December 12: Walking Up and Down, E-mail, Daughter

He was not reading now, but walking up and down despairingly. Scrooge looked at the Ghost, and with a mournful shaking of his head, glanced anxiously towards the door.

The reason Scrooge is mournful in this passage is simple: he is about to witness an encounter from his past. It’s between a young Scrooge and “little Fan,” Scrooge’s sister. Fan is one of the few people in the novel who exhibits affection and love for Scrooge, and Scrooge is absolutely devoted to her. Of course, Fan dies at a young age, giving birth to Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, which probably explains Scrooge’s animosity toward him in the opening pages of A Christmas Carol. This little moment preceded a scene with the other woman who loved the young Scrooge, his fiancé, Belle. There’s a great deal of disappointment and heartache in Scrooge’s past.

This Worry Wednesday, I want to talk about my daughter. Yesterday, I received an e-mail from one of her teachers. The subject line was simply my daughter’s name. No details. No hint of what the message contained. I didn’t want to open it. I was afraid I was going to find out my daughter was failing a subject or owed the school $600 for a computer she had broken. Well, I wasn’t far off. The first line of the message was, “I’m worried about your daughter.” The teacher went on to explain that my daughter had missed turning in several assignments and was close to receiving a detention. “I’m just wondering if something is wrong,” her teacher wrote, “because she’s such a good student.”

I was touched by the teacher’s concern, and I was a little worried about my daughter. I have to admit that I did a little walking up and down, like young Scrooge in the above passage. I started imagining the worst. Boy trouble. Bully trouble. Mental illness trouble. Physical abuse. Sexual abuse. Verbal abuse. My mind went everywhere. My wife and I have been talking about our financial situation a lot since she lost her job. Maybe she picked up on my worries. (I must admit that I don’t hide my feelings in this arena very well.)

Something was obviously troubling my daughter. She comes by her penchant for worry naturally. It’s in her genetics.

I spoke to my daughter last night. She got pretty agitated when I told her about the e-mail from her teacher. When she calmed down, she told us that she had completed the missing assignments, but she kept on forgetting to turn them in. They were stacked up in her locker at school. (This explanation touches upon another of my worries: I think my daughter has ADHD. Again, she’s genetically predisposed to this condition.)

My daughter’s explanation was a lot better than I expected it to be. No trauma. Nothing requiring extensive therapy. No vandalism or truancy issues. I told her to turn in the missing assignments for partial credit, and I suggested she always carry a folder for important papers to complete and submit to her teachers. Problem solved.

I wish all of my worries were so easily solved. I wish I could put all my troubles into a folder and submit it to somebody for possible solutions. It isn’t quite that simple. Yeah, yeah, I know about prayer and trust and faith. I know all that.

But Saint Marty will still wear a rut in the living room rug the next time he gets an e-mail from his daughter’s teacher.

Do snakes get e-mails? 

August 10: Losing Again

I'm beginning to think nobody reads these evening posts.  For the last four or five days, I've had no views of my night-time blogs.  That's fine.  I'm used to writing stuff in a vacuum, without having any kind of response.  Perhaps the night-time posts have been a little boring.  Maybe whiny.  Lacking in some way.

Tonight will be no different.  I checked my university e-mail a few hours ago, not even thinking about the poetry contest I entered a few months ago.  Really, the thing I was thinking about was an order from Amazon I needed to make.  Well, there was a message from the book press that sponsors the contest.  The message said it all in the memo line: Esteemed poet Xavier NoTalent names Jamie Mediocre's "Sucking Ass" Winner of the Pretentious Poetry Prize.  Yes, names and titles have been changed to protect the innocent.

I am not angry or jealous.  I'd pretty much given up hope of winning this contest.  However, that little e-mail sort of took the wind out of my sails.  I don't feel like doing a whole lot of anything now.  I'm going to wallow for a few hours.  In fact, I'm going to take the gold medal in wallowing tonight.  Even the Chinese aren't going to beat me.

I know there are a lot of really good poets out there.  I know that a lot of really good poets entered this competition.  I know that some really good poets never win contests or awards.  I know all that.  It still doesn't take the sting out of that e-mail.  Some days, being a poet sucks.

Saint Marty needs to go turn off the lights and sit in a dark room for a while.

Nothing to write home about

April 16: "Carol" Dip Monday, Surprise Rejection, Publishing

Once again, it is Monday.,  If there were any way to skip Mondays and go directly to Tuesdays, I'd get on that train in a heartbeat.  But then Tuesdays would become Mondays, and I would want to skip Tuesdays and got directly to Wednesdays.  It would get quite confusing for the Julian calendar.  Therefore, I guess we'll just have to leave things as they are and simply bitch about the fact that it is yet again Monday.

About nine months ago, I submitted a batch of poems to the online publication The Christian Century.  This morning, I opened an e-mail on one of my work accounts (one that I would never use for submissions), and there was my "thanks, but you suck" response from the editor.  Frankly, I'd written that magazine off about, oh, six months ago.  So today's surprise rejection was just a reminder of how much of a failure I am.  Hey, I shouldn't expect anything better on a Monday.

I think this calls for a Carol dip.  My question was prompted by my unpleasant message from The Christian Century:

Will I ever get another poem published?

And the answer from Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol is:

...Here, again, were shadows on the window-blind of guests assembling; and there a group of handsome girls, all hooded and fur-booted, and all chattering at once, tripped lightly off to some near neighbour's house; where, woe upon the single man who saw them enter--artful witches; well they knew it--in a glow!

I have no idea what the hell that means.  The passage comes right after Scrooge's visit with the Ghost of Christmas Present to the Cratchit household.  Therefore, I believe it's supposed to describe a happy moment.  It does have the "glow" of yuletide revelry.  I guess I'm going to take Dickens' handsome girls and artful witches as a positive sign.  Some editor(s) out there will fall under the spell of my art.  I will publish poetry this year.

Now, if Saint Marty can just avoid any more nasty electronic surprises, he may be able to salvage the rest of this day.

Trying to avoid shit like this for the rest of the day

February 1: End of Day, Donald Hall, Feeling Important

It is the end of a very long work day.  My mind feels weary.  I'm looking forward to getting home, putting on my pajamas, and doing nothing for the rest of the night.  Of course, I will probably end up doing something, but I'm not planning anything in particular.I hope you got all that.  Nothing.  Something.  Anything.  That's a lot of "things" in one paragraph.

This morning, my good poet friend, who is the editor of the literary magazine at the university, forwarded me an e-mail she received from the poet Donald Hall.  Attached to the e-mail were two of Hall's unpublished poems.  Now, being the associate poetry editor of the magazine, I shouldn't act like some kind of teenage girl at a Justin Bieber concert when I read a submission by a famous poet.  But it was Donald freakin' Hall.  Come on.  The poems were short and funny.  For me, reading a personal communication from Donald Hall was like finding a copy of the Bible with Mother Teresa's hand-written notes in it.  It made my morning.

Aside from making me feel like the ultimate geek poetry fanboy, it also made me feel a little important.  I was considering publishing two poems by Donald Hall.  Actually, there was very little consideration involved.  The poems were going to get accepted, whether I liked them or not.  I didn't even really get to express my opinion before I got a second e-mail from my poet friend saying that she'd accepted the poems.  However, just the fact that I was being asked my opinion about work by Donald Hall was a pretty big ego boost.

Anyway, Donald Hall made Saint Marty's day today.

Donald Hall and some other guy