December 16, 2024: "All Eyes," Grading Like Crazy, Ghosts

I am furiously finishing up my teaching duties for the semester.  That means that I'm grading like crazy, have been all day.  Will be grading all night, literally, with a short nap here and there when my eyes cross and I can't see the computer screen clearly.

Translation:  I am not fit to be around people or impart wisdom tonight.  By tomorrow night, I will look like an extra on a zombie movie.  Let's call it Night of the Grading Dead.

Billy Collins writes about being dead . . . 

All Eyes

by:  Billy Collins

Just because I'm dead now doesn't mean
I don't exist anymore.
All those eulogies and the obituary
in the corner of the newspaper
have made me feel more vibrant than ever.

I'm here in some fashion,
maybe like a gust of wind
that disturbs the upper leaves,
or blows a hat around a corner,
or disperses a little cloud of mayflies over a stream.

What I like best about this
is you realizing you can no longer
get away with things the way your used to
when it would be ten o'clock at night
and I wouldn't know where you were.

I'm all ears, you liked to say
whenever you couldn't bother listening.
And now you know that I'm all eyes,
looking in every direction,
and a special eye is always trained on you.

I often imagine my dead as spirits constantly around me, watching my every move.  That's both comforting and terrifying at the same time.  Tonight, I wish I could hand them my laptop, tell them what needs to be graded, and go to bed.

I can't do that, obviously, because I don't know if ghosts can identify a comma splice or a sentence fragment.

Therefore, it is going to be a long, sleepless night.

Saint Marty did step into his backyard a moment ago and saw a bright star burning in his neighbor's window.  Even in the midst of darkness, there is light.

May 7: "Junior Philosopher," Blink of a Cursor, "Peace of Mind"

Billy Collins philosophizes . . .

Junior Philosopher

by:  Billy Collins

I'll have this figured out in no time,

he announced,

as he faced the Cosmic Void.

He was wearing

a clean white shirt

and holding

the tool kit of reason

by its handy leather strap.

On the day Final Grades are due, I always face the Cosmic Void.

At around 11 a.m. today, I clicked the "submit" button, and just like that, the life I've been leading since January vanished in the blink of a cursor.

And now I face the summer, which resembles the Cosmic Void, as well.  I didn't receive a summer class to teach (those having been gobbled up by full-time professors who are looking to make some extra bucks), so the next four months are going to be very lean.

I'm trying to come to terms with the impending financial struggles in June, July, and August, wondering if I have a spare kidney or lung I can hock on the black market for five or six thousand dollars.  I can do nothing to change the situation.  It is out of my control.

So the best Saint Marty can do tonight is become one with poverty.

Peace of Mind

by:  Martin Achatz

I once had a friend

so Zen

she'd actually

heard the sound

of one hand clapping.

August 15: "Wrens," Worrier and Fretter, Miracles Happen

Mary Oliver admires feathered diligence . . . 

Wrens

by:  Mary Oliver

here I go

into the wide gardens of

wastefields blue glass clear glass

and other rubbishes blinking from the

dust from the fox tracks among the

roots and risings of

buttercups joe pye honey

suckle the queen's

lace and her

blue sailors

the little wrens

have carried a hundred sticks into

an old rusted pail and now they are

singing in the curtains of leaves they are

fluttering down to the bog they are dipping

their darling heads down to wet

their whistles how happy they are to be

diligent at last

foolish birds

I'm not quite sure why Oliver thinks the wrens are foolish in this poem.  They could be foolish because they're drinking from the bog.  Or because they're happy.  Or because they're diligent and industrious at last, instead of frittering away their days and nights among the buttercups and Joe Pye weed.  If I were a betting person, though, I'd lay $20 on the diligence and industry thing.  Oliver strikes me as a person who, if she had wings, would have spent all of her waking hours flying from trees to lakes to fields of Queen Anne's lace.  She wouldn't have wasted her time with the work of worry.

Of course, I'm a worrier and fretter.  Most faithful disciples of this blog know that about me.  A good portion of my days are spent in a state of anxiety, trying to keep up with work and grading and blogging and poeting.  For instance, final grades for the summer semester were due by noon today.  So, like a diligent wren gathering sticks, I spent yesterday, all of last night, and this morning writing my final comments on papers, responding to student emails, and putting my math minor to work calculating grades.  In total, I've had about three hours of sleep in the last 48 hours.

I write this not because I'm looking for sympathy or amazement or disdain.  Far from it.  I write this because I think Mary Oliver would probably have shaken her head at me, as she does with the wrens, and said to herself, "Foolish saint."  And she would be right.

I haven't experienced a whole lot of Mary moments in the last two days.  Because I  haven't had the time to pay close attention to the world around me.  Instead, I was focused on computer screens and electronic essays, with not a whole lot of amazement to spare.  

Now, Mary taught at universities and colleges for almost 20 years.  She was very familiar with the inside of a classroom.  So, I'm sure that she experienced the grading crunch at certain times in her life.  That means that she probably had to take time out of her miracle chasing to pick up a red pen and sit with a stack of student writing.  In short, she was a foolish bird at times, too.

When I got home this afternoon, I took a nap.  Then I ate and watched the movie Inception.  After that, I got off the couch, picked up my iPhone, and stepped outside to flush a covey of wonder from the world.  I listened to the birds talking back and forth in the twilight.  Found some interesting trees and a rabbit or two in my backyard.  And saw the sunset.

Even when Saint Marty's tied up in knots with work and worry, miracles happen.  Right outside his window.

July 2: Final Grades, Classic Saint Marty, "Man Hang Glides to Heaven"

I have just finished the last eight papers for my online class.  Submitted my final grades.  Done. 

This is only my second time teaching online, and I'm sort of amazed at how many of my students simply don't hand in assignments or just stop participating at all.  But I was always one of those irritating students who got upset if I got an A- instead of an A.  I just couldn't except academic failure.  It sent me into a panic.  And when I have to fail a student, it makes me feel as if I've somehow done something wrong as a teacher.  Teacher guilt.

However, I am done, and I plan to take this next week to simply do whatever the hell I want.  Read.  Write.  Watch some movies.  Maybe I'll even get a new poem or two out of the next seven days.

Seems like I was a little preoccupied with poetry three years ago, as well . . .

July 2, 2014:  Blank Sheet, Terrible Infatuation, a Writing Life

"A blank sheet of paper holds the greatest excitement there is for me . . . What is this terrible infatuation anyway?"

E. B. White lived a writing life.  From a very young age, he was writing, reading, and dreaming of being a published author.  The annoying fact is that White actually began publishing in national magazines before he graduated from high school.   He never wavered from his dream.

I live a writing life, too.  It's just a different kind of writing life.  I'll characterize it as a poet's writing life.  I don't really get paid for poetry.  My life consists of a bunch of part-time and full-time jobs that support my habit.  Yes, I said habit.  I am comparing poetry to addiction.  I don't make this statement to diminish the seriousness of drug or alcohol or sex addiction.  I know how damaging these afflictions can be.  My point is that poetry, generally, does not help your bank account or your personal life.  It can leave you begging for money from friends and family.

I'm not saying that the poet's life is devoid of merit.  Poetry is sometimes the only thing that lifts my spirits at the end of fatally dull work days.  Solace in times of sorrow.  Poetry expresses the deepest, truest part of my being.

And that's why Saint Marty is a poet.

This is a crack house, a poet house, or both.

And, because I still have this affliction called poetry . . .

Man Hang Glides to Heaven

(title taken from a headline in Weekly World News)

by:  Martin Achatz



No map to follow,
fat black dots to find,
blue ribbons to trace
to thumbprints of sea.
Jungles full of breadfruit,
forests thick with coyote,
glacier and prairie under
a migraine of Perseids.
None of these places.
Find a cliff, a mountain,
where wind drives hay
through trunks of cedar, maple.
Strap on those arms
of wax, feather.  Step to the edge.
Close your eyes.  Think
of everything perfect.
Pineapple on a coral atoll.
Your wife's tongue pressed
to your moon shoulder.
Your daughter's pinking
breath, infant December oxygen.
An albino doe in snowy birches,
white in white in white.
Think of all this.  Think hard.
Take a step.  Take another.
Spread your arms.
Then jump.

May 9: "Valley of the Dolls," Final Grades, Ann Patchett

Billy asked for something to read on the trip to Tralfamadore.  His captors had five million Earthling books on microfilm, but no way to project them in Billy's cabin.  They had only one actual book in English which would be placed in a Tralfamadorian museum.  It was Valley of the Dolls, by Jacqueline Susann.

Billy read it, thought it was pretty good in spots.  The people in it certainly had their ups and downs, ups and downs.  But Billy didn't want to read about the same ups and downs over and over again.  He asked if there wasn't, please, some other reading matter around.

"Only Tralfamadorian novels, which I'm afraid you couldn't begin to understand," said the speaker on the wall.

"Let me look at one anyway."

So they sent him in several.  They were little things.  A dozen of them might have had the bulk of Valley of the Dolls--with all its ups and downs, ups and downs.

Billy Pilgrim craves stories on the long flight from Earth to Tralfamadore.  Unfortunately, all his hosts have is a copy of Valley of the Dolls, a highly popular but completely trashy novel by Jacqueline Susann that was published in 1966.  Since Dolls was first released, it has sold 31 million copies.  To put that into perspective, the first Harry Potter novel sold a relatively small 5 million copies in hardcover and 6.6 million in paperback during the first year of its release.

It's not surprising that Valley of the Dolls is going in the Earth exhibit in a Tralfamadorian museum.  Everyone was reading Susann's book when Slaughterhouse first came out.  Today, the Tralfamdorians might choose a copy of Fifty Shades of Gray for their museum's human collection.  It's all about popularity.  Certainly, J. K. Rowling and Stephen King might make the cut as well, simply by the sheer numbers of books they've sold.

It is the day after.  I finished evaluating my last stack of papers at 10:40 p.m., entered my final grades at 11:35 p.m., took some ibuprofen, and went to bed.  I am currently in the state of end-of-semester hangover.  My eyes are burning, and I am a little achy with sleep deprivation.  I plan to completely relax this evening.  Tomorrow, I dive into planning my summer class, which begins in two weeks.  Gulp.

Tonight, however, I take a break.  I have a copy of Ann Patchett's Commonwealth that I have been saving for this occasion.  It's not Valley of the Dolls, but it has gotten great reviews.  If I can stay awake, I plan on reading a few chapters before I pass out from exhaustion.  I do have a bottle of white wine in the fridge.  I may have a glass.  Or two.

Saint Marty is thankful for a night without a red pen in his hand.

August 8: A Creek Life, Not Fond of People, Neanderthal Brain

Summer:  I go down to the creek again, and lead a creek life.  I watch and stalk.

Dillard is stalking creatures in the summer heat.  Birds.  Fish.  Muskrats.  She goes to Tinker Creek and stares into the water for flashes of silver.  She gazes into trees and watches for flashes of feather.  She stands on the shores of the creek and waits for wet fur to emerge.  That's summer at Tinker Creek.  A carnival of creatures.  And Dillard, chasing after said creatures like Eskimos hunting caribou.

I am done with grading.  My final grades have been submitted.  I have a few more weeks of summer left.  Unlike Dillard, I will not be traipsing off into the forest, looking for skunks or rabbits or wild blueberries.  I will be reading.  Watching the Rio Olympics.  Getting ready for fall semester teaching.  But not tonight.

Tonight, I am going to be antisocial.  There are some nights where I am not very fond of people.  Tonight is one of those nights.  I would rather lose a limb than make small talk.  Maybe it's part of some inactive neanderthal part of my brain that, for some reason, stirs into life at certain moments.  When I'm like this, I'm snappy and short, and I make everyone around me snappy and short.

I find that silence is best when I'm like this.  If I open my mouth, I say things that piss people off.  My wife, in particular.  She just snapped at me.  Maybe Dillard has it right.  Summer is the time for a creek life.  Being by yourself.  Animals that shy away from me.  The only sound, my breathing.  Maybe cicadas or a breeze or a distant train whistle.  No people to irritate or to irritate me.

Saint Marty is not going to stalk anything except silence.  And maybe a glass of wine to celebrate the end of the semester.

May 2: May Valley, May Colds, Final Grades

Here in the May valley, fullness is at a peak.  All the plants are fully leafed, but intensive insect damage hasn't begun.  The leaves are fresh, whole, and perfect.  Light in the sky is clear, unfiltered by haze, and the sun hasn't yet withered the grass.

Dillard is thrilling in the crush of spring.  Trees and grasses and flowers are bustin' out all over.  It is the time before destructive insects hatch and devour the beauty.  I imagine the air is still cool in the evening and temperate during the day.  The sky is not a headache of heat and humidity.

It is the second day of May, and I have submitted my final grades to the university.  The students have packed up and left campus for home or summer jobs.  As I sit in my office in the English Department, silence runs up and down the hallway like a mute kindergartner.  There are no arguing grad students.  No phones ringing.  I am not concerned that a student will come knocking on my door as I type this post.  Spring has arrived at the university.

This past weekend is a blur of papers and final exams.  Piles and piles of them.  I finished the last of my grade calculations at about 12:30 this morning.  I am weary and a little sick.  I have a cough that won't go away, and my eyes are burning for a nap.  I hate May colds.  Just as the weather gets nicer and snow has become a not-too-distant memory, I will probably be taking to my sick bed this evening.  At the very least, I will pass out on the couch for a few hours after I eat dinner.

Lack of sleep never used to bother me that much.  I survived on about five hours of sleep a night for years.  If I got six or seven hours of rest, I used to feel like I'd wasted the day.  Now, one of my greatest pleasures in life is napping.  Putting my head back, closing my eyes, and drifting off to unworried slumber.  I rarely do this.  Generally, my life does not permit this kind of luxury.

But, I can tell that my body needs to rest tonight.  Every one of my muscles is telling me this.  So, on this May 2, as the world is waking up after a long winter's nap, I will be closing my eyes and . . . just . . . hibernating.

Wake Saint Marty up for the Fourth of July parades.

One of life's mysteries solved . . .

December 15: Celtic Cross, Holy Cross Cemetery, Annie Dillard, On the Lighter Side

They buried his son on Christmas Eve morning, 1967, out in Long Island, his marker a simple Celtic cross.  The burial was covered by the press, despite efforts to maintain privacy.  A lot of important people came, few whom Ives knew.  Zoom-lensed cameras captured the scene, and in an unfortunate gaffe, they published a picture of Celeste, Robert's former girlfriend, who had fallen apart and kept her distance from the family until the funeral, being held in Ives' arms, and identified her as his daughter.

Yes, Ives' son is buried on December 24th.  It's a dark scene, full of chaos and sadness.  A moment that should be small and intimate is a spectacle of cameras and celebrities.  The Ives' family must grieve under a magnifying glass.  There is no opportunity for privacy and heartbreak.

This evening, at Holy Cross Cemetery, my family came together to lay my sister to rest.  As darkness fell, our parish priest led us in prayer and song.  My seven-year-old son sobbed through the entire ceremony.  I could hear my father quietly crying behind me.  It was solemn and cold and, in a strange way, beautiful.  Snow fell last night, so everything was coated in a rime of white.  Currier & Ives sorrow.

It felt like a door closing, in a way.  Until today, my sister's journey was incomplete.  She'd been waiting these past months for this final moment of parting and tears.  I have to be honest.  I don't find much comfort in the idea of her in that dark graveyard tonight while I'm sitting in my living room, staring at the blinking lights on the Christmas tree. 

I know that it's ridiculous, but I almost feel like I've placed my sister on an ice floe and launched her into an arctic sea.  She's growing smaller, less distinct.  As she reaches the horizon, she lifts her arm and waves one last time.  Then, she's gone.  Forever.

I'm sorry if I don't have some comforting wisdom for you after my days of absence.  My semester's work is done, four days of massive grading behind me.  I will be the first to admit that these last three months of teaching have been difficult.  My focus has been very . . . diffused.  But I did the best I could.  Last night, after I entered my final grades on the computer, I didn't experience relief or satisfaction, like I normally do.  I felt . . . disappointed that I hadn't done a better job.

Sometimes, however, I have to find satisfaction simply in surviving a very difficult time.

The Poet of the Week is Annie Dillard.  I believe I featured her earlier this fall, but I find great comfort in her writing sometimes.  The following passage comes from her book Teaching a Stone to Talk:

We are clumped on an ice floe drifting over the black polar sea.  Heaven and earth are full of our terrible singing.  Overhead we see a blurred, colorless brightness; at our feet we see the dulled, swift ice and recrystallized snow.  The sea is black and green; a hundred thousand floes and bergs float in the water and spin and scatter in the current around us everywhere as far as we can see.  The wind is cool, moist, and scented with salt.

I have little else to say tonight.  It's good to blog again, to get back to some sense of normalcy.  My side of the world is approaching the winter solstice.  The longest night of the year.  Soon, the days will start growing longer.  Light will overtake the darkness.

Saint Marty is ready for a little more light in his life.

On the lighter side...

May 2: Old Spencer, Exam Paper, Final Grades

"You glanced through it, eh?" he said--very sarcastic.  "Your, ah, exam paper is over there on top of my chiffonier.  On top of the pile.  Bring it here, please."

Old Spencer is a little ruthless here, grilling Holden at the beginning of Catcher.  Spencer is trying to guide Holden, give him life advice.  All Spencer manages to do, however, is disgust him and piss him off.  After Holden fetches the exam, Spencer proceeds to read it aloud to him.  Holden sits and listens, mortified.

I spent all of last night grading my Intro to Film students' final exams.  I finished the job this morning.  In the space of a couple hours, I managed to read, comment on, and grade 23 of them.  And I enjoyed it.  I thought it was going to be torture, like eating mashed potatoes laced with ground-up glass.  Instead, I coasted through it.  Then, I dragged out my calculator and finished totaling final semester grades.  I had to fail no student.  There were a pack of A's, a gaggle of B's, and some C's.  It was a good class.

Now, I'm sitting in a lecture hall, watching The Wonder Boys with Michael Douglas, waiting for my students to not show up and collect their graded final exams.  Yes, I'm Old Spencer, expecting Holden Caulfield to walk through the door so I can hand him his essay questions.

After The Wonder Boys ends, I will pack up my belongings, bring them back to my office, and be done with teaching until the fall semester begins.  It's a long four months without university paychecks.  Even longer now that I had to shell out $400 for a brake job.  Yes, I'm a little melancholy right now.  I'm going to miss this part of my life.  Miss campus, students, and colleagues.  I like the academic hustle.

Until the end of August, unfortunately, Saint Marty's title is simply going to be "medical records clerk."

Farewell, academia

May 2: Final Grades, Birthday Present, Short Story

My whole goal today was to submit the final semester grades for the classes I taught and to finish writing the short story for my friend's birthday present tomorrow.  Well, I completed the first part of that task at about 8 a.m.  The rest of the morning was spent completing the second part of that task.

Grades submitted.  Check.

Story done.  Check-check.

I will be giving my friend her cocker spaniel story tomorrow.  Also, tomorrow, I will post my cocker spaniel story.  I think it turned out really well.  It has made a few people cry, which either means it was really, really bad or really, really sentimental or really, really good.  Unless told otherwise, I'm going with the last option.  When I post it tomorrow, you can comment and let me know if it sucks.

I've also been invited to do a couple of poetry readings this summer in the Marquette area.  That's very exciting.  I haven't done a full-blown poetry reading in a long time.  We'll see how it goes.  It's very strange.  My Lenten poetry exercise seems to be reaping benefits in more ways than one.

Of course, last night I watched President Obama announce on TV that Osama bin Laden had been killed.  I'm not the kind of person who will join a street party celebrating the death of a mass murderer.  I do believe in justice, but the kind of jubilation being shown on the news seems more appropriate for the success of an Olympic hockey team, not the killing of a terrorist.  I think the world is going to be a safer place without bin Laden around, but I'm not going to host a Bye bye bin Laden Luau.  I do think the 9-11 families will have a little peace now.  But let's remember:  the death of one man doesn't make up for the loss of over three thousand lives.

I'm not against vengeance, as long as it involves the humiliation of writers who don't deserve to be published or win awards.  (Can you hear me, Professor Ihateyourshittywriting?)

Saint Marty just prays for peace, for the entire world.

You might not know this is funny, but it is.