to stop the action.  Hence, you get the entire narrative of Stubb killing a sperm whale.  Its details aren't pleasant, especially if you are an animal lover.  Basically, you have an innocent creature (despite Melville's use of the word "monster" here, the whale does nothing threatening) being slaughtered.  Not fun.

However, it's probably a fairly accurate description of whale hunting in the 19th century.  I don't begrudge Melville this story.  He writes what he knows.  I, myself, have come under criticism in the past for some of the material that I include in my writing.  Last night, I had a fairly lengthy discussion with a friend about a poem I've just finished.  In the poem, I describe Bigfoot finding a squirrel and snapping its neck.  Out of about 75 to 80 lines, the squirrel killing takes up about three lines.  Yet, my friend really had a hard time with this particular moment.

I am not a serial killer.  I don't capture neighborhood cats and dogs to torture and mutilate them in my basement.  I don't even have a basement.  Sure, every once in a while, a squirrel or bird dies.  I think the largest thing that I've ever killed in a poem was a hog.  In my defense, the poem was about my grandfather, who was a farmer.  Slaughter is a regular part of life on a farm.  If you don't believe me, read Charlotte's Web.

My point is that, while it is possible that Herman Melville witnessed the killing of a sperm whale in his younger days, the paragraphs above are fiction, and, as such, they should be read with that in mind.  Whaling was a part of life in Melville's time.  To ask him not to describe this death is like asking William Shakespeare to keep Romeo and Juliet alive at the end of the play.  It just doesn't work that way.  To be real in any sense, a reader of Moby-Dick should be ready for a few whales to die.  Just sayin'.

I try not to shy away from difficult subject matter.  Thus, Bigfoot killing the squirrel.  Life isn't easy, so poetry is not always easy, either.  In fact, my favorite poems that I've written involve things like killing squirrels, dead wrens, wounds that don't heal, and last breaths.  That's a pretty gruesome list, I know.  But I believe there's beauty in everything, including heartbreak and loss.  It's just harder beauty.

That's the reason why certain books or movies or plays or television shows that deal with difficult subject matter resonate with so many people.  Terms of Endearment still makes me weep like a baby every time I see it.  One of my favorite films of all time is Ordinary People--not really a warm-fuzzy viewing experience.  Our Town, a play I've seen and performed in, is full of tragedy.  A book I love--Mr. Ives' Christmas--is about a guy that suffers from severe depression for 25-plus years after the murder of his son on Christmas Eve.  And his son was going to be a priest!

I don't think any of these texts are great because they are sad or difficult.  I think they are great because they remind me that I'm human, and being a part of the human race is messy and beautiful and ugly and glorious and terrible.

Saint Marty is thankful today for being alive, even if it sucks sometimes.

September 16: Gastrointestinal, James Dickey, "The Hospital Window"

Went to the doctor's yesterday about my chest and throat pain.  He ruled out anything cardiac (I had a normal stress test last June).  It isn't pleurisy--that usually occurs after an illness like the flu, something viral.  That leaves something gastrointestinal.  So my doctor is referring me to a GI specialist.  In two months' time, when I finally get an appointment, I may know why I've been feeling as if I'm dying.  (Cue the theme from Terms of Endearment.)

Despite having to wait that long for my diagnosis, I was much relieved today, as if a weight had been lifted out of my life.  For the first time in a couple months, I expect to wake up tomorrow morning without the specter of a fatal illness looming over me.

It rained today, but I didn't care.  Work was long and tedious.  Didn't care.  Spent my evening siting in wet bleachers, watching a football game.  Didn't care.  Nothing bothered me too much.  I'm reading a great book, Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.  It's Friday night.  There's a great documentary about Mexican art on PBS.  Pretty soon, I'm going to head off to bed.

Saint Marty has had a good day.  A good, untroubled day.

The Hospital Window

by:  James Dickey

I have just come down from my father.

Higher and higher he lies

Above me in a blue light

Shed by a tinted window.

I drop through six white floors

And then step out onto pavement.

Still feeling my father ascend,

I start to cross the firm street,

My shoulder blades shining with all

The glass the huge building can raise.

Now I must turn round and face it,

And know his one pane from the others.

Each window possesses the sun

As though it burned there on a wick.

I wave, like a man catching fire.

All the deep-dyed windowpanes flash,

And, behind them, all the white rooms

They turn to the color of Heaven.

Ceremoniously, gravely, and weakly,

Dozens of pale hands are waving

Back, from inside their flames.

Yet one pure pane among these

Is the bright, erased blankness of nothing.

I know that my father is there,

In the shape of his death still living.

The traffic increases around me

Like a madness called down on my head.

The horns blast at me like shotguns,

And drivers lean out, driven crazy—

But now my propped-up father

Lifts his arm out of stillness at last.

The light from the window strikes me

And I turn as blue as a soul,

As the moment when I was born.

I am not afraid for my father—

Look! He is grinning; he is not

Afraid for my life, either,

As the wild engines stand at my knees

Shredding their gears and roaring,

And I hold each car in its place

For miles, inciting its horn

To blow down the walls of the world

That the dying may float without fear

In the bold blue gaze of my father.

Slowly I move to the sidewalk

With my pin-tingling hand half dead

At the end of my bloodless arm.

I carry it off in amazement,

High, still higher, still waving,

My recognized face fully mortal,

Yet not; not at all, in the pale,

Drained, otherworldly, stricken,

Created hue of stained glass.

I have just come down from my father.

June 16: A Wimp

I used to love scary movies.  Freddy and Jason.  Exorcists and poltergeists.  Demons and zombies.  I loved all of that stuff.  On Saturdays, when I was a kid, I watched creature features with titles like I Was a Teenage Cannibal and Blood of the Vampire Cuticle.

I have become a wimp.  I just saw a commercial for a new film called Deliver Us from Evil.  I sat there, mouth open, terrified.  I have lost my nerve.  I have no interest in seeing a movie that's going to increase my need for sleeping pills.  No, I will not be wasting money on two hours of terror.

Saint Marty prefers something happier, like Terms of Endearment.

My kind of scary movie

May 8: Worst Day, Waves of Sadness, Walking Out

Wilbur couldn't believe what was happening to him when Lurvy caught him and forced the medicine down his throat.  This was certainly the worst day of his life.  He didn't know whether he could endure the awful loneliness any more.

Wilbur has just arrived at the Zuckerman farm.  He misses Fern.  None of the other animals in the barn are being particularly friendly to him.  Lurvy has just forced "sulphur" and molasses down his throat.  His young life has reached a pretty low point.

This evening, I understand Wilbur's state of mind.  It was my last day of work at the medical office.  All day long, coworkers kept saying how much they were going to miss me.  In between, I had family and friends calling me about my brother.  Every time someone said "I'm so sorry" on the phone, I'd start crying.  I was hoping to be stoic and strong, like a Viking or something.  Instead, I was Shirley MacLaine at the end of Terms of Endearment, coming unglued.

As I was walking out of the medical office at the end of the day, I looked back at what has been my desk for the past 14 years.  It was like I'd been erased.  Depressing.  So, to bolster my spirits, I came to my office at the university and boxed up the rest of my belongings for the big move to the new English Department in July.  That was a mistake, too.  The fact that I can fit 17 or 18 years of my life into five small boxes was pretty depressing, too.

So, I'm crapping out all over the place tonight.

When Saint Marty gets home tonight, he's going to have a very big drink.  And he ain't talking about chocolate milk.

Saint Marty this afternoon

August 7: "Dark Knight" Date

Tonight, my wife and I are going to see The Dark Knight Rises.  By ourselves.  It's the first date we've had in months.  We're both looking forward to it a great deal.  I wanted to see this movie, even though it's not exactly a "date" movie.  A movie like Terms of Endearment is a date movie.  Batman is more of a drinking buddy kind of film, if you have drinking buddies.  Since I don't, my wife will be my drinking buddy tonight, even though neither of us will be drinking anything with alcohol in it.

The editor for Blogger is not moving very fast at the moment.  I'm lucky if I get five words typed before the blue circle of death appears.  I need to give my son a bath and pick up my daughter, who is at her grandma's house.  Then I have to pick up the babysitter.  Yes, the blue circle of death has not appeared yet, and I'm on my fifth line of continuous text.  I'm going to cut my losses and end the post here.

Saint Marty has a date to get ready for.

Batman and romance tonight