November 26: Exceedingly Laborious, Back to the Grind, Water Essay, Writing and Rewriting

When in the Southern Fishery a captured Sperm Whale, after long and weary toil, is brought alongside late at night, it is not, as a general thing at least, customary to proceed at once to the business of cutting him in. For that business is an exceedingly laborious one; is not very soon completed; and requires all hands to set about it.

Back to the grind.  If I were on the Pequod, I'd be cutting in the captured sperm whale.  Instead, I was at my desk at 6 a.m., working through a pile of faxes, answering e-mails, and writing.  After a four-day-weekend, I found myself profoundly unmotivated.  I missed seeing my wife and kids in the morning.  Missed the warmth of my house.  All I wanted to do was continue the Thanksgiving weekend.

That being said, I have been fairly productive today.  I finished one of the three writing projects that have been on my to-do list.  A little essay about water that a friend of mine asked me to write for a local publication.  It has been a month-long process.  Starts and stops.  Long stretches and dead ends.  It finally all came together this morning.  I typed it up and sent it off.  Now, I wait for my friend's feedback.  As Truman Capote once said, "Good writing is rewriting."

I'm actually not sure how my friend is going to respond to what I sent him.  It's a little weird.  A lyric essay with some linguistics thrown in for good measure.  It's the kind of stuff I like reading.  Half poetry.  Half prose.  Flights of images.  And Jesus walking on water.  What more could a person want?

I taught this afternoon, as well.  Mythology.  We're finishing up our section on Grimms fairy tales.  It's been a long half-semester, and I'm eyes-deep in piles of grading.  Papers and quizzes.  Pretty soon, final exams and more papers.

On top of all that, I'm still waiting to hear whether I will have a job after December 31st.  There's an air of fatalism that seems to be hanging over the medical office where I work.  Everybody has already decided that the end times are upon us.  Now, I'm not wearing blinders.  I've got contingency plans.  Not really appealing contingency plans, but they will get me through until I find something better.

Work.  Writing,  Teaching.  Worry.  That has been my day.  I'm kind of exhausted.

Saint Marty isn't ready to rewrite his life anymore tonight.

November 24: Watery Part of the World, Water Essay, Nostalgia

Call me Ishmael.  Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.

Saturday morning.  Rainy and gross.  The snow has been melting pretty quickly the last couple days in the Upper Peninsula.  I'm down to bare pavement and driveway at my house.

Usually, I avoid writing about weather in my blog.  I think it reflects an inability to come up with anything interesting to discuss, or that I'm avoiding a subject.  I've used both of those tactics in the past.  Saint Marty is not a weather blog.  I'm not an amateur meteorologist, and, generally, the only time weather preoccupies me is when I have to shovel it.

Today, however, I will be preoccupied with Nature and weather.  I'm working on an essay about water that focuses quite a bit on weather, so it's unavoidable.  I've been struggling a little with this project because it's writing that was solicited from me, and I'm feeling like a high school student trying to finish a term paper by deadline.  It's not something that encourages creativity in me.

In fact, I have three separate writing projects that need to be completed in the next few weeks.  The water essay.  A Christmas essay.  My annual Christmas poem.  Plus, I have teaching and grading and all the uncertainty at work.  AND I don't know what I'm teaching next semester at the university yet.  (That is the life of a contingent professor.  Classes based on student enrollment.  I will get classes.  I know that.  I'm just not sure if I'm going to be teaching composition, film, good books, mythology, or a combination of these subjects.  It's a little frustrating, considering I've been teaching in the department longer than all but two of the full-timers.)

If I didn't have all these other worries pressing in on my mind, I'd be gold right now.  I'd just disappear into my writing study (yes, I'd have a writing study) and pound out these pieces of writing.  That is not my life, though.  My times to write are smuggled in between one job and the next, carved out of the time before I go to bed, and stolen from grading time/reading time/teaching time/medical officing time.  That is how I've lived a majority of my writing life.

When I was in graduate school, working as a teaching assistant, I never really realized how lucky I was to be paid to simply teach, take classes, and write.  The hours I had to sit in my office with my journal and pen, plucking poems and stories and essays out of the air.  Even then, I felt stressed and rushed.  There was never enough time to get everything done.  I was always running a race.  I wish I had realized then how lucky I was.

In a few years, I'll probably be looking back at these minutes spent blogging and essaying and poeming with nostalgia, as well.  That's the way nostalgia works.  It makes you feel wistful for moments that weren't necessarily but are now gilded with gold because they are in the past, have been lived.  In retrospect, they seem better and happier and easier.  They weren't, though.  They were filled with sadness and anger and frustration, as well.

I'm not Marcel Proust, nibbling on a cookie that launches me into writing a multi-volume reflection on my life.  I'm just a little Upper Peninsula poet, staring out my window, trying to keep my head above water (or snow).

Call me Saint Marty.  Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sit down and write about the watery part of the world . . .