September 29: Sunday Night, Feeling Prepared, Powerlessness

Sunday night.  Probably my least favorite time of the week.  It's all about getting my 11-year-old son to take a shower and put on his pajamas.  Making my lunch.  Setting out my work clothes for tomorrow.  Double checking that my lessons are planned and my books are gathered.  Leaving nothing to chance before I go to bed.

However, I know that I'm going to forget something.  I always do.  That's the way I roll, always feeling as if I'm forgetting something.  It could be a bill that is coming due.  Or an assignment I forgot to grade for my students.  Or some writing deadline that went whooshing by me like a freight train.  There's always some shadow looming over my shoulder that I can't quite make out.

I like feeling prepared.  That's why I addressed my Christmas cards for this year back in February.  And I bought a Christmas present for my nephew back in January in Florida.  At the moment, I'm planning to order the pictures that I'll stuff into those Christmas cards.  I just made a reservation for a little trip I'm taking to Calumet on Thursday, and I've completed two writing tasks that were on my to-do list for today.  Like I said, I like feeling prepared.

Of course, there are things for which you can never prepare yourself.  Illnesses.  Car problems.  Marriage problems.  Money problems.  Kid problems.  These things strike like lightning from a blue sky.  There's no way to anticipate them.  That's when you go into survival mode and live minute-by-minute, as opposed to day-by-day.

I've been doing the minute-by-minute thing for quite some time now.  It's exhausting.  And I don't see an end in sight.  Yesterday, I talked about everyone leading lives of quiet desperation, as Thoreau said.  It's a pretty apt description.  You can prepare and prepare all you want, but there will always come that moment when lightning strikes and everything changes.  Then, chaos for a while.  Desperation.

I'm looking for a way to end this post on a positive note.  Something hopeful to say.  The only thing that you can do sometimes is acknowledge your powerlessness and give your problem up to your higher power.  Because it's always at the lowest times when God steps in and helps out.  That's pretty much the way it works.  When you hit rock bottom, there's nowhere else to go.

Saint Marty embraced his powerlessness quite some time ago.

February 18: Grasshoppers, Divine Plan, Winter Weather

I had stepped into the meadow to feel the heat and catch a glimpse of the sky, but these grasshoppers demanded my attention, and became an event in themselves.  Every step I took detonated the grass.  A blast of bodies like shrapnel exploded around me; the air burst and whirred.  There were grasshoppers of all sizes, grasshoppers yellow, green, and black, short-horned, long-horned, slant-faced, bad-winged, spur-throated, cone-headed, pygmy, spotted, striped and barred.  They sprang in salvos, dropped in the air, and clung unevenly to stems and blades with their legs spread for balance, as redwings ride cattail reeds.  They clattered around my ears, they ricocheted off my calves with an instant clutch and release of tiny legs.

Dillard is constantly surprised by the natural world, whether the reflection of clouds in Tinker Creek, praying mantis cocoons, or hoards of invading grasshoppers.  In Dillard's mind, there is something sacred in the very messiness of these phenomenon.  She does not see the universe as a victim of chaotic happenstance.  There is an order (even if we, in our limited human way,) cannot see it.

Tomorrow morning, I am supposed to teach poetry to my son's second grade class.  Tonight, winter has returned to the Upper Peninsula in the form of freezing rain and snow.  Winter weather advisories are in force until early Friday.  My daughter just danced through our living room, announcing that she could hear rain slapping the kitchen window.  She is hoping that the rain will beget ice will beget snow will beget ice will beget a school cancellation.

I, on the other hand, am not thrilled with the notion of a school cancellation.  For the entire week, I have been preparing my poetry lesson.  I have my visuals done.  I have my handouts copied.  All week long, I have been showing up to work early, working late, in order to have enough time off for this classroom visit.  And now, there may not be school tomorrow.  Messiness.  Chaos.

If I were Dillard, I suppose I would be looking for some kind of divine plan in all this.  Perhaps I am being spared some kind of tragedy.  Or, maybe, I needed the extra sleep.  I am too tired to contemplate God's mind right now.  If there is school tomorrow, I will show up and teach my son and his classmates about poetry.  If there is no school tomorrow, I will go back to bed.

For the record, Saint Marty does believe in a divine plan.  Also for the record, he hates grasshoppers.

A completely unrelated cartoon . . .