March 28: "The Sunday Times," Sausages, Maunday Thursday

Billy Collins has breakfast . . . 

The Sunday Times

by:  Billy Collins

There's so much 

going on in the world

besides these sausages. 

It's so much easier to focus on the sausages instead of the latest from Ukraine or Washington, D. C.  Lot's of people choose simply to avoid the news, deeming it too depressing or slanted.  (I will be the first to admit that misinformation has exploded, thanks to AI, politicians, and general public gullibility.)  Of course, just focusing on the sausages on your plate hasn't always worked out for the best, historically speaking.  How many German citizens were preoccupied with their sauerbraten instead of what was happening at the Reichstag?  You see what I mean.

It is Maunday Thursday.  This evening, I played keyboard for a service at a local Lutheran church.  The narrative of the Last Supper was read.  Attendees were called forward by the pastor to lay hands on, bless, and give absolution.  Communion was distributed.  Then, at the end, we sang "O Sacred Head Surrounded" while the altar was stripped bare and sanctuary lights extinguished.  We left in silence.

It was a time to really pay attention to more than just the pizza you had for dinner or the mint sitting in the pocket between your gums and cheek.  I find all of Holy Week a pretty raw experience.  Because it's about examining your conscience and life.  It's impossible for me to attend these church services and not emerge bruised and more than a little bloody.

Introspection is difficult.  Nobody likes to think of their failings.  The Biblical story of Christ's passion is brutal, full of torture and death.  According to Christian tradition, that's the price Jesus paid for all the cruelties we inflict on each other day after day.  Things haven't changed all that much in 21 centuries.  We've just found better, more effective ways of hurting each other.  (If you don't believe that, you really do need to look up from your breakfast sausages.)

That's what the days of Holy Week are all about:  salvation from all the times we've fucked up our lives, relationships, and the world.  We need to be saved from our own myopic selves.  Just because Ukraine is 5000 miles away doesn't mean that what happens there has nothing to do with you.  If you call yourself a Christian, you're supposed to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the stranger and sick and oppressed.  Jesus is pretty clear about this in almost everything he says.

If you don't believe Saint Marty, try to find redemption in your oatmeal or bacon.

October 21: "Sleeping in the Forest," Blinders, Hatred and Cruetly

Mary Oliver spends a night in the woods . . .

Sleeping in the Forest

by:  Mary Oliver

I thought the earth

remembered me, she

took me back so tenderly, arranging

her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds.  I slept

as never before, a stone

on the riverbed, nothing

between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated

light as moths among the branches

of the perfect trees.  All night

I heard the small kingdoms breathing

around me, the insects, and the birds

who do their work in the darkness.  All night

I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling

with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.

Oliver is surrounded by the small kingdoms of the wild--insect and bird--breathing their dark work.  She says she rises and falls all night, as if floating in a midnight pond or lake, facing a luminous doom, disappearing over and over into the goodness of the universe.

It's not an easy thing to lose yourself, to give up the insectile or elephantine struggles of every day.  Humans have a habit of wearing blinders, to blot out all else but what is in front of their eyes, and, of course, what is in front of their eyes is only what they choose to see.

In the last couple weeks, the Middle East has been torn apart by conflict and violence.  I've been aware, in a superficial way, of the ongoing hostilities, just like I'm aware in a superficial way of the ongoing violence in the Ukraine.  (Notice, I'm not using the word "war," but perhaps that's just me wearing my blinders.)  I guess I'm just like every other person--unless I'm directly affected by the violence taking place in the world, I don't pay as close attention as I do, say, to prices at the gas pump.

I'm not willfully ignoring the situation in Israel.  Simply put, I haven't had the opportunity to sit down and try to understand what's going on.  Thus, I haven't been actively worrying about the possibility of an all-out nuclear holocaust.  I truly don't get hatred, no matter what motivates it.  (This coming from a white male who has benefitted from white male privilege his whole life.)  

I have witnessed cruelty up close and personal.  I grew up with a sister who had Down syndrome and was the target of bullying most of her school career.  Ignorance and intolerance were classmates of my sister, never missing an opportunity to take advantage of her defenselessness.  

My sister loved singing, and she was in the high school chorus.  She didn't sing well, but she sang with more heart and passion than all the rest of the students in the chorus combined.  When she sang, she moved her shoulders, danced.  She couldn't help it.  Well, just before one performances, another member of the chorus told my sister to just mouth the words and not use her voice.  "You're making us sound bad," the girl said.  My sister stood on the stage that night, not moving or singing, looking like her puppy had just been killed by a car.

That's what I'm talking about--how human beings can be so cruel and hateful to each other.  I just don't get it.  

When countries go to war, innocent people die.  That's fact.  I'm not sure any cause or disagreement is worth that price.  And when someone is deliberately cruel and intolerant, innocent people suffer.  Nothing warrants that kind of heartbreak, either.

Don't wear blinders.  Look far.  Notice.  Open your mouth and speak up for the innocent and weak.  Be a vessel of peace instead of a conduit of hatred.

Saint Marty wants to make the world golden instead of filling it with darkness.

March 27: Faint and Dizzy, Will Smith, Slap

Santiago feels the strain of the battle . . . 

But the fish kept on circling slowly and the old man was wet with sweat and tired deep into his bones two hours later. But the circles were much shorter now and from the way the line slanted he could tell the fish had risen steadily while he swam.

For an hour the old man had been seeing black spots before his eyes and the sweat salted his eyes and salted the cut over his eye and on his forehead. He was not afraid of the black spots. They were normal at the tension that he was pulling on the line. Twice, though, he had felt faint and dizzy and that had worried him.

"I could not fail myself and die on a fish like this," he said. "Now that I have him coming so beautifully, God help me endure. I'll say a hundred Our Fathers and a hundred Hail Marys. But I cannot say them now."

Consider them said, he thought. I'll say them later.

Just then he felt a sudden banging and jerking on the line he held with his two hands. It was sharp and hard-feeling and heavy.

Okay, the fish is circling the boat.  Santiago is feeling faint and dizzy.  And Will Smith slapped Chris Rock in the face for telling a joke at the Academy Awards.  

I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on this post.  It's late.  The Oscars just got over.  I'm sure that the whole world is going to be losing its collective mind for quite some time over what happened this evening.  

I watch the Oscars every year.  Even in the Out of Africa and Crash years, I enjoy myself.  There's something fascinating about seeing these celebrities patting themselves on the backs for three hours.  Or slapping each other in the face.  It's like going to the zoo.  Even when the monkeys are masturbating in front of you, it's still entertaining.  

Is assault ever an appropriate response to a situation?  No.  Do incredibly rich and famous people feel a little above the law?  Probably.  Is this whole situation going to ruin some careers?  Probably, for a while.  

Please keep this in mind, though:  there are thousands of people suffering and dying in Ukraine.  It's life-and-death there right now.  If you want to get outraged, do it over something important.  Something that deserves outrage.

That's the last thing Saint Marty will say about the slap seen 'round the world.

And a Lenten Poem . . . 

Planet of the Ape

by:  Martin Achatz

Caesar hated his home
In the ape house in Detroit,
Sat with his silver spine
To visitors, crushing his truck
Tire like machines in the Ford plant,
Over and over and over,
Planning his next rebellion.
A handful of feces flung
Through cage bars at the glass
Protecting kids and mothers
From his frustration, boredom,
Rwandan moons dying in his eyes.
Bananas, lettuce, apples, grapes
Smashed on keepers' heads,
Ground with the force
Of tropical rain, hard
Enough to splinter trees.
Caesar suffered indignities,
Vets observing him, his mate,
Lulu, in intimate moments, he,
Unable to scream, beat his chest
In wild pleasure, or lose himself
To that moment of brute release.
For decades, he stared, placid
As the Sphinx, day after day,
Waited for night to come,
When people went away, when
He closed his eyes, drifted back, back,
Back in blood, in DNA,
In ancestral memory,
To mountain and jungle,
To moon in a canopy
Green as Eden, to the beginning,
When he was named before names.
Thunder. Earthquake. Hurricane.
Eclipse in trees and rocks.
Avalanche of fist and tooth
And hunger.

March 8: From That Height, In Comparison, Ukraine

Santiago thinks about perspective . . . 

An airplane passed over head on its course to Miami and he watched its shadow scaring up the schools of flying fish.

"With so much flying fish there should be dolphin," he said, and leaned back on the line to see if it was possible to gain any on his fish. But he could not and it stayed at the hardness and water-drop shivering that preceded breaking. The boat moved ahead slowly and he watched the airplane until he could no longer see it.

It must be very strange in an airplane, he thought. I wonder what the sea looks like from that height? They should be able to see the fish well if they do not fly too high. I would like to fly very slowly at two hundred fathoms high and see the fish from above. In the turtle boats I was in the cross-trees of the mast-head and even at that height I saw much. The dolphin look greener from there and you can see their stripes and their purple spots and you can see all of the school as they swim. Why is it that all the fast-moving fish of the dark current have purple backs and usually purple stripes or spots? The dolphin looks green of course because he is really golden. But when he comes to feed, truly hungry, purple stripes show on his sides as on a marlin. Can it be anger, or the greater speed he makes that brings them out?

This little reflection by Santiago reminds me of that scene from Dead Poets Society when Robin Williams/Mr. Keating hops on top of his desk and talks about looking at the world in a different way.  That's what Santiago is doing here.  He's thinking about what his world looks like from the window of an airplane.  How much smaller and bigger it is all at once.

Tonight's post is going to be short.  I'm tired, and I have "miles to go before I sleep," as Robert Frost says.  This will be just a check-in, to say that I am alive and functioning.  Nothing huge and catastrophic happened today.  It was just . . . busy.

Of course, these days, nothing really seems huge and catastrophic in comparison to what's going on in Ukraine.  Vladimir Putin wreaking military Armageddon on a country and its people.  Last night, I heard about a young Ukrainian girl who was one her way home after delivering medical supplies to a veterinary clinic.  The girl encountered some Russian soldiers.  She was shot and killed in the street.  (A friend of mine, who currently lives and works in Ukraine, communicated this story.  The girl was a former student of my friend.)

This is what's going on in the world.  Innocent people being murdered.  Men, women, and children.  Sadly, this is nothing new on the face of the planet.  We've all heard/seen it before.  Nazi Germany.  Stalinist Russia.  Rwandan genocide.  Humans are very good at killing each other on massive scales.

Ukraine puts things into perspective.  My problems are tiny.  Insignificant.  Everybody I love is safe and healthy.  I don't have to worry whether a bomb is going to fall on top of my house.  Or that my daughter is going to be raped and slaughtered by soldiers on her way home from school.  I am incredibly blessed.

I could ask you all to pray for Ukraine right here.  That would be appropriate.  I believe in the power of prayer.  Yet, I know, by the time I type the last period on this post, more people will have been murdered in that country, and any prayer I utter will seem . . . not enough.  

I'm not sure how this all will end.  How history will judge us as we sit back and watch Ukrainians be massacred.  Many weeks ago, we knew this was going to happen.  Here we sit.  It's happening.  T. S. Eliot wrote, "This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper."

Saint Marty is feeling a little like a hollow man tonight.  Whimpering these words.

Here's a way to bring a little light into the world of someone I care about.  Vote for my sister-in-law, Cindi Carlson, who is up for a very big prize:

Vote for Cindi Carlson

August 8: Scary Poetry, Sharon Olds, "When"

Some of the best poems I've ever written have been about subjects that scare me or make me feel uneasy.  I think it has something to do with the immediacy of emotion.  The urgency of it.  I've written about my brother's death.  My mother's decline in health.  My daughter's growing up.  My wife's mental illness.  Subjects that are raw as a butcher's display case.

Sharon Olds excels at writing about subjects that seem dangerous, taboo, and frightening.  Tonight's poem is one of my favorites.  It seems appropriate to share it tonight, with the Middle East in turmoil, again, and the Ukraine in a state of absolute chaos.

Saint Marty will give this poem his highest compliment:  he wishes had written it.

When

by:  Sharon Olds

I wonder now, only when it will happen,
when the young mother will hear the
noise like somebody's pressure cooker
down the block, going off.  She'll go out in the yard,
holding her small daughter in her arms,
and there, above the end of the street, in the
air above the line of the trees,
she will see it rising, lifting up
over our horizon, the upper rim of the
gold ball, large as a giant
planet starting to lift up over ours.
She will stand there in the yard holding her daughter,
looking at it rise and glow and blossom and rise,
and the child will open her arms to it,
it will look so beautiful.

Terrifying and beautiful