May 7: Off Your Stride, Difficult Thing to Maintain, Circus

Zaphod and Arthur and Ford are making introductions . . .

When you're cruising down the road in the fast lane and you lazily sail past a few hard-driving cars and are feeling pretty pleased with yourself and then accidentally change down from fourth to first instead of third thus making your engine leap out of your hood in a rather ugly mess, it tends to throw you off your stride in much the same way that this remark threw Ford Prefect off his.

Being thrown off your stride.  I get it.

Happiness is a difficult thing to maintain.  I have found that out recently.  Things come along that throw you off your stride.  Two months ago, it was the place where I've worked for close to 20 years closing.  Forever.  A month ago, it was starting a new job.  These last few days, it was stacks of final papers and exams to grade.  (That last one is also why I've been absent from this blog for the last two days.)

I submitted my final grades late last night.  I thought I would feel happier, freer, relaxed-er.  Instead, happiness fled again, threw me off my stride.  Darkness is sitting on my shoulders.  Just before I sat down to type this post, I tried to eat some cheese curds, which I normally love.  They tasted like oily, deep-fried rubber.  I'm tempted to try to some chocolate, but I have a feeling that I would experience similar results.

As I said, happiness has fled me.

If you've gotten this far, I know you're probably wondering the cause of this current bout of the blues.  You're also probably wondering where I got those cheese curds.  (For the record, it was Culver's.)  I am not ready to dissect and examine this depression I'm in.  So, please just accept this explanation . . . 

Happiness has fled me.

I struggled all day at work.  I went to the circus this evening with my family.  I struggled there, as well.  (Do NOT send me angry comments about the treatment of circus animals.  I don't have the energy to respond to them.)  As I sit here typing this post, I'm still struggling, because . . .

Happiness has fled me.

I will be taking things one day at a time.  May one hour or one minute at a time.  Whatever is required.  Despair seems like it's moved into my neighborhood, probably in the abandoned meth house on the corner.  I plan to keep myself locked away, and I don't plan to answer any knocks on the front door or rings on my home phone.

Depression is becoming a very familiar creature to me.  It sort of looks like a big, black, hairy elephant.

Happiness has fled Saint Marty.

Some joyful pics from the circus tonight . . . 

September 7: The Pacific, Peachtree Schnapps, Poutine

When gliding by the Bashee isles we emerged at last upon the great South Sea; were it not for other things I could have greeted my dear Pacific with uncounted thanks, for now the long supplication of my youth was answered; that serene ocean rolled eastwards from me a thousand leagues of blue.
There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seems to speak of some hidden soul beneath; like those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St. John. And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery prairies and Potters' Fields of all four continents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness.

To any meditative Magian rover, this serene Pacific, once beheld, must ever after be the sea of his adoption. It rolls the midmost waters of the world, the Indian ocean and Atlantic being but its arms. The same waves wash the moles of the new-built California towns, but yesterday planted by the recentest race of men and lave the faded but still gorgeous skirts of Asiatic lands, older than Abraham; while all between float milky-ways of coral isles, and low-lying, endless, unknown Archipelagoes, and impenetrable Japans. Thus this mysterious, divine Pacific zones the world's whole bulk about; makes all coasts one bay to it; seems the tide-beating heart of earth. Lifted by those eternal swells, you needs must own the seductive god, bowing your head to Pan.

But few thoughts of Pan stirred Ahab's brain, as standing, like an iron statue at his accustomed place beside the mizen rigging, with one nostril he unthinkingly snuffed the sugary musk from the Bashee isles (in whose sweet woods mild lovers must be walking), and with the other consciously inhaled the salt breath of the new found sea; that sea in which the hated White Whale must even then be swimming. Launched at length upon these almost final waters, and gliding towards the Japanese cruising-ground, the old man's purpose intensified itself. His firm lips met like the lips of a vice; the Delta of his forehead's veins swelled like overladen brooks; in his very sleep, his ringing cry ran through the vaulted hull, "Stern all! the White Whale spouts thick blood!"

Friday at last.  These school semester weeks seem wide and long, like the Pacific in Melville's above chapter.  Of course, my jobs eat up most of my time, Monday through Friday.  By the time I hit Thursday night, I am exhausted, like I've been battling Ahab's white whale for four days.  When I walked into my house this evening, my wife looked at me and said, "Wow!  You look relaxed."

Yes, I am relaxed.  Relieved that I've made it to this day.  This evening, I'll be going out for dinner with my family to a restaurant where I don't even have to tell my server what I want to drink.  She brings me pineapple juice and Peachtree Schnapps.  I don't have to look at the menu--I always order poutine, which is just a really fancy name for French fries and cheese curds smothered in gravy.  A guilty indulgence.

Yesterday, I had a follow-up appointment with the physician's assistant who's been helping me with my anxiety and depression.  I talked about my week, blood pressure log, and moods.  It's kind of a terrifying thing to bare yourself to another person, even if that person is simply there to help you feel better.  I felt like I was admitting some kind of weakness, and I've always thought of myself as a pretty strong person.

After some minutes of conversation, she looked at me and said, "I think what you need is an antidepressant."  I think she could tell by my face that she had said something that bothered me, because she quickly followed it up with, "Something that's going to help you control that anxiety."

I nodded a little.

She smiled, "Just for like nine months or so.  I think what you're experiencing is situational.  I don't like keeping people on antidepressants long term."  Then her face got serious.  "Unless you need it," she said.

So, that is where I am.  I feel like I owe this information to all of my friends who read this post and are concerned about me.  I am doing better.  I've even written a couple things that might become new poems.  It's a day-by-day thing.  Sometimes it's like floating in the Pacific, no land in sight, trying not to imagine what's swimming underneath you.  Other times, it's like Friday night, planning for a good dinner with your wife and kids.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for healthcaregivers who really seem to care.

March 23: Ten Times a Donkey, Mean Drunks, Pretty Darn Pleasant

Some days elapsed, and ice and icebergs all astern, the Pequod now went rolling through the bright Quito spring, which at sea, almost perpetually reigns on the threshold of the eternal August of the Tropic. The warmly cool, clear, ringing perfumed, overflowing, redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up- flaked up, with rose-water snow. The starred and stately nights seemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride, the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns! For sleeping man, 'twas hard to choose between such winsome days and such seducing nights. But all the witcheries of that unwaning weather did not merely lend new spells and potencies to the outward world. Inward they turned upon the soul, especially when the still mild hours of eve came on; then, memory shot her crystals as the clear ice most forms of noiseless twilights. And all these subtle agencies, more and more they wrought on Ahab's texture.

Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death. Among sea-commanders, the old greybeards will oftenest leave their berths to visit the night-cloaked deck. It was so with Ahab; only that now, of late, he seemed so much to live in the open air, that truly speaking, his visits were more to the cabin, than from the cabin to the planks. "It feels like going down into one's tomb,"- he would mutter to himself- "for an old captain like me to be descending this narrow scuttle, to go to my grave-dug berth."

So, almost every twenty-four hours, when the watches of the night were set, and the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band below; and when if a rope was to be hauled upon the forecastle, the sailors flung it not rudely down, as by day, but with some cautiousness dropt it to its place for fear of disturbing their slumbering shipmates; when this sort of steady quietude would begin to prevail, habitually, the silent steersman would watch the cabin-scuttle; and ere long the old man would emerge, gripping at the iron banister, to help his crippled way. Some considering touch of humanity was in him; for at times like these, he usually abstained from patrolling the quarter-deck; because to his wearied mates, seeking repose within six inches of his ivory heel, such would have been the reverberating crack and din of that bony step, that their dreams would have been on the crunching teeth of sharks. But once, the mood was on him too deep for common regardings; and as with heavy, lumber-like pace he was measuring the ship from taffrail to mainmast, Stubb, the old second mate, came up from below, with a certain unassured, deprecating humorousness, hinted that if Captain Ahab was pleased to walk the planks, then, no one could say nay; but there might be some way of muffling the noise; hinting something indistinctly and hesitatingly about a globe of tow, and the insertion into it, of the ivory heel. Ah! Stubb, thou didst not know Ahab then.

"Am I a cannon-ball, Stubb," said Ahab, "that thou wouldst wad me that fashion? But go thy ways; I had forgot. Below to thy nightly grave; where such as ye sleep between shrouds, to use ye to the filling one at last.- Down, dog, and kennel!"

Starting at the unforseen concluding exclamation of the so suddenly scornful old man, Stubb was speechless a moment; then said excitedly, "I am not used to be spoken to that way, sir; I do but less than half like it, sir."

"Avast!" gritted Ahab between his set teeth, and violently moving away, as if to avoid some passionate temptation.

"No, sir; not yet," said Stubb, emboldened, "I will not tamely be called a dog, sir."

"Then be called ten times a donkey, and a mule, and an ass, and begone, or I'll clear the world of thee!"

As he said this, Ahab advanced upon him with such overbearing terrors in his aspect, that Stubb involuntarily retreated.

"I was never served so before without giving a hard blow for it," muttered Stubb, as he found himself descending the cabin-scuttle. "It's very queer. Stop, Stubb; somehow, now, I don't well know whether to go back and strike him, or- what's that?- down here on my knees and pray for him? Yes, that was the thought coming up in me; but it would be the first time I ever did pray. It's queer; very queer; and he's queer too; aye, take him fore and aft, he's about the queerest old man Stubb ever sailed with. How he flashed at me!- his eyes like powder-pans! is he mad! Anyway there's something's on his mind, as sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks. He aint in his bed now, either, more than three hours out of the twenty-four; and he don't sleep then. Didn't that Dough-Boy, the steward, tell me that of a morning he always finds the old man's hammock clothes all rumpled and tumbled, and the sheets down at the foot, and the coverlid almost tied into knots, and the pillow a sort of frightful hot, as though a baked brick had been on it? A hot old man! I guess he's got what some folks ashore call a conscience; it's a kind of Tic-Dolly-row they say- worse nor a toothache. Well, well; I don't know what it is, but the Lord keep me from catching it. He's full of riddles; I wonder what he goes into the after hold for, every night, as Dough-Boy tells me he suspects; what's that for, I should like to know? Who's made appointments with him in the hold? Ain't that queer, now? But there's no telling, it's the old game- Here goes for a snooze. Damn me, it's worth a fellow's while to be born into the world, if only to fall right asleep. And now that I think of it, that's about the first thing babies do, and that's a sort of queer, too. Damn me, but all things are queer, come to think of 'em. But that's against my principles. Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth- So here goes again. But how's that? didn't he call me a dog? blazes! he called me ten times a donkey, and piled a lot of jackasses on top of that! He might as well have kicked me, and done with me. Maybe he did kick me, and I didn't observe it, I was so taken aback with his brow, somehow. It flashed like a bleached bone. What the devil's the matter with me? I don't stand right on my legs. Coming afoul of that old man has a sort of turned me wrong side out. By the Lord, I must have been dreaming, though- How? how? how?- but the only way's to stash it; so here goes to hammock again; and in the morning, I'll see how this plaguey juggling thinks over by daylight."

Another first--we finally hear Ahab's voice.  It's not a very pleasant encounter between Ahab and Stubb.  In fact, I would venture to say that Ahab is kind of an asshole.  Of course, he's not in his right mind.  Sleep-deprived.  Driven to the brink of madness in his desire to hunt down the whale that cost him his leg. 

When I read books, I sometimes play a little game.  I try to decide which character I wouldn't mind getting drunk with.  Holden Caulfield would be an obnoxious drunk.  Bob Cratchit, on the other hand, would know how to have a good time.  So would McMurphy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.  Billy Pilgrim from Slaughterhouse wouldn't be the life of the party.  Most of the characters from The Great Gatsby would be able to hold their liquor.  However, Ahab and Ebenezer Scrooge would be mean drunks. 

It has been a really long week.  Lots of drama with kids.  My daughter was taking tests, performing in concerts, and preparing for her trip to Florida.  When I got home from work this evening, she was stressing about the end of the marking period.  For about a half hour, she thought she was going to receive less than an "A" in one of her online classes.

I am happy to report that my daughter is on her way to the sunshine state, and she has retained her 4.0 GPA.  My wife and I did not receive any phone calls from the principal of my son's school this week, and, tomorrow, we head to Wisconsin to see a traveling production of Les Miserables in Appleton.  Nobody from my family is in the hospital or near death, and I am not on the brink of bankruptcy.

I think that my wife and I have earned a few drinks tonight.  I am not Ahab, although some of my students this semester would probably beg to differ.  Alcohol tends to amplify personality.  If you tend to be an asshole naturally, like Ahab, you will be a flaming asshole after a carafe or two of wine. 

I'm a fairly easy-going guy.  I enjoy good jokes, good food, and good friends.  So, when I drink, I tend to be pretty darn pleasant.  If you don't believe me, I invite you to drive to Jasper Ridge Brewery in Ishpeming tonight.  I will be the guy in the dining room, guzzling Tanqueray and tonics and eating cheese curds. 

If you are an Ahab, please stay below decks in your cabin. 

Saint Marty is thankful for Friday and alcohol and Victor Hugo.

December 1: Book Club Food, Elizabeth Alexander, "Butter"

It's Book Club night at my house.  My wife is in the kitchen, whipping up some barbecue chicken dish.  Soon, our dining room table will be full of all kinds of delicious treats.  Chili and shrimp and cheese curds.  Oh, and we'll talk about a book, too.

Tonight's literature of choice is The Boys in the Boat.  The food of choice remains to be seen.  I'm sort of leaning towards the cheese curds.

But Saint Marty is always up for something new, as long as it has a lot of butter in it.

Butter

by:  Elizabeth Alexander

My mother loves butter more than I do,

more than anyone. She pulls chunks off

the stick and eats it plain, explaining

cream spun around into butter! Growing up

we ate turkey cutlets sauteed in lemon

and butter, butter and cheese on green noodles,

butter melting in small pools in the hearts

of Yorkshire puddings, butter better

than gravy staining white rice yellow,

butter glazing corn in slipping squares,

butter the lava in white volcanoes

of hominy grits, butter softening

in a white bowl to be creamed with white

sugar, butter disappearing into

whipped sweet potatoes, with pineapple,

butter melted and curdy to pour

over pancakes, butter licked off the plate

with warm Alaga syrup. When I picture

the good old days I am grinning greasy

with my brother, having watched the tiger

chase his tail and turn to butter. We are

Mumbo and Jumbo’s children despite   

historical revision, despite

our parent’s efforts, glowing from the inside

out, one hundred megawatts of butter.