May 30: "Avoidance," Introvert Day, "Expressionism"

Billy Collins tries not to be seen . . . 

Avoidance

by: Billy Collins

When I saw him

walking toward me in the city,

I stopped and looked in the window

of a store that had closed.

Turned out, it was only 

someone who looked like him,

but all the way home, I wondered

where in the world he could possibly be.

I understand what Collins is doing in this poem.  There are times when I simply do not have the energy for human interaction.  I call them my introvert days.  (Believe it or not, I am an introvert.  While I can and do socialize with large groups of people, I am usually drained to silence by such interactions.  I have to hibernate for a while afterward.)

I had an introvert day today.  Pretty much, I holed up in my office at the library and worked on my computer for about nine or ten hours, with a few breaks to chat with good friends who stopped by.  I needed to recharge my peopling battery.  Now, I'm sitting in my dark living room, typing this post, enjoying the silence.  

One of my recent guilty pleasures is watching a British show called Portrait Artist of the Year at night.  Basically, every episode consists of nine amateur and/or professional artists who paint famous peoples' portraits for four hours.  After they are done painting, three judges tear their work apart and choose a winner.  I watch this show alone because my wife thinks it's as dull as . . . well, watching paint dry, and my son is gaming online with his friends.  So it's another way for me simply to be still and enjoy myself.

DIGRESSION:  In a lot of ways, I think painting and writing poetry are very similar.  It's all about creating or arresting moments in time.  Artists do it with paints and pencils and pastels.  Poets do it with words.  Perhaps that's why I enjoy this show so much--I get to witness the creation of something artistically beautiful.  And I've been a amateur art enthusiast most of my life, Andrew Wyeth, Claude Monet, and Vincent van Gogh being my three favorite painters.

Hopefully, by tomorrow, Saint Marty will be ready to rejoin humanity.  Until then, it's British painters and darkness.

Expressionism

by: Martin Achatz

My uncle never sold

any of his landscapes,

gave them away as

birthday and wedding gifts

instead.  As far as I know,

he also never shaved off

his ear to give my aunt

on their anniversary.

March 5: I Was Happy, Smell of Bacon, Worry

 Merton doesn't realize that he's really happy . . . 

I was still without any formal spiritual direction, but I went frequently to confession, especially at St. Francis’ Church, where the Friars were more inclined to give me advice than secular priests had been. And it was in one of the confessionals at St. Francis’ that a good priest one day told me, very insistently: 

“Go to Communion every day, every day.” 

By that time, I had already become a daily communicant, but his words comforted and strengthened me, and his emphasis made me glad. And indeed I had reason to be, for it was those daily Communions that were transforming my life almost visibly, from day to day. 

I did not realize any of this on those beautiful mornings: I scarcely was aware that I was so happy. It took someone else to draw my attention to it. 

I was coming down Seventh Avenue one morning. It must have been in December or January. I had just come from the little church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and from Communion, and was going to get some breakfast at a lunch wagon near Loew’s Sheridan Theater. I don’t know what I was thinking of, but as I walked along I nearly bumped into Mark who was on his way to the subway, going to Columbia for his morning classes. 

“Where are you going?” he said. The question surprised me, as there did not seem to be any reason to ask where I was going, and all I could answer was: “To breakfast.” 

Later on, Mark referred again to the meeting and said: 

“What made you look so happy, on the street, there?” 

So that was what had impressed him, and that was why he had asked me where I was going. It was not where I was going that made me happy, but where I was coming from. Yet, as I say, this surprised me too, because I had not really paid any attention to the fact that I was happy—which indeed I was. 

Can I tell you that happiness is snow that comes in the middle of the night, coating everything, the way medicine paints a sore throat into numbness?  You wake up in the morning, and the world, once ugly with mud or dead leaves or bare black branches, is Ansel Adams stunning.  You wander through your backyard, not even recognizing it as your backyard.  It has become the most beautiful place you have ever been.

Happiness always arrives in that surprising way, like a cousin that travels all night and appears at your door at 7 a.m., asking for coffee and a bed.  You don't even realize you've missed the cousin until his face is staring at you across the kitchen table.  And then you find yourself smiling, laughing even, when you haven't smiled or laughed in a very long time.

That's what Merton experiences here--the kind of happiness that sneaks in the back door and is making you breakfast when you didn't even realize you were hungry.  And, for the rest of the day, you walk around with the smell of bacon sitting in your nose, feeling full, satisfied.  You don't even realize how happy you are, because you are simply too busy being happy.

I think most people walk around focusing on what's wrong in their lives.  I know I do.  For me, today was all about a person who's been making choices that are painful to witness and be a part of.  These thoughts have consumed me for a good portion of my waking hours, like a wine hangover.  No matter what remedy I've tried, I couldn't shake the lingering headache of the situation.

Here's the other truth I know:  most of us worry about things we have absolutely no control over.  Worry about unemployment or illness or weather or your sister's Alzheimer's or Donald Trump's bad hair.  I have zero control over any of these things.  No matter what I say or do, the person I spoke about in the above paragraph will continue to make bad choices.  Until she decides not to.  It has absolutely nothing to do with me.  Yet, I allow those bad decisions to control my happiness.  

Jeanne Calment, purportedly the oldest living person in modern times (she died at age 123), had something to say about worry.  Calment lived from 1875 to 1997 in Arles, France, and allegedly met Vincent van Gogh.  She said about the famous painter, "I met him at the end of his life . . . At the very end.  He was ugly.  He was blighted by alcohol."  Calment became known for her blunt talk and wisdom.  She outlived every person in her immediate family.  At the end of her life, she had become an international celebrity.  Here is what Calment said about worry:

"If you can't do anything about it, don't worry about it."

This philosophy seemed to have served Calment well.  She smoked from the time she was 21 until age 117, when she quit because she could no longer see well enough to light her cigarette.  She ate a pound of chocolate a week.  Hers was not a life of denial and frugality.  More like excess and indulgence.  Worry was not a factor.  She experienced great loss--her daughter died of pleurisy at the age of 36, her grandson was killed in a car accident.  Yet, she remained indefatigably happy, right up to her dying day.

I think we can all pick a card from Calment's deck.  Worry over things you can't change is pointless and harmful.  Tonight, I can say that it is also exhausting.  So, tomorrow, I choose to be happy, regardless of what happens during the day.  Because life is short.  Even if I live to be 123, I've already spent a good portion of my days chasing after a version of happiness that just might be impossible.

So, happiness tomorrow.  And chocolate.

Saint Marty can get behind those two miracles. 

March 1: Bottom Fell Out, Swallowed by a Whale, Inside Out

Arthur and Ford, aboard the Vogon ship, are about to jump to hyperspace . . .

The noise stopped.

Arthur discovered to his embarrassment that he was lying curled up in a small ball on the floor with his arms wrapped round his head.  He smiled weakly.

"Charming man," he said.  "I wish I had a daughter so I could forbid her to marry one . . ."

"You wouldn't need to," said Ford.  "They've got as much sex appeal as a road accident.  No, don't move," he added as Arthur began to uncurl himself, "you'd better be prepared for the jump into hyperspace.  It's unpleasantly like being drunk."

"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"

"You ask a glass of water."

Arthur thought about this.

"Ford," he said.

"Yeah?"

"What's this fish doing in my ear?"

"It's translating for you.  It's a Babel fish.  Look it up in the book if you like."

He tossed over The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and then curled himself up into a fetal ball to prepare himself for the jump.

At that moment the bottom fell out of Arthur's mind.

His eyes turned inside out.  His feet began to leak out of the top of his head.

The room folded flat around him, spun around, shifted out of existence and left him sliding into his own navel.

They were passing through hyperspace.

Yes, that little description of hyperspace sort of describes my entire week.  Started out with a blizzard that nearly buried my entire house.  Ends tonight with me, sitting in my kitchen, feeling like the bottom has fallen out of my mind and everything that I've known for the past 20 or so years has shifted out of existence.

No, I'm not going to go all Sylvia Plath or Vincent van Gogh on you.  You will not need to increase your dosage of antidepressants or sit under a light therapy lamp for hours after reading this post.  Rather, I just want to meditate on how unreal the last five or so days have been.  Like something from a van Gogh painting or a Plath poem.

This afternoon, I sat in my new office at the hospital, the door closed and locked.  I was surrounded by remnants of my old office, including my Employee of the Month picture, which I nailed onto the wall behind my desk.  I listened to my online Christmas radio station and assembled patient charts.  All stuff I would have done last week, as well.  Except that I felt like I'd been swallowed by a whale or something.

Like in the movie Pinocchio where Geppetto and Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket are sitting on the deck of a boat in the belly of Monstro.  Everything is sort of normal and sort of isn't.  There's the boat and the wooden mast and the windows and a lamp.  But look up, and all you see is a heaven of whale ribs and stomach.  It isn't quite right.

Until I somehow find my footing in my new space (which will only last for about six weeks), I am going to continue to float around on my little boat, waiting to be coughed up onto some foreign shore.  (Yes, I am now mixing narratives.  I am no longer Geppetto or Pinocchio.  I am Jonah, on my way to the shores of some distant Nineveh.  Stick with me.)

That is the extent of my wisdom this evening.  Everything is inside out, upside down.  I've made the jump to hyperspace, and I'm not enjoying it right now.  I'm on a voyage, but something much larger (and fishier) is doing the navigating by the green auroras of winter.

Saint Marty isn't much for sea food.

April 3: Beaked Whales, Rewarding Artists and Writers, Prince Moneybanks

BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER II. (Right Whale).- In one respect this is the most venerable of the leviathans, being the one first regularly hunted by man. It yields the article commonly known as whalebone or baleen; and the oil specially known as "whale oil," an inferior article in commerce. Among the fishermen, he is indiscriminately designated by all the following titles: The Whale; the Greenland Whale; the Black Whale; the Great Whale; the True Whale; the Right Whale. There is a deal of obscurity concerning the Identity of the species thus multitudinously baptized. What then is the whale, which I include in the second species of my Folios? It is the Great Mysticetus of the English naturalists; the Greenland Whale of the English whaleman; the Baliene Ordinaire of the French whalemen; the Growlands Walfish of the Swedes. It is the whale which for more than two centuries past has been hunted by the Dutch and English in the Arctic seas; it is the whale which the American fishermen have long pursued in the Indian ocean, on the Brazil Banks, on the Nor' West Coast, and various other parts of the world, designated by them Right Whale Cruising Grounds.

Some pretend to see a difference between the Greenland whale of the English and the right whale of the Americans. But they precisely agree in all their grand features; nor has there yet been presented a single determinate fact upon which to ground a radical distinction. It is by endless subdivisions based upon the most inconclusive differences, that some departments of natural history become so repellingly intricate. The right whale will be elsewhere treated of at some length, with reference to elucidating the sperm whale.

BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER III. (Fin-Back).- Under this head I reckon a monster which, by the various names of Fin-Back, Tall-Spout, and Long-John, has been seen almost in every sea and is commonly the whale whose distant jet is so often descried by passengers crossing the Atlantic, in the New York packet-tracks. In the length he attains, and in his baleen, the Fin-back resembles the right whale, but is of a less portly girth, and a lighter color, approaching to olive. His great lips present a cable-like aspect, formed by the intertwisting, slanting folds of large wrinkles. His grand distinguishing feature, the fin, from which he derives his name, is often a conspicuous object. This fin is some three or four feet long, growing vertically from the hinder part of the back, of an angular shape, and with a very sharp pointed end. Even if not the slightest other part of the creature be visible, this isolated fin will, at times, be seen plainly projecting from the surface. When the sea is moderately calm, and slightly marked with spherical ripples, and this gnomon-like fin stands up and casts shadows upon the wrinkled surface, it may well be supposed that the watery circle surrounding it somewhat resembles a dial, with its style and wavy hour-lines graved on it. On that Ahaz-dial the shadow often goes back. The Fin-Back is not gregarious. He seems a whale-hater, as some men are man-haters. Very shy; always going solitary; unexpectedly rising to the surface in the remotest and most sullen waters; his straight and single lofty jet rising like a tall misanthropic spear upon a barren plain; gifted with such wondrous power and velocity in swimming, as to defy all present pursuit from man; this leviathan seems the banished and unconquerable Cain of his race, bearing for his mark that style upon his back. From having the baleen in his mouth, the Fin-Back is sometimes included with the right whale, among a theoretic species denominated Whalebone whales, that is, whales with baleen. Of these so-called Whalebone whales, there would seem to be several varieties, most of which, however, are little known. Broad-nosed whales and beaked whales; pike-headed whales; bunched whales; under-jawed whales and rostrated whales, are the fisherman's names for a few sorts.

In connexion with this appellative of "Whalebone whales," it is of great importance to mention, that however such a nomenclature may be convenient in facilitating allusions to some kind of whales, yet it is in vain to attempt a clear classification of the Leviathan, founded upon either his baleen, or hump, or fin, or teeth; notwithstanding that those marked parts or features very obviously seem better adapted to afford the basis for a regular system of Cetology than any other detached bodily distinctions, which the whale, in his kinds, presents. How then? The baleen, hump, back-fin, and teeth; these are things whose peculiarities are indiscriminately dispersed among all sorts of whales, without any record to what may be the nature of their structure in other and more essential particulars. Thus, the sperm whale and the humpbacked whale, each has a hump; but there the similitude ceases. Then this same humpbacked whale and the Greenland whale, each of these has baleen; but there again the similitude ceases. And it is just the same with the other parts above mentioned. In various sorts of whales, they form such irregular combinations; or, in the case of any one of them detached, such an irregular isolation; as utterly to defy all general methodization formed upon such a basis. On this rock every one of the whale-naturalists has split.

But it may possibly be conceived that, in the internal parts of the whale, in his anatomy- there, at least, we shall be able to hit the right classification. Nay; what thing, for example, is there in the Greenland whale's anatomy more striking than his baleen? Yet we have seen that by his baleen it is impossible correctly to classify the Greenland whale. And if you descend into the bowels of the various leviathans, why there you will not find distinctions a fiftieth part as available to the systematizer as those external ones already enumerated. What then remains? nothing but to take hold of the whales bodily, in their entire liberal volume, and boldly sort them that way. And this is the Bibliographical system here adopted; and it is the only one that can possibly succeed, for it alone is practicable. To proceed.

So continues the naming and categorizing of whales, however inaccurate it may be.  Remember, Melville is working with a nineteenth-century understanding of the whale.  Most of his information seems to come from observations by a few scientists and quite a few whalers like Ishmael and Starbuck and Ahab.  Thus, the leviathan, as Melville calls it, is a commodity--valued more for its individual parts than for its whole.  That is the way of the human world.  Everything stickered and priced.

I have been thinking a lot about value recently.  I have to say that most of the things I value--poetry, literature, art, writing--are not highly valued by people in the United States.  In fact, unless your name is Stephen King or van Gogh, the Western world, dominated by capitalism and wealth, isn't really about rewarding artists and writers at all.  (Keep in mind that Herman Melville struggled all of his life as a writer.  Moby-Dick didn't really grow in reputation until well after his death.  Vincent van Gogh, whose paintings now sell in the hundreds of millions of dollars, sold only one painting in his entire lifetime--400 Francs for "The Red Vineyard" a few months before he died.)

This is the sad reality for artists and writers now.  Death is the only thing that seems to increase value and reputation.  Granted, there are always stories of first-time writers who sell their novels for a million dollars.  Andrew Wyeth had his first art exhibition in New York when he was only 18- or 19-years-old.  (Wyeth came from a wealthy, artistic family, so he really doesn't count.)  Overall, there is no real support system in my part of the world for any kind of artist.

This fact makes me sort of nostalgic for the days when artists and writers had wealthy patrons.  Those lucky bastards didn't have to worry about how to support their families, feed their kids, or pay their bills.  Prince Moneybanks would take care of those concerns.  All the artist had to do was paint or write or compose.  Every once in a while, maybe release a new painting or perform a new symphony or read a new sonnet sequence.  That was the life of an artist with a sponsor.

Of course, those days are long gone, along with smallpox and the Black Death.  Yes, there were trade-offs for living in those times.  Health care wasn't always the greatest, and Pizza Hut didn't exist.  I, myself, being an insulin-dependent diabetic, would have died at the age of 13, which is when I spent a week or so in the hospital in a coma.  So, I guess I wouldn't have fared well in the Renaissance as an artist and writer.

Success is a matter of hard work AND luck now.  While digital media has expanded the possibilities for artists, it hasn't expanded the rewards.  If I like a song these days, I don't have to go out and buy a CD.  All I have to do is Google it.  If I like a book, I can get my hands on an electronic copy of it for just a couple dollars.  Technology has not improved the plight of artists.  It has improved the possibilities for thieves.

If I sound like a Luddite, I'm not.  I love my laptop and iPhone just as much as the next person.  One of main creative outlets is this blog.  I enjoy modern conveniences a great deal.  However, I am bemoaning the devaluation of the arts and artists, in which technology plays a huge role.

Whales are no longer hunted the way they were in the 1800s.  For the most part, they are protected from the likes of Ahab and his crew.  Harpoons are pretty much things of the past.  Instead of being valued in part, whales are now valued as whole living creatures.  Artists, on the other hand, have gone in the opposite direction--from being completely appreciated and valued to being fry cooks and contingent instructors.

As a poet, Saint Marty simply appreciates when he's valued for anything.

January 11: News from the Feegees, Envy, Full Bottle of Gin

At last some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an adjoining room. It was cold as Iceland- no fire at all- the landlord said he couldn't afford it. Nothing but two dismal tallow candles, each in a winding sheet. We were fain to button up our monkey jackets, and hold to our lips cups of scalding tea with our half frozen fingers. But the fare was of the most substantial kind- not only meat and potatoes, but dumplings; good heavens! dumplings for supper! One young fellow in a green box coat, addressed himself to these dumplings in a most direful manner.

"My boy," said the landlord, "you'll have the nightmare to a dead sartainty."

"Landlord," I whispered, "that aint the harpooneer is it?"

"Oh, no," said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, "the harpooneer is a dark complexioned chap. He never eats dumplings, he don't- he eats nothing but steaks, and he likes 'em rare."

"The devil he does," says I. "Where is that harpooneer? Is he here?"

"He'll be here afore long," was the answer.

I could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of this "dark complexioned" harpooneer. At any rate, I made up my mind that if it so turned out that we should sleep together, he must undress and get into bed before I did.

Supper over, the company went back to the bar-room, when, knowing not what else to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the evening as a looker on.

Presently a rioting noise was heard without. Starting up, the landlord cried, "That's the Grampus's crew. I seed her reported in the offing this morning; a three years' voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah, boys; now we'll have the latest news from the Feegees."

A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door was flung open, and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough. Enveloped in their shaggy watch coats, and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters, all bedarned and ragged, and their beards stiff with icicles, they seemed an eruption of bears from Labrador. They had just landed from their boat, and this was the first house they entered. No wonder, then, that they made a straight wake for the whale's mouth- the bar- when the wrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating, soon poured them out brimmers all round. One complained of a bad cold in his head, upon which Jonah mixed him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses, which he swore was a sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never mind of how long standing, or whether caught off the coast of Labrador, or on the weather side of an ice-island.

The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generally does even with the arrantest topers newly landed from sea, and they began capering about most obstreperously.

It's a cold night, in the passage above and outside my windows.  There's no fire for Ishmael to warm himself in the Spouter-Inn.  He must rely on boiling tea and his dinner of meat, potatoes, and dumplings to provide any relief from winter.  When the crew members of the Grampus enter a little while later, they are shagged with icicles and head straight to the bar for the heat of some alcohol. 

I'm once again sitting in my office at the university, and there's a doozy of a storm blowing outside.  The rain and fog of this morning have transformed into driving ice pellets and ribs of frozen slush.  My daughter and son got out of school early this afternoon because of the weather.  And here I sit, reading about hot tea and hot food, sort of envying Ishmael his small reliefs of warmth.

It strikes me that I partake in envy a lot.  I envy full-time university professors because I'm a contingent professor.  I envy young people walking down the street because they are young and have their whole lives ahead of them.  Looking over at my office-mate's desk, I envy its lack of piles and empty pop cans and stray paperclips.

Envy is pretty seductive.  It can make you feel righteous ("That bastard doesn't deserve that!") and unappreciated ("I work twice as hard as she does!") and weirdly superior ("I am so much better than him at teaching/writing/basketball/insert-your-own-skill-here!").  Envy makes you feel better about yourself by feeling worse about yourself.  It's like having a bad day, going home, drinking a full bottle of gin, and then expecting to feel better about yourself in the morning.

It doesn't quite work that way.  Envy allows a person to sit back and wait to be successful.  For example, if I tell myself that I'm already a better poet than, say, Danez Smith (I'm not!), then all I have to do is wait for the rest of the world to catch up with me.  I'm already great.  Everybody just needs to recognize my greatness.

And, of course, envy also completely dismisses the struggles and pains of other people.  If I envy Danez Smith's success, I'm overlooking all of the things he's had to overcome in his life as a gay African American male.  Nobody's existence is perfect, despite power or money or talent or fame.  Vincent van Gogh sold only one painting in his lifetime.  Emily Dickinson published fewer than a dozen poems while she was alive.  To envy them, I must also envy their mental and physical illnesses.  The homophobia and racism.

Nobody knows my inner landscape.  I am the Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula.  Yet, I'm also incredibly insecure with my poems.  Nothing I write ever seems good enough.  I received a teaching award in December.  Yet, when I read my student evaluations from last semester, I feel like a complete failure because of two or three negative comments.  I overthink and beat myself up, all the time.

My point tonight is that we need to treat each other (and ourselves) with more kindness.  Not begrudge peoples' successes.  Not rejoice in their failures.  If someone is warm and you're cold, make yourself some tea.  If someone is grief-stricken and you're joyful, share some of your happiness. 

And remember, envy is a small emotion that makes you even smaller.

Saint Marty is thankful for the cold he feels today.  The sadness and the happiness, as well.

July 23: Art Students League, Van Gogh, Siv Cedering, "Sunflowers"

Thinking about Robert, Ives would always fondly remember those evenings he spent in 1948, at the Art Students League on West Fifty-seventh Street, where he took classes several nights a week.  After a day freelancing, he'd walk in and sit in the back, his sketchbook, charcoals, and pencils set out before him...

Aside from his wife and kids, Ives' passion is art.  From a very young age, Ives draws.  Cartoons.  Christmas cards.  Portraits.  He is never without his sketchbook.  After Robert's death, Ives finds solace in his drawing.  He volunteers to teach art classes for at-risk youths at a local community center.  He designs the menu for his best friend's new restaurant.  Art gives Ives a livelihood, and art gives Ives an escape at times.

As most of my loyal disciples know, I dabble in art.  Besides my writing journal, I always carry around an art journal, too.  I sketch and doodle.  Of course, if you're a frequent visitor to Saint Marty, you know that I have a weekend comic strip.  At work, I draw cartoons every day for my coworkers on the assignment board.  I enjoy making people laugh.

I am not a tortured artist.  I'm not going to cut off my ear and mail it to a poetry editor.  Rather, I post my drawings to amuse and inspire, hopefully.  Which brings me to my announcement.

At the beginning of August, I will be launching a new cartoon strip titled The Adventures of Stickman.  It's an idea I've been toying with for a few weeks.  It will be a daily comic, Monday through Friday.  I'm not sure if I have the artistic stamina for it, but I'm going to give it a shot.

Saint Marty van Gogh.  Has a nice ring, doesn't it?

Sunflowers

by:  Siv Cedering

Someone
gave me a copy of
Van Gogh's
Sunflowers,
saying:

It's a picture
women can relate to
feeling kin to a man
who could see many suns
each whirling and wild.
There are thousands
of reproductions.

But a woman, she said,
doesn't have to cut off an ear
in order to bleed.

Not bad for a one-eared guy

June 25: Tedious, Why I Write, Louise Gluck, "The Couple in the Park"

At first, the job in itself, as an illustrator, was not so hard as tedious, his hours spent with some rather dull assignments. . . 

Ives finally takes a full-time job with the Mannis Advertising Agency when he's a young husband and father.  He realizes he has to give up his artistic ambitions to be a struggling painter for more pragmatic ambitions:  a steady income and health insurance.  It's a choice many artistic people are forced to make.  Not everybody wants to live the life of William Faulkner or Vincent van Gogh.

Many years ago, I realized that I needed to alter my expectations.  I had a pregnant wife and was a part-time book store clerk and adjunct English instructor.  Everything about my life was unstable, transient.  I needed to provide for my family.  Do I sometimes play the game of "what if"?  Of course.  I sometimes feel like an absolute failure in the game of life.

Tonight, my book club met.  We read My One and Only Bomb Shelter, a collection of stories by my friend and colleague, John Smolens.  John is a fantastic writer and one of the most humble, articulate writers I know.  Every time I talk to him, invite him to my house, he reminds me why I write.  John quite matter-of-factly says that writing has saved his life, kept him sane through a lot of difficult times.  Writing helps him understand the world.

I don't have much to add to his answer.  I write because not to write would be something akin to death.  I think any writer would agree with John, including Louise Gluck.

And Saint Marty.

The Couple in the Park

by:  Louise Gluck

A man walks alone in the park and beside him a woman walks, also alone.  How does one know?  It is as though a line exists between them, like a line on a playing field.  And yet, in a photograph they might appear a married couple, weary of each other and of the many winters they have endured together.  At another time, they might be strangers about to meet by accident.  She drops her book; stooping to pick it up, she touches, by accident, his hand and her heart springs open like a child's music box.  And out of the box comes a little ballerina made of wood.  I have created this, the man thinks; though she can only whirl in place, still she is a dancer of some kind, not simply a block of wood.  This must explain the puzzling music coming from the trees.

Not really willing to lose an ear for my art just yet...