May 28: "Invitation," Change-phobic, Christmas Tree

Mary Oliver hears an . . . 

Invitation

by:  Mary Oliver

Oh do you have time

     to linger

          for just a little while

               out of your busy

and very important day

     for the goldfinches

          that have gathered

               in a field of thistles

for a musical battle

     to see who can sing

          the highest note

               or the lowest,

or the most expressive of mirth,

     or the most tender?

          Their strong, blunt beaks

               drink the air

as they strive

     melodiously

          not for your sake

               and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning

     but for sheer delight and gratitude--

          believe us, they say,

               it is a serious thing

just to be alive

     on this fresh morning

          in this broken world.

               I beg of you,

do not walk by

     without pausing

          to attend to this

               rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.

     It could mean everything.

          It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:

               You must change your life.

You know, if we all listen close enough and hard enough, we can hear those goldfinches singing to us--an insistent chorus charging us to change our lives in some way.  And it's not just a polite suggestion.  The verb Rilke uses, and Oliver repeats, is "must."  We must change our lives.

The follow-up question, of course, is simple:  "How?"

Today, my wife and I took down the Christmas decorations in our house.  (Before you get all judgmental, let me say that, in the past, we have let our Christmas tree blaze in our living room until well past Independence Day.  So, we are actually ahead of schedule this year.)  The reason for ending yuletide season this Memorial Day weekend is quite simple:  it just felt like the right time.

I often let instinct motivate my decisions.  For most life-altering choices, I do a gut check.  If the idea of making some kind of change makes me uncomfortable, I interrogate that discomfort.  Any kind of switch in life can inspire a certain level of anxiety in my being, and I'm not a person who embraces change easily.  In fact, some might say that I am change-phobic.  

That doesn't mean that I reject the idea of change outright, given a choice.  No.  That means that I need more time than other people to adjust to shifting realities.  I'm not Billy Pilgrim, unstuck in time, leaping from one life situation to another with little to no preparation.  If I wake up tomorrow morning on the planet of Tralfamadore, I'm probably not going to have a good time.  

However, I can sense when a change is right and necessary.  The last huge change I made in my life was over three years ago.  At the time, I'd been working in the healthcare industry for over 20 years.  The first six or so months of the pandemic, I masked up, registered patients, and took temperatures at hospital entrances.  Then the adult programming position became available at the library, and I knew immediately that I wanted to pursue it.  I applied and was interviewed.  A couple weeks later, I was offered the job, and I accepted.

I like to think I helped a lot of people during my time in the healthcare field.  I was good at calming patients and families down in stressful situations, making them laugh and relax.  Some of my best friends still work in the medical profession, and I still make people laugh and relax for my job at the library.  Some things never change.

I always listen for the goldfinches in the thistle field.  They may be calling on me to start my next big adventure.

Or they may simply be saying to Saint Marty, "It's time to take down your Christmas tree."

January 12: Gone Forever, Emily, Disappear into Memory

Billy was working on his second letter when the first letter was published.  The second letter started out like this:

"The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die.  He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral.  All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist.  The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance.  They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that  interests them.  It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.

"When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments.  Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is 'So it goes.'"

There's something very comforting about the Tralfamadorian concept of time.  The idea that death is not an end, but just another moment in a person's life that exists alongside birth and graduations and weddings and car accidents and first kisses.  And they all can be revisited, re-enjoyed, re-experienced.

It sort of reminds me of the end of the play Our Town, where Emily dies and decides to return to a moment in her life.  A small, insignificant moment.  A birthday.  What Emily learns is that human beings are completely oblivious.  We are distracted by small, insignificant problems--sour milk, ingrown toenails, pimples, flat tires.  These things get in the way.  Instead of seeing each other, we see the splinters in our fingers instead.

I'm just as guilty as the next person.  Tonight, I will spend my time writing blog posts, checking out Facebook.  My kids will be playing on their Nintendos.  My wife will probably lie down in bed.  We will all be in our own little worlds, focusing on our own needs and wants.  And we probably won't really look at or talk to each other all night long.

If I was from Tralfamadore, it wouldn't matter.  Tomorrow, I could travel back to tonight or last week or this past Christmas.  I could take a trip to four years ago, when my sister and brother were still alive.  Or eight years ago, when my son was born.  If I wanted to, I could go see Lily Tomlin on Broadway again sixteen years ago.  Go trick-or-treating in Detroit, see Star Wars for the first time again.

But I am not Tralfamadorian.  I'm human.  Tonight will come and go.  Disappear into memory.  The only record I will have of this moment is this blog post, these words.  Frozen in the ether of the Internet.  Waiting to be plucked like a ripe plum by some visiting alien.

Greetings from the planet of Saint Marty.

Full moon rising  over the Planet of Saint Marty

January 10: Flying Saucer, Doctor's Appointment, In a Zoo

When Billy finally got home to Ilium after the airplane crash, he was quiet for a while.  He had a terrible scar across the top of his skull.  He didn't resume practice.  He had a housekeeper.  His daughter came over almost every day.

And then, without any warning, Billy went to New York City, and got on an all-night radio program devoted to talk.  He told about having come unstuck in time.  He said, too, that he had been kidnapped by a flying saucer in 1967.  The saucer was from the planet Tralfamadore, he said.  He was taken to Tralfamadore, where he was displayed naked in a zoo, he said.  He was mated there with a former Earthling movie star named Montana Wildhack.

To paraphrase Han Solo, here's where the fun begins in Slaughterhouse Five.  Billy time jumping.  Billy abducted by aliens and kept in a zoo with the beautiful Montana Wildhack.  Suddenly, Vonnegut's Dresden book morphs into a 1950s porno science fiction flick.  Billy becomes a prophet and a patient.  You're not quiet sure if he's telling the truth or belongs in a mental institution.

I had a doctor's appointment today.  Saw a liver and digestive disease specialist.  As I was sitting in the exam room, waiting for the doctor to appear, I stared out of the windows.  There's a snowstorm blowing through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan right now, so the scene below looked almost like a Christmas card.  Cars mounded with snow.  The air a frenzy of white.

Waiting for a doctor to show up is a humbling experience.  I wasn't quite sure what he was going to say, what course of treatment he was going to recommend.  I was sort of at the mercy of a man that I had never even met.  I sort of felt like Billy Pilgrim in the zoo on Tralfamadore.  A specimen to observe and probe.

Thank goodness, the doctor was nice.  A little too serious, but that's okay.  When you're talking about family histories of bleeding ulcers and stomach cancer, you probably want a guy who's earnest and concerned.  (Please don't worry.  I do not have a bleeding ulcer or stomach cancer.  Those were just a couple of the questions the doctor asked.)

I left the hospital with an appointment for an upper endoscopy.  I walked out into a world of cold and white.  There's always a strange stillness that descends in a snowstorm.  I felt like I was stepping into an Edward Hopper painting, the world all muffled and lonely.  Like I was entering the deserted Automat.  So it goes.

That was Saint Marty's afternoon.  In a zoo on Tralfmadore. Waiting for the alien probe.