November 18: Sub-Etha News-Matics, #makeAmericasmartagain, Ignoring Problems

"That is really amazing," he [Zaphod] said.  "That really is truly amazing.  That is so amazingly amazing I think I'd like to steal it."

A marvelous presidential quote, absolutely true to form.  The crowd laugheds appreciatively, the newsmen gleefully punched buttons on their Sub-Etha News-Matics and the President grinned.

Even in outer space, people pay attention to politicians who say outrageous things and commit outrageous acts.

Today is one of those days where I wish I could have stayed in bed.  All day.  I just got done paying some bills, figuring out how much I'm going to need on Friday, when I have to pay some more bills.  Somehow, the amount in my savings and checking accounts don't really match up to the bills coming due.  That's no surprise.

I have to say, to those people in the middle class who still support Donald Trump and his tax plan, I am NOT financially better off today than when Mr. Trump took office.  In fact, things have gotten quite a bit worse for me.  I don't live extravagantly.  I don't have expendable income.  (Frankly, I don't even know what that term really means.)  For reasons I will not get into, my life and debt have taken a turn in the last six months, and that turn forced me to take on another job to try to pay my bills.  That is Trump America.

Don't worry, I'm not about to step up on my soapbox to rant about the person currently residing in the Oval Office.  I believe the less attention paid to Donald Trump, the better.  If everybody simply chose to ignore what Mr. Trump says or tweets, simply focused on facts, the man would probably be in prison (or at least removed from office) already.  In fact, I wish someone would start a movement to ignore Donald Trump.  Call it something like #makeAmericasmartagain, and, instead of reading Mr. Trump's latest 140 characters, everyone picks up a good book and reads that instead.

Of course, I know ignoring a problem will not make that problem disappear.  Sort of like bills.  If you ignore them, they don't go away.  Instead, your phone starts ringing  and threatening letters arrive in the mail.  By ignoring problems, they multiply instead of dissipate.  So ignorance is not the answer.

What is the answer?  I don't know.  I would love to ignore my woes into oblivion.  It doesn't work.  When I go to bed at night, I lay them down for a few hours.  When I wake up, they are waiting for me.  Sometimes they're standing right beside the bed, waving their arms, clamoring for my attention like goblin Trumps. 

Instead, I choose to deal with my problems as soon as they arise.  I don't like them hanging over me.  I certainly won't let them take up residence in the Oval Office of my head.  I'd rather impeach them now and get them removed as soon as possible.  They can't wreak as much havoc that way, and I sleep a whole lot better.

So, that's Saint Marty's advice for this evening--impeach those problems before they start building a wall around your bathroom or something

October 15: The Log and Line, Torpor, Another Challenge

While now the fated Pequod had been so long afloat this voyage, the log and line had but very seldom been in use. Owing to a confident reliance upon other means of determining the vessel's place, some merchantmen, and many whalemen, especially when cruising, wholly neglect to heave the log; though at the same time, and frequently more for form's sake than anything else, regularly putting down upon the customary slate the course steered by the ship, as well as the presumed average of progression every hour. It had been thus with the Pequod. The wooden reel and angular log attached hung, long untouched, just beneath the railing of the after bulwarks. Rains and spray had damped it; sun and wind had warped it; all the elements had combined to rot a thing that hung so idly. But heedless of all this, his mood seized Ahab, as he happened to glance upon the reel, not many hours after the magnet scene, and he remembered how his quadrant was no more, and recalled his frantic oath about the level log and line. The ship was sailing plungingly; astern the billows rolled in riots.

"Forward, there! Heave the log!"

Two seamen came. The golden-hued Tahitian and the grizzly Manxman. "Take the reel, one of ye, I'll heave."

They went towards the extreme stern, on the ship's lee side, where the deck, with the oblique energy of the wind, was now almost dipping into the creamy, sidelong-rushing sea.

The Manxman took the reel, and holding it high up, by the projecting handle-ends of the spindle, round which the spool of line revolved, so stood with the angular log hanging downwards, till Ahab advanced to him.

Ahab stood before him, and was lightly unwinding some thirty or forty turns to form a preliminary hand-coil to toss overboard, when the old Manxman, who was intently eyeing both him and the line, made bold to speak.

"Sir, I mistrust it; this line looks far gone, long heat and wet have spoiled it."

"'Twill hold, old gentleman. Long heat and wet, have they spoiled thee? Thou seem'st to hold. Oh, truer perhaps, life holds thee; not thou it."

"I hold the spool, sir. But just as my captain says. With these grey hairs of mine 'tis not worth while disputing, 'specially with a superior, who'll ne'er confess."

"What's that? there now's a patched professor in Queen Nature's granite-founded College; but methinks he's too subservient. Where wert thou born?"

"In the little rocky Isle of Man, sir."

"Excellent! Thou'st hit the world by that."

"I know not, sir, but I was born there."

"In the Isle of Man, hey? Well, the other way, it's good. Here's a man from Man; a man born in once independent Man, and now unmanned of Man; which is sucked in- by what? Up with the reel! The dead, blind wall butts all inquiring heads at last. Up with it! So."

The log was heaved. The loose coils rapidly straightened out in a long dragging line astern, and then, instantly, the reel began to whirl. In turn, jerkingly raised and lowered by the rolling billows, the towing resistance of the log caused the old reelman to stagger strangely.

"Hold hard!"

Snap! the overstrained line sagged down in one long festoon; the tugging log was gone.

"I crush the quadrant, the thunder turns the needles, and now the mad sea parts the log-line. But Ahab can mend all. Haul in here, Tahitian; reel up, Manxman. And look ye, let the carpenter make another log, and mend thou the line. See to it."

"There he goes now; to him nothing's happened; but to me, the skewer seems loosening out of the middle of the world. Haul in, haul in, Tahitian! These lines run whole, and whirling out: come in broken, and dragging slow. Ha, Pip? come to help; eh, Pip?"

"Pip? whom call ye Pip? Pip jumped from the whaleboat. Pip's missing. Let's see now if ye haven't fished him up here, fisherman. It drags hard; I guess he's holding on. Jerk him, Tahiti! Jerk him off we haul in no cowards here. Ho! there's his arm just breaking water. A hatchet! a hatchet! cut it off- we haul in no cowards here. Captain Ahab! sir, sir! here's Pip, trying to get on board again."

"Peace, thou crazy loon," cried the Manxman, seizing him by the arm. "Away from the quarter-deck!"

"The greater idiot ever scolds the lesser," muttered Ahab, advancing. "Hands off from that holiness! Where sayest thou Pip was, boy?"

"Astern there, sir, astern! Lo! lo!"

"And who art thou, boy? I see not my reflection in the vacant pupils of thy eyes. Oh God! that man should be a thing for immortal souls to sieve through! Who art thou, boy?"

"Bell-boy, sir; ship's-crier; ding, dong, ding! Pip! Pip! One hundred pounds of clay reward for Pip; five feet high- looks cowardly- quickest known by that! Ding, dong, ding! Who's seen Pip the coward?"

"There can be no hearts above the snow-line. Oh, ye frozen heavens! look down here. Ye did beget this luckless child, and have abandoned him, ye creative libertines. Here, boy; Ahab's cabin shall be Pip's home henceforth, while Ahab lives. Thou touchest my inmost centre, boy; thou art tied to me by cords woven by my heart-strings. Come, let's down."

"What's this? here's velvet shark-skin," intently gazing at Ahab's hand, and feeling it. "Ah, now, had poor Pip but felt so kind a thing as this, perhaps he had ne'er been lost! This seems to me, sir, as a man-rope; something that weak souls may hold by. Oh, sir, let old Perth now come and rivet these two hands together; the black one with the white, for I will not let this go."

"Oh, boy, nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag thee to worse horrors than are here. Come, then, to my cabin. Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods oblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude. Come! I feel prouder leading thee by thy black hand, than though I grasped an Emperor's!"

"There go two daft ones now," muttered the old Manxman. "One daft with strength, the other daft with weakness. But here's the end of the rotten line- all dripping, too. Mend it, eh? I think we had best have a new line altogether. I'll see Mr. Stubb about it."

I must admit that I'm not a sailor and don't understand a whole lot of what Melville says in this chapter about logs and lines, loose coils and reels.  That's really not the aim of this chapter, however.  Melville is putting Ahab and Pip together, as Manxman says, "One daft with strength, and other daft with weakness."  Ahab has lost the support of most of his crew, so he turns to Pip, who lost his mind after being abandoned in the ocean for several hours during a whale hunt.  Both are mentally unstable.  Ahab is dangerous.  Pip is harmless.

I have been struggling a good portion of today with a kind of torpor.  That's the best word for it.  It may be the change of weather in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  It's cold.  Snow on the ground this morning.  Snow still in the trees tonight.  It hasn't gotten much above 35 degrees the whole day.  I'm not sure if torpor qualifies as losing my mind.  Certainly, I've lost my energy.

I also think the whole job insecurity is getting to me, as well.  Haven't been sleeping all that well.  It's strange.  Every time I feel like I'm on somewhat stable ground in my life, the ground shifts, and I find myself facing another challenge.  In the last few years, I've proven to be pretty adaptable.  I've switched careers twice--surgery to cardiology and back to surgery.  I've survived major upheaval at the university and English Department.  It has been quite the roller coaster ride.

And now I find myself at another possible crossroads.  There's part of me that just wants to go to bed and stay there for about two or three weeks.  Or maybe until the end of the year.  I know, I know.  God never closes a door without opening a window.  There's always light at the end of the tunnel.  Every storm cloud has a silver lining.  Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.  I've heard and thought of them all.

I feel a little bit like Pip right now, though.  Out of my mind.  I'm tired of moving from one possible disaster to another.  I really think that is the cause of my torpor today.  I'm just plain weary. 

Please don't think I'm ungrateful for the blessings in my life.  I'm so thankful for everything--my wife and kids, my home and jobs, music and poetry.  I am grateful for all of this.  But, in Trump America, where all decisions are motivated by profit and power, I face yet another challenge to a life that I've worked really hard to build. 

Saint Marty is doing his best to hold it together.

June 20: Lenelle Moise, "children of immigrants," Trump America

children of immigrants

by:  Lenelle Moise

When I am a toddler, a child, a tween, a teen, and a young adult, I am called an ancestral soul, a ti gran moun, a little old person.

Adults study me and decide that I am wise beyond my years, mature for my age, emotionally ripe. I am told it is unusual to meet a five-ten-fifteen-year-old girl who does not slouch or mumble or speak in monosyllables.

When I do the things that come naturally to me—when I hold my spine up erect, when I wait my turn to speak, when I speak having listened, carefully, when I enunciate, when I look grown-ups in the eye—I am told I must have “been here before.”

"How do you know?" one college professor asks me after she has seen a psychologically violent play I have written at age nineteen. "How do you already know?”

In high school, I charm my teachers. They encourage me to write speeches about feminism that I recite for International Women's Day at City Hall or deliver as part of conference panels at local universities. “If you were older," they tell me, "we would probably be friends.” One of them even flirts with me.

Among my peers I exist somewhere between amicably mysterious and irrevocably dorky. The popular kids greet me in the hallways, but they never invite me to their beer-drenched parties. I will never play Spin the Bottle. I will never play Seven Minutes in Heaven. My mother tells me she is protecting me from boys, but the truth is, after I do my homework, she wants me to type up another family friend’s résumé or resignation letter. At home, I am a bridge, a cultural interpreter, a spokesperson, a trusted ally, an American who is Haitian too, but also definitely American.

The children of immigrants don't get to be children. We lose our innocence watching our parents' backs bend, break. I am an old soul because when I am young, I watch my parents' spirits get slaughtered.

In Haiti, they were middle class. Hopeful teachers. Home owners. They were black like their live-in servants. They donated clothes to the poor. They gave up everything they knew to inherit American dreams. And here, they join factory lines, wipe shit from mean old white men's behinds, scrub five-star hotel toilets for dimes above minimum wage. Here, they shuck and jive and step and fetch and play chauffeur to people who aren't as smart as they are, people who do not speak as many languages as they do. In the 1980s, they are barred from giving blood because newscasters and politicians say that AIDS comes from where they come from: Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, a black magic island that spawns boat people and chaos, a place of illiterate zombies, orphan beggars and brazen political corruption.

When I am a child, my childhood is a luxury my family cannot afford. Their dignity is not spared, so my innocence is not spared. They are humihated and traumatized daily, so I become a nurse to their trauma. I am told too much, so I know too much, so I am wise beyond my years.

When I am six, my mother tells me she found out she was pregnant with me at age nineteen, she “tried to kill the baby." She says "the baby," as if it isn’t me she’s talking about; as if I am not the expensive, scandalous daughter who forced my way into her world despite the abortion-inducing herbal teas she drank and her frantic leaps off of small buildings.

When I am sixteen, my father calls me on the phone to, inevitably, weep. He says, "Living in this country, I have learned not to hope for things. Only you are my hope. Only you."

So—yes, I grow up fast.

__________________________

Greetings from Calumet.  I am in town to perform in the Red Jacket Jamboree, an old-fashioned radio program that's taped at the Calumet Theatre.

I'm pretty tired tonight after a day of traveling and rehearsal.  However, I found this poem that I thought said a lot about immigrants and children.  Pretty appropriate for Trump America.

Saint Marty is still mightily disappointed in his country.

February 28: X Mark, Being Queequeg, Past Life

As we were walking down the end of the wharf towards the ship, Queequeg carrying his harpoon, Captain Peleg in his gruff voice loudly hailed us from his wigwam, saying he had not suspected my friend was a cannibal, and furthermore announcing that he let no cannibals on board that craft, unless they previously produced their papers. "What do you mean by that, Captain Peleg?" said I, now jumping on the bulwarks, and leaving my comrade standing on the wharf.

"I mean," he replied, "he must show his papers."

"Yes," said Captain Bildad in his hollow voice, sticking his head from behind Peleg's, out of the wigwam. "He must show that he's converted. Son of darkness," he added, turning to Queequeg, "art thou at present in communion with any Christian church?"

"Why," said I, "he's a member of the first Congregational Church." Here be it said, that many tattooed savages sailing in Nantucket ships at last come to be converted into the churches.

"First Congregational Church," cried Bildad, "what! that worships in Deacon Deuteronomy Coleman's meeting-house?" and so saying, taking out his spectacles, he rubbed them with his great yellow bandana handkerchief, and putting them on very carefully, came out of the wigwam, and leaning stiffly over the bulwarks, took a good long look at Queequeg.

"How long hath he been a member?" he then said, turning to me; "not very long, I rather guess, young man."

"No," said Peleg, "and he hasn't been baptized right either, or it would have washed some of that devil's blue off his face."

"Do tell, now," cried Bildad, "is this Philistine a regular member of Deacon Deuteronomy's meeting? I never saw him going there, and I pass it every Lord's day."

"I don't know anything about Deacon Deuteronomy or his meeting," said I; "all I know is, that Queequeg here is a born member of the First Congregational Church. He is a deacon himself, Queequeg is."

"Young man," said Bildad sternly, "thou art skylarking with me- explain thyself, thou young Hittite. What church dost thee mean? answer me."

Finding myself thus hard pushed, I replied, "I mean, sir, the same ancient Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg there, and Queequeg here, and all of us, and every mother's son and soul of us belong; the great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshipping world; we all belong to that; only some of us cherish some crotchets no ways touching the grand belief; in that we all join hands."

"Splice, thou mean'st splice hands," cried Peleg, drawing nearer. "Young man, you'd better ship for a missionary, instead of a fore-mast hand; I never heard a better sermon. Deacon Deuteronomy- why Father Mapple himself couldn't beat it, and he's reckoned something. Come aboard, come aboard: never mind about the papers. I say, tell Quohog there- what's that you call him? tell Quohog to step along. By the great anchor, what a harpoon he's got there! looks like good stuff that; and he handles it about right. I say, Quohog, or whatever your name is, did you ever stand in the head of a whale-boat? did you ever strike a fish?"

Without saying a word, Queequeg, in his wild sort of way, jumped upon the bulwarks, from thence into the bows of one of the whale-boats hanging to the side; and then bracing his left knee, and poising his harpoon, cried out in some such way as this:-

"Cap'ain, you see him small drop tar on water dere? You see him? well, spose him one whale eye, well, den!" and taking sharp aim at it, he darted the iron right over old Bildad's broad brim, clean across the ship's decks, and struck the glistening tar spot out of sight.

"Now," said Queequeg, quietly, hauling in the line, "spos-ee him whale-e eye; why, dad whale dead."

"Quick, Bildad," said Peleg, his partner, who, aghast at the close vicinity of the flying harpoon, had retreated towards the cabin gangway. "Quick, I say, you Bildad, and get the ship's papers. We must have Hedgehog there, I mean Quohog, in one of our boats. Look ye, Quohog, we'll give ye the ninetieth lay, and that's more than ever was given a harpooneer yet out of Nantucket."

So down we went into the cabin, and to my great joy Queequeg was soon enrolled among the same ship's company to which I myself belonged.

When all preliminaries were over and Peleg had got everything ready for signing, he turned to me and said, "I guess, Quohog there don't know how to write, does he? I say, Quohog, blast ye! dost thou sign thy name or make thy mark?

But at this question, Queequeg, who had twice or thrice before taken part in similar ceremonies, looked no ways abashed; but taking the offered pen, copied upon the paper, in the proper place, an exact counterpart of a queer round figure which was tattooed upon his arm; so that through Captain Peleg's obstinate mistake touching his appellative, it stood something like this:-

Quohog.

his X mark.

Melville is indulging in some comedy here again, mostly at the expense of Peleg and Bildad.  The two captains hold Queequeg suspect because of his tattoos and color of his skin.  They must somehow be assured that Queequeg has abandoned his pagan ways and converted to Christianity.  I suppose they want to be confident that they don't hire a cannibal who is going to (one-by-one) consume the other members of the ship's crew.  Of course, the fact that Peleg can't even get Queequeg's name right ("Quohog" is very near to the "quahog," which is, according to Dictionary.com, a "large, rounded edible clam of the Atlantic coast of North America").

The biggest joke of the passage is that Queequeg is a very experienced whaler, and the two owners of the Pequod fall all over themselves trying to hire him, even offering him a larger stake in the profits of the voyage.  Christianity goes right out the window when it comes to money.

I suppose it's all about judging a person by appearance.  Queeqeug is dark-skinned with pointed teeth.  He's covered in tattoos from head to foot.  He carries a harpoon wherever he goes and sells shrunken human heads.  Not to mention the little wooden idol that he worships.  All these things mark him as questionable.  In the United States today, Queequeg would have been picked up and deported by the FBI a long time ago.  He wouldn't have lasted one week in Trump America.

I've been thinking about otherness quite a bit today.  I think we all have a little bit of Queequeg in us.  I know I do.  In my family, I pretty much stand out like Dorothy in the Land of Oz.  I teach at a university and write poetry.  I'm very liberal-minded in a family of conservatives.  I think my dad voted for a Democrat for President just once in his life--John F. Kennedy.  I'm a musician and performer.  Directed a few musicals in my years, as well.  Totally comfortable in a crowd of theater geeks and artists.

If there are such things as past lives, I think I could have been Charles Dickens.  I've always been drawn to his writing and life.  I have a 1200-page biography of Dickens on my bookshelf.  Every year or so, I reread it.  I stopped counting how many times I've made my way through its pages.  Well over eight or nine times.  Dickens was an actor and writer.  He had a huge family, but he didn't really "fit in."  Had a complicated relationship with his dad.  Was passionate and driven in everything he did.  He existed on the fringe of normal, but he was well-loved by everyone who knew him.

Charles Dickens was a Queequeg.  Tonight, after I'm done with these blog posts, I have to finalize my plans for a poetry workshop that I'm leading tomorrow night.  After that, I think I may work on a new poem.  Tomorrow afternoon, I'm meeting someone from the university where I teach.  We are planning a poetry reading for the month of April.  Poet Laureate stuff.

It's not so bad being a little Queequeg-ish.  As a matter of fact, it allows me quite a bit of freedom.  I don't have to live up to anyone's expectations.  Instead, I create my own expectations.  Success for other people may be a large bank account.  Vacations twice a year.  A nice car.  Nice house.  Right now, I'd say that my idea of success would be publishing a collection of Bigfoot poems.

Different expectations, yet I will put my X mark on the world.  Just like Queequeg.

Saint Marty is thankful this evening for everything that makes him different.