October 3: "Lost," Ross Gay Style, Delights

One of my best friends and I have a thing for Ross Gay's collection of essays The Book of Delights. 

Yesterday, I texted a picture of the sunrise to this friend.

She texted me this today:  "Good morning!  Wonder if you want to share delights with me?  Ross Gay style.  You shared the sunrise that was your delight.  I shared the albino deer that was one.  I am telling you now that I love the smell of the post office."

I responded, "I love sitting in my library office in the dark, watching car headlights climbing up the building."

Billy Collins loses a coin that gives him delight and luck . . .

Lost

by: Billy Collins

There was no art in losing that coin 

you gave me for luck, the one with the profile 

of an emperor on one side and a palm on the other. 

It rode for days in a pocket 

of my black pants, the paint-speckled ones, 

past storefronts, gas stations and playgrounds, 

and then it was gone, as lost as the lost 

theorems of Pythagoras, or the Medea by Ovid, 

which also slipped through the bars of time, 

and as ungraspable as the sin that landed him— 

forever out of favor with Augustus— 

on a cold rock on the coast of the Black Sea, 

where eventually he died, but not before 

writing a poem about the fish of those waters, 

into which, as we know, he was never transformed, 

nor into a flower, a tree, or a stream, 

nor into a star like Julius Caesar, 

not even into a small bird that could wing it back to Rome.

It's really easy to lose or overlook things that give us delights.  Collins writes about the poet Ovid who was banished from the place that delighted him the most--the city of Rome.  He spent the rest of his days exiled by Augustus Caesar to a small fishing village on the Black Sea, never seeing Rome again.  Some say he died of a broken heart.

I would venture to say that Ovid probably never realized how delightful his Roman life was until it was taken away from him.  That's the way delights generally work.  We take them for granted until we lose them like a lucky coin.

So, I am going to share a list of delights I experienced today.

I love the smell of my puppy's breath when she kisses me as I walk through the front door.

I love taking walks at night, when everyone has locked their doors and turned off their front porch lights.

I love talking about books with the members of my book club (we met tonight and discussed Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam).

I love the sound of my wife's breathing when she falls asleep.

I love those quiet hours of early morning or late night when I'm the only person awake.

I love friends who share their delights with me.

I love soggy Lucky Charms and thin crust pizza.

I love the idea of Bigfoot.

I love unexpected texts from people I care about.

I love falling asleep on the couch while comfort movies like On Golden Pond or The Perks of Being a Wallflower are on the TV.  

I love writing blog posts.

Delight.  Delight.  Delight.  Delight.

Saint Marty is now going to brush his teeth (another delight).  He might even read a little Ross Gay before his closes his eyes.

June 16: Building Weeping, Miracles, Sally Wen Mao, "Monstera Deliciosa"

In one slip of a second, anything seemed possible--had the moon risen and started to sing, had pyramids appeared over the Chrysler building weeping, Ives would have been no more surprised.

Ives has just had a near death experience.  As he walks the streets of Manhattan, he starts having visions of God's goodness.  Four colored winds spinning in the sky.  The sun, glowing red and huge.  Car horns sounding like celestial trumpets.  As the above passage says, anything seems possible.

I've been contemplating miracles recently.  Ives thinks of his near-death experiences as some kind of divine vision granted to him.  I'm not so sure that's accurate.  I think most people go through their days with blinders on.  Ives' blinders have simply been removed for a little while.  He's seeing the world from a God's-eye-view. 

I think I'm a lot like the blindered Ives.  Driving to work, talking to patients, eating lunch, walking to my car at the end of the day, I probably miss more miracles than contained in the gospels.  For instance, near the medical center where I work, there's a bike path in the woods.  I know there are albino deer in that forest.  One night, as I was leaving the university after teaching an evening class, I drove by a cemetery.  Near the cemetery fence was a family of deer.  When the headlights of my car spotlighted them, the deer leaped into the darkness, hurdling headstones and hedges like souls racing to heaven.

Everyday miracles.  I need to open my eyes and look around more often.  Maybe I'll see the moon singing or the university clock tower weeping.  Who knows?  The whole world is full of wonder.  Sure, I'm sort of stuck in a swamp of worry right now.  But I know that my very existence--my lungs' habit of breathing, my heart's habit of beating, my pores' habit of sweating--all of the things that keep me alive are impossible miracles of creation.

Sally Wen Mao's poem for tonight is about one of those miracles of nature that most people don't even stop to notice.

Saint Marty is taking some time tonight to give thanks for miracles.

Monstera Deliciosa

by:  Sally Wen Mao

I'm a monster because I poison the children.
They dance around me and my fronds flutter
with holes.  They invite:  Eat my fanged fruit.

Each scale will peel off easy, but if you eat it
unripe, it will steal your voice.  Your gums
will blister little stars.  You'll vomit, swell, tremble.

When ripe, it is sublime.  Better than banana,
soft mango, sweeter than wild yellow rambutan
coated in syrup.  It only takes one year.  Bite.

Bon appetit!