July 5, 2025: “His Stillness,” Family Members, “Pizza Party”

I have a confession:  my family (parents and siblings) never really went all out for Independence Day.  Generally, we didn’t go to parades.  I’m pretty sure my brothers blew up things with firecrackers, and I have memories of my sisters taking me to see some fireworks displays.  That’s about it.

But we did do barbecues.  Food was a thing that my family always did well.  Hotdogs.  Bratwurst.  Chicken.  Supplemented by watermelon and corn on the cob.  Some of my fondest memories are family meals, especially around holidays.

Sharon Olds writes about her father’s dignity . . . 

His Stillness

by: Sharon Olds

The doctor said to my father, "You asked me
to tell you when nothing more could be done.
That's what I'm telling you now." My father
sat quite still, as he always did,
especially not moving his eyes. I had thought
he would rave if he understood he would die,
wave his arms and cry out. He sat up,
thin, and clean, in his clean gown,
like a holy man. The doctor said,
"There are things we can do which might give you time,
but we cannot cure you." My father said,
"Thank you." And he sat, motionless, alone,
with the dignity of a foreign leader.
I sat beside him. This was my father.
He had known he was mortal. I had feared they would have to
tie him down. I had not remembered
he had always held still and kept quiet to bear things,
the liquor a way to keep still. I had not
known him. My father had dignity. At the
end of his life his life began
to wake in me.

We always swear we will be different than our parents.  Raise our kids differently.  Be more successful.  Retire earlier.  Travel more.  Some people don’t even want to look like their mothers or fathers.

Yet, when I look in the mirror these days, I see my mother’s and father’s faces.  No getting around heredity.  I think I look a lot more like my mom than my dad, and I inherited her calmer disposition, as well.  My dad could be a hothead.  My mom, on the other hand, was always cool and thoughtful.  (When she lost her temper, you really didn’t want to be around her.  I think I take after her in that respect, as well.)

Around holidays, I think a lot about family members who are no longer around to celebrate with us.  My faithful disciples know that, in the last ten years or so, I’ve lost quite a few people in my life—a best friend, brother, two sisters, and both my parents.  The kind of nostalgia I’m experiencing today is pretty normal, I would guess.  Big holidays conjure up big feelings.

I did attend a parade this morning with my wife and kids.  There was even an Elvis impersonator on a float.  Now, I know we were supposed to boycott parades this July 4th in protest of the Republican apocalypse happening in Washington, D.C.  Nothing about the United States at the moment makes me proud to be a citizen of this country.  Yet, I do celebrate the freedom I have today.  (This time next year, I may have a different opinion.  Check back in 2026.)

I know that our country is incredibly flawed.  We live on stolen land in a society built on the backs of African American slaves.  Not really a great way to start this grand experiment in democracy.  However, I’ve also believed that we can be better.  Do better.  And I’m holding onto that hope right now.  I celebrated today what we CAN be as a nation, not what we currently are.  

The fireworks scheduled for tonight were rained out, so, instead, I went to the laundromat to wash some clothes and work on a new poem.  It’s about nine o’clock at night right now and still raining intermittently, but that’s not stopping our neighbors from disturbing the peace with some bottle rockets, firecrackers, and mortars.  That doesn’t bother me, though.  They’re out there having a good time.  Celebrating the freedom that still exists in the United States.  For now.

Saint Marty wrote a poem tonight about ghosts based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

It’s the birthday of Jean Cocteau, surrealist poet and playwright.  In honor of his birthday, write a surrealist poem today.  One way to do this is to begin with a 5-minute automatic writing session.  Write as fast as you can without thinking logically or worrying about making sense.  When you are finished with your timed writing, read it over and highlight passages that interest you.  Using these passages as triggers, continue writing fast.  Once you’ve done this, shape this raw and strange material into a poem.

Pizza Party

by: Martin Achatz

What do ghosts like on their pizzas?

Does my friend, Helen, want just

cheese, unadorned, plain as yoga?

My brother, Kevin, he loves ham,

even though he claimed to be vegan

when he was alive.  Sally is always 

particular, doesn’t want anything 

besides pepperoni to surprise

her tongue with too much heat or salt.

Rose, my other sister, eats everything with

the abandon of a flock of seagulls.  Dad

is meat and potatoes, wants as much

pork and beef and bacon as possible

on his slices, as if he grew up in a Russian

gulag with only one bowl of cabbage

broth to fuel his daily labors in the fields.

Mom?  She always eats after everyone

else, cobbling together her dinner

from turkey necks and sweet potato

skins.  Her pizza will be whatever

is left in the greasy boxes after the rest

of us are ready to nap or go for

a long, long walk.  That’s her now,

gliding around the table, asking

if everybody has had enough 

to eat, her ghostly stomach glowing

like a stove burner that’s just been 

used to fry up a skillet of scrambled eggs.

September 25: "No Things," Thingness, Fireworks

Poet William Carlos Williams once said, "No ideas but in things."

I think most poets subscribe to that maxim.  Ideas are empty cups, and it's up to the poet to fill those cups with pomegranate juice or blood or mud or a thousand breaths.  Whatever it takes to turn the empty cup into something that can be tasted or seen or smelled or heard or felt.

Billy Collins has some things to say about things . . . 

No Things

by: Billy Collins

This love for everyday things,
part natural from the wide eye of infancy,
part a literary calculation,

this attention to the morning flower
and later to a fly strolling
along the rim of a wineglass—

are we just avoiding out one true destiny,
when we do that, averting our glance
from Philip Larkin who waits for us in an undertaker’s coat?

The leafless branches against the sky
will not save anyone from the void ahead,
nor will the sugar bowl or the sugar spoon on the table.

So why bother with the checkered lighthouse?
Why waste time on the sparrow,
or the wildflowers along the roadside

when we should all be alone in our rooms
throwing ourselves against the wall of life
and the opposite wall of death,

the door locked behind us
as we hurl rocks at the question of meaning,
and the enigma of our origins?

What good is the firefly,
the droplet running along the green leaf,
or even the bar of soap sliding around the bathtub

when we are really meant to be
banging away on the mystery
as hard as we can and to hell with the neighbors?

banging away on nothingness itself,
some with the foreheads,
others with the maul of sense, the raised jawbone of poetry.

I don't spend my days preoccupied with nothingness.  No thingness.  I remain pretty enamored of the small things in my life.  Sometimes, when I close my eyes at night, I become very aware of each breath I take, the very action of inhaling and exhaling.  In summertime, I can spend a couple hours watching bees swimming in my lilac bushes, and, in wintertime, I love the slant of light in icicles.  

Thingness is what poetry is all about for me.  I'm not sure that makes me a disciple of Dr. Williams, but all the little fireworks of everyday life--ants crawling on the sidewalk, an ice cube melting in my glass of water--lend meaning and grace to my existence.

Even if you're not a practicing poet, you can still celebrate thingness.  I say practicing poet because I believe every person is born a poet.  When I've worked with elementary school students, they blow me away with their creativity and facility at language play.  And then something happens--life, puberty, bad teachers--and, by the time they hit high school and college, they're too cool or embarrassed to unleash their inner poets. 

Celebrating thingness is easy.  You just need to open your eyes, be aware of all the little miracles you encounter each and every day.  Once you get into the practice (it takes a little while--be patient), you will find it difficult to stop.  Each dandelion or mud puddle or spiderweb becomes a firework blossoming in front of you.

Saint Marty wishes you all happy thingness tonight.

July 3: "Spring at Blackwater: I Go Through the Lessons Already Learned," Independence Day Eve, These Truths

Mary Oliver holds these lessons to be self-evident . . . 

Spring at Blackwater:  I Go Through the Lessons Already Learned

by:  Mary Oliver

He gave the fish

her coat of foil,

and her soft eggs.

He made the kingfisher's 

quick eye

and her peerless, terrible beak.

He made the circles

of the days and the seasons

to close tightly,

and forever--

then open again.

Yes, I borrowed words from Thomas Jefferson for my introduction on this Independence Day Eve as my neighbors shoot off their fireworks and my puppy cowers by her cage, staring at me with terrified eyes.

Oliver's lessons have nothing to do with equality or life or liberty.  However, they do have something to do with the pursuit of happiness.  Nothing makes Oliver happier than pursuing the wonders of nature--from foiled fish to the spinning of the seasons.  Nature is proof of the divine for Oliver.  Forests and seas, there are her cathedrals.

Tomorrow, the citizens of the United States celebrate Independence Day with parades and barbecues and fireworks.  It's a pretty big deal, even though the country has never really lived up to the primary ideal of the Declaration of Independence:  that we're all created equal.  History can back me up on this fact, from slavery to Stonewall.  We have a bad habit of marginalizing and killing individuals who have the wrong color skin or love the wrong people or question gender definitions/differences.

I have been an educator for over 30 years now.  I can't tell you how many lessons I've taught.  Harder still:  I don't know how much of a difference I've made in my students' lives.  I've taught mythology and film, poetry and research, literature and narrative writing.  Through my entire academic career, I've tried to instill in my pupils a love for nature and the environment, per Mary Oliver.  I've also thrown in a healthy dose of respect for all creatures, great and small, human and nonhuman.

I learned these lessons over many years.  I grew up with a father who was racist and homophobic.  Of course, he was a product of his own upbringing, so I can't be angry with him.  From a young age, he was taught this kind of hate.  As a young person myself, I swallowed my embarrassment when my dad told his "jokes" to my friends.  When I became a parent, however, I started putting my foot down.  I wanted to break the cycle, and I think I did.  My kids are loving and accepting, and I'm incredibly lucky for that.

The world needs more Mary Oliver lessons, less John Birch Society lessons.  (Yes, my father was a member of that organization, as well.  If you've never heard the name John Birch before, count your blessings.)  More spring at Blackwater lessons, less Andrew Jackson lessons.

That's Saint Marty's self-evident truth tonight.

July 5: Plenty of Things, Little Overwhelmed, Willows and Horsetails

Santiago wishes for help . . . 

"I wish I had the boy," the old man said aloud. "I'm being towed by a fish and I'm the towing bitt. I could make the line fast. But then he could break it. I must hold him all I can and give him line when he must have it. Thank God he is travelling and not going down."

What I will do if he decides to go down, I don't know. What I'll do if he sounds and dies I don't know. But I'll do something. There are plenty of things I can do.

Santiago never gives up.  Sure, he may wish every once in a while that his circumstances were different, but he never allows himself to despair completely.  As he thinks, "There are plenty of things I can do."

Returned to work today after a three-day holiday weekend.  It was rough getting up this morning and working up enthusiasm to return to the office.  Because I knew the length of my list of things I needed to do.  Plus, I am teaching this second summer session at the university, so there are Discussion Forums to grade and panicked students to calm.

I must admit that I allowed myself to get a little overwhelmed.  However, I took my cue from Santiago, and I just concentrated on the task in front of me.  Task by task, I chipped away at my piles.  Plus, I had three meetings, as well.  I finished what needed to get done.  Then, I screened a documentary at the library about the Trail of Tears, a film I picked out for its close proximity to the celebration of Independence Day.  Just to provide a little counterpoint and balance to the strain of rampant patriotism that takes over the country this time of year.

I didn't get everything accomplished.  However, tomorrow's pile of tasks in substantially smaller than today's.  I count that a win.  Last night's fireworks were rained out in Marquette, Michigan, so the plan was to set them off this evening.  At 6 p.m., there was a fine mist settled in the city, with thick fog hovering over Lake Superior.  As I headed down to start screening the documentary, I had my doubts about fireworks going off at dusk.

But there were fireworks tonight.  I make the supposition from the absence of an announcement stating that they had been postponed again.  I'm sure that, tomorrow, Facebook will be flooded with photos and videos of Willows and Horsetails and Kamuros in the night sky.

There are plenty of things I can do now.  I could watch an episode of The Big Bang Theory.  Read a little Louise Erdrich.  Grade some more.  Lie on the couch in the dark, staring up at the ceiling.  Write a new poem.

Or Saint Marty could just give up and go to sleep.

July 13: Problems Connected with Life, Pioneer Days, Fireworks

A little bit about the big questions of life . . .

There are of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most popular are Why are people born?  Why do they die?  Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?

Greetings, faithful disciples!

Well, again this is going to be a short post.  I am about to leave for a fireworks display in a neighboring town.  The town, you see, didn't really have huge Independence Day festivities, so, many years ago, some smart town leaders decided to create a holiday.  It's a week-long celebration called Pioneer Days.  It's full of class reunions, softball tournaments, pie socials, a parade, and, at the end of it all, fireworks.

I went to the parade this morning.  Now, it's time to blow up the heavens a little bit. 

Of course, life is always full of problems, as the passage above states.  Big questions, with not a whole lot of answers.  Humanity spends a lot of time and energy on solving problems or creating a whole crop of new ones.  At the moment, the world (or at least the country in which I live) seems hell-bent on the creation of problems (or messing up the solutions that have already been put in place). 

So, it seems pretty appropriate this evening to be celebrating a made-up holiday.  Frankly, I don't even know what pioneers we are supposed to be honoring.  Perhaps the founders of the town, although I don't think so.  Maybe the person who discovered iron ore in the area.  I think that was a thing many years ago. 

For me, I am going to celebrate being with my family members.  Buying a bratwurst.  Listening to the marching band.  Eating way too much kettle corn.  And then, as dusk is thick in the air, leaning back on the grass and enjoying a little fire in the sky.

If you want to join Saint Marty, he'll be down by the school, in front of the lake.  Look for the guy in the Bigfoot hat.

July 5: Stoic, Teenage Daughter, Fireworks

Crossing the deck, let us now have a good long look at the the Right Whale's head.
As in general shape the noble Sperm Whale's head may be compared to a Roman war-chariot (especially in front, where it is so broadly rounded); so, at a broad view, the Right Whale's head bears a rather inelegant resemblance to a gigantic galliot-toed shoe. Two hundred years ago an old Dutch voyager likened its shape to that of a shoemaker's last. And in this same last or shoe, that old woman of the nursery tale with the swarming brood, might very comfortably be lodged, she and all her progeny.

But as you come nearer to this great head it begins to assume different aspects, according to your point of view. If you stand on its summit and look at these two f-shaped spout-holes, you would take the whole head for an enormous bass viol, and these spiracles, the apertures in its soundingboard. Then, again, if you fix your eye upon this strange, crested, comblike incrustation on the top of the mass- this green, barnacled thing, which the Greenlanders call the "crown," and the Southern fishers the "bonnet" of the Right Whale; fixing your eyes solely on this, you would take the head for the trunk of some huge oak, with a bird's nest in its crotch. At any rate, when you watch those live crabs that nestle here on this bonnet, such an idea will be almost sure to occur to you; unless, indeed, your fancy has been fixed by the technical term "crown" also bestowed upon it; in which case you will take great interest in thinking how this mighty monster is actually a diademed king of the sea, whose green crown has been put together for him in this marvellous manner. But if this whale be a king, he is a very sulky looking fellow to grace a diadem. Look at that hanging lower lip! what a huge sulk and pout is there! a sulk and pout, by carpenter's measurement, about twenty feet long and five feet deep; a sulk and pout that will yield you some 500 gallons of oil and more.

A great pity, now, that this unfortunate whale should be hare-lipped. The fissure is about a foot across. Probably the mother during an important interval was sailing down the Peruvian coast, when earthquakes caused the beach to gape. Over this lip, as over a slippery threshold, we now slide into the mouth. Upon my word were I at Mackinaw, I should take this to be the inside of an Indian wigwam. Good Lord! is this the road that Jonah went? The roof is about twelve feet high, and runs to a pretty sharp angle, as if there were a regular ridge-pole there; while these ribbed, arched, hairy sides, present us with those wondrous, half vertical, scimitar-shaped slats of whalebone, say three hundred on a side, which depending from the upper part of the head or crown bone, form those Venetian blinds which have elsewhere been cursorily mentioned. The edges of these bones are fringed with hairy fibres, through which the Right Whale strains the water, and in whose intricacies he retains the small fish, when openmouthed he goes through the seas of brit in feeding time. In the central blinds of bone, as they stand in their natural order, there are certain curious marks, curves, hollows, and ridges, whereby some whalemen calculate the creature's age, as the age of an oak by its circular rings. Though the certainty of this criterion is far from demonstrable, yet it has the savor of analogical probability. At any rate, if we yield to it, we must grant a far greater age to the Right Whale than at first glance will seem reasonable.

In old times, there seem to have prevailed the most curious fancies concerning these blinds. One voyager in Purchas calls them the wondrous "whiskers" inside of the whale's mouth;* another, "hogs' bristles"; a third old gentleman in Hackluyt uses the following elegant language: "There are about two hundred and fifty fins growing on each side of his upper chop, which arch over his tongue on each side of his mouth."

*This reminds us that the Right Whale really has a sort of whisker, or rather a moustache, consisting of a few scattered white hairs on the upper part of the outer end of the lower jaw. Sometimes these tufts impart a rather brigandish expression to his otherwise solemn countenance.

As every one knows, these same "hogs' bristles," "fins," "whiskers," "blinds," or whatever you please, furnish to the ladies their busks and other stiffening contrivances. But in this particular, the demand has long been on the decline. It was in Queen Anne's time that the bone was in its glory, the farthingale being then all the fashion. And as those ancient dames moved about gaily, though in the jaws of the whale, as you may say; even so, in a shower, with the like thoughtlessness, do we nowadays fly under the same jaws for protection; the umbrella being a tent spread over the same bone.

But now forget all about blinds and whiskers for a moment, and, standing in the Right Whale's mouth, look around you afresh. Seeing all these colonnades of bone so methodically ranged about, would you not think you were inside of the great Haarlem organ, and gazing upon its thousand pipes? For a carpet to the organ we have a rug of the softest Turkey- the tongue, which is glued, as it were, to the floor of the mouth. It is very fat and tender, and apt to tear in pieces in hoisting it on deck. This particular tongue now before us; at a passing glance I should say it was a six-barreler; that is, it will yield you about that amount of oil.

Ere this, you must have plainly seen the truth of what I started with- that the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale have almost entirely different heads. To sum up, then: in the Right Whale's there is no great well of sperm; no ivory teeth at all; no long, slender mandible of a lower jaw, like the Sperm Whale's. Nor in the Sperm Whale are there any of those blinds of bone; no huge lower lip; and scarcely anything of a tongue. Again, the Right Whale has two external spout-holes, the Sperm Whale only one.

Look your last now, on these venerable hooded heads, while they yet lie together; for one will soon sink, unrecorded, in the sea; the other will not be very long in following.

Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's there? It is the same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead seem now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death. But mark the other head's expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed by accident against the vessel's side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw. Does not this whole head seem to speak of an enormous practical resolution facing death? This Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years.

Right Whale versus Sperm Whale.  I especially enjoy the final passages in this chapter, where Melville notes that the Right Whale has the expression of a Stoic, while the Sperm Whale is a follower of Plato.  I don't think that he's truly investing either whale with philosophical schools of thought.  No, I think he's using the terms more generally.  The Right Whale's face, to Melville, seems devoid of strong emotion.  The Sperm Whale, on the other hand, is invested with stronger feeling, reaching toward some higher good, so to speak.

I know.  That's pretty heavy stuff after a long day, but it sort of touches upon my frame of mind this evening.  Yesterday, I was forced to confront the fact that my 17-year-old daughter is not that interested in hanging out with her family as much anymore.  Last night, at the community fireworks, she spent the night wandering around with her boyfriend and a pack of their friends.  I only saw her from a distance, passing by, ignoring us.

I know this is normal teenage behavior.  My daughter is trying to establish herself as a person, independent of me or her mother.  Gone are the days when she was content to sit on a blanket with us, listen to my jokes, and light sparklers.  She was having fun, enjoying her freedom.

The problem came at dusk, when the fireworks started flying.  I wanted my daughter to come back to us to watch the show.  She was with her friends, having a good time.  I got angry.  Texted her that she needed to come back immediately or she wouldn't be able to go anywhere with her friends for a long time.  She came storming back to our blanket, flung herself on the ground, with her back to me.  We both watched the fireworks, but I don't think either of us enjoyed them.

In retrospect, I now realize that I was being unreasonable.  She was doing what every every child has to do at some time:  pull away from her parents.  However, in the heat of the moment, I wasn't able to be Stoic or Platonic in my thought process.  I was just pissed and maybe a little sad.  I don't think there's been a single Independence Day where she hasn't watched the fireworks with me.

Well, here I sit a day later.  The anger is gone.  What I am left with this evening is a lot of sadness.  It's irrational for me to feel like this.  However, in some way, I feel like I lost a little part of my daughter last night.  I got a taste of her future--high school graduation, college, jobs, relationships.  All of the stuff that doesn't really include me a whole lot.  I didn't like it.

So, excuse me this evening if I'm a little blue.  I will be better tomorrow, once I get more distance and perspective from yesterday.  I think that, like Melville, I'm playing a comparison game:  my little, ponytailed girl versus my almost adult daughter.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight to be a part of his daughter's life.

July 2: Given to the Waves, Independence Day Week, Hard Lemonade

In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale, there is much running backwards and forwards among the crew. Now hands are wanted here, and then again hands are wanted there. There is no staying in any one place; for at one and the same time everything has to be done everywhere. It is much the same with him who endeavors the description of the scene. We must now retrace our way a little. It was mentioned that upon first breaking ground in the whale's back, the blubber-hook was inserted into the original hole there cut by the spades of the mates. But how did so clumsy and weighty a mass as that same hook get fixed in that hole? It was inserted there by my particular friend Queequeg, whose duty it was, as harpooneer, to descend upon the monster's back for the special purpose referred to. But in very many cases, circumstances require that the harpooneer shall remain on the whale till the whole tensing or stripping operation is concluded. The whale, be it observed, lies almost entirely submerged, excepting the immediate parts operated upon. So down there, some ten feet below the level of the deck, the poor harpooneer flounders about, half on the whale and half in the water, as the vast mass revolves like a tread-mill beneath him. On the occasion in question, Queequeg figured in the Highland costume- a shirt and socks- in which to my eyes, at least, he appeared to uncommon advantage; and no one had a better chance to observe him, as will presently be seen.

Being the savage's bowsman, that is, the person who pulled the bow-oar in his boat (the second one from forward), it was my cheerful duty to attend upon him while taking that hard-scrabble scramble upon the dead whale's back. You have seen Italian organ-boys holding a dancing-ape by a long cord. Just so, from the ship's steep side, did I hold Queequeg down there in the sea, by what is technically called in the fishery a monkey-rope, attached to a strong strip of canvas belted round his waist.

It was a humorously perilous business for both of us. For, before we proceed further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at both ends; fast to Queequeg's broad canvas belt, and fast to my narrow leather one. So that for better or for worse, we two, for the time, were wedded; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage and honor demanded, that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag me down in his wake. So, then, an elongated Siamese ligature united us. Queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother; nor could I any way get rid of the dangerous liabilities which the hempen bond entailed.

So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then, that while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to perceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another's mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster and death. Therefore, I saw that here was a sort of interregnum in Providence; for its even-handed equity never could have so gross an injustice. And yet still further pondering- while I jerked him now and then from between the whale and ship, which would threaten to jam him- still further pondering, I say, I saw that this situation of mine was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most cases, he, one way or other, has this Siamese connexion with a plurality of other mortals. If your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your pills, you die. True, you may say that, by exceeding caution, you may possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances of life. But handle Queequeg's monkey-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he jerked it so, that I came very near sliding overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that, do what I would, I only had the management of one end of it.*

*The monkey-rope is found in all whalers; but it was only in the Pequod that the monkey and his holder were ever tied together. This improvement upon the original usage was introduced by no less a man than Stubb, in order to afford to the imperilled harpooneer the strongest possible guarantee for the faithfulness and vigilance of his monkey-rope holder.

I have hinted that I would often jerk poor Queequeg from between the whale and the ship- where he would occasionally fall, from the incessant rolling and swaying of both. But this was not the only jamming jeopardy he was exposed to. Unappalled by the massacre made upon them during the night, the sharks now freshly and more keenly allured by the before pent blood which began to flow from the carcass- the rabid creatures swarmed round it like bees in a beehive.

And right in among those sharks was Queequeg; who often pushed them aside with his floundering feet. A thing altogether incredible were it not that attracted by such prey as a dead whale, the otherwise miscellaneously carnivorous shark will seldom touch a man.

Nevertheless, it may well be believed that since they have such a ravenous finger in the pie, it is deemed but wise to look sharp to them. Accordingly, besides the monkey-rope, with which I now and then jerked the poor fellow from too close a vicinity to the maw of what seemed a peculiarly ferocious shark- he was provided with still another protection. Suspended over the side in one of the stages, Tashtego and Daggoo continually flourished over his head a couple of keen whale-spades, wherewith they slaughtered as many sharks as they could reach. This procedure of theirs, to be sure, was very disinterested and benevolent of them. They meant Queequeg's best happiness, I admit; but in their hasty zeal to befriend him, and from the circumstance that both he and the sharks were at times half hidden by the blood-muddled water, those indiscreet spades of theirs would come nearer amputating a leg than a tall. But poor Queequeg, I suppose, straining and gasping there with that great iron hook- poor Queequeg, I suppose, only prayed to his Yojo, and gave up his life into the hands of his gods.

Well, well, my dear comrade and twin-brother, thought I, as I drew in and then slacked off the rope to every swell of the sea- what matters it, after all? Are you not the precious image of each and all of us men in this whaling world? That unsounded ocean you gasp in, is Life; those sharks, your foes; those spades, your friends; and what between sharks and spades you are in a sad pickle and peril, poor lad.

But courage! there is good cheer in store for you, Queequeg. For now, as with blue lips and blood-shot eyes the exhausted savage at last climbs up the chains and stands all dripping and involuntarily trembling over the side; the steward advances, and with a benevolent, consolatory glance hands him- what? Some hot Cognac? No! hands him, ye gods! hands him a cup of tepid ginger and water!

"Ginger? Do I smell ginger?" suspiciously asked Stubb, coming near. "Yes, this must be ginger," peering into the as yet untasted cup. Then standing as if incredulous for a while, he calmly walked towards the astonished steward slowly saying, "Ginger? ginger? and will you have the goodness to tell me, Mr. Dough-Boy, where lies the virtue of ginger? Ginger! is ginger the sort of fuel you use, Dough-boy, to kindle a fire in this shivering cannibal? Ginger!- what the devil is ginger?- sea-coal? firewood?- lucifer matches?- tinder?- gunpowder?- what the devil is ginger, I say, that you offer this cup to our poor Queequeg here."

"There is some sneaking Temperance Society movement about this business," he suddenly added, now approaching Starbuck, who had just come from forward. "Will you look at that kannakin, sir; smell of it, if you please." Then watching the mate's countenance, he added, "The steward, Mr. Starbuck, had the face to offer that calomel and jalap to Queequeg, there, this instant off the whale. Is the steward an apothecary, sir? and may I ask whether this is the sort of bitters by which he blows back the life into a half-drowned man?"

"I trust not," said Starbuck, "it is poor stuff enough."

"Aye, aye, steward," cried Stubb, "we'll teach you to drug it harpooneer; none of your apothecary's medicine here; you want to poison us, do ye? You have got out insurances on our lives and want to murder us all, and pocket the proceeds, do ye?"

"It was not me," cried Dough-Boy, "it was Aunt Charity that brought the ginger on board; and bade me never give the harpooneers any spirits, but only this ginger-jub- so she called it."

"Ginger-jub! you gingerly rascal! take that! and run along with ye to the lockers, and get something better. I hope I do no wrong, Mr. Starbuck. It is the captain's orders- grog for the harpooneer on a whale."

"Enough," replied Starbuck, "only don't hit him again, but-"

"Oh, I never hurt when I hit, except when I hit a whale or something of that sort; and this fellow's a weazel. What were you about saying, sir?"

"Only this: go down with him, and get what thou wantest thyself."

When Stubb reappeared, he came with a dark flask in one hand, and a sort of tea-caddy in the other. The first contained strong spirits, and was handed to Queequeg; the second was Aunt Charity's gift, and that was freely given to the waves.

In the United States, this week is one of celebration.  Independence Day is celebrated on Wednesday.  In my little area of this country, many people take the entire week off from work and spend the next seven days barbecuing and drinking.  Oh, and also going to parades and setting off fireworks.  So, this chapter on the virtues of spirits (and I'm not talking about the kind that show up for seances) is pretty apropos.

So, tonight, I will kick off Independence Day week by drinking some hard lemonade.  Just one.  I have to work tomorrow morning.  And I do come from a family who has a penchant for substance abuse, so I always consume alcohol in moderation.  I know that I have a high tolerance for it.

Of course, the stereotype for poets is that they write and drink and carouse.  Think Dylan Thomas, who, aside from being a fantastic poet, was legendary for his bouts of drunken debauchery.  Truth be told, most of the poets I know never drink heavily.  For most, it's just a beer or two after a poetry reading.  That's it.  An occasional celebratory glass of wine or champagne on special occasions.  I, myself, when I win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, plan to down some Bailey's Irish Cream, on the rocks.

If you haven't guessed by now, this post is not going to delve very deeply into metaphysical questions this evening.  I'm too tired to wallow in the blood and boil, like Queequeg.  Nope.  After I'm done typing this post, I plan on getting into my pajamas, turning on the television to some mindless entertainment, and drinking a little.

Of course, my neighbors celebrate this week by setting off fireworks all night long.  I wouldn't be surprised if alcohol is also a part of their week-long firecracker fest.  That's what we Americans do:  we get drunk and blow things up.

Sing with Saint Marty (and try not to think about who's running the country at the moment):  "I'm proud to be an Americaaaaaannnnn!!!"

(DISCLAIMER:  Please read this post in the spirit in which it was written--with a great deal of tongue-in-cheekness.)

July 9: Limp Noodle, Classic Saint Marty, "Radio Jazz in the Morning"

I am a limp noodle this afternoon.  I was at a fireworks display until well past midnight.  Got up for church at 6:30 this morning.  Dragged myself through worship.  (That's the life of a church musician.)  Went home and mowed the lawn.  Went grocery shopping at Walmart because my wife hasn't been feeling well this weekend.  Home.  Put away the groceries.  Buzzed over to a poet friend's house to plan out a poetry reading we're giving next weekend.  Now, blogging and dinner.  I plan to go home and do . . . absolutely nothing.

This next week is going to be exciting, though.  I'm traveling to the east end of the Upper Peninsula to give a reading in Sault Ste. Marie and meet some old and new friends.  It's going to be a mini family vacation.  I'm looking forward to a couple days off, devoted to poetry and summer fun.

A few years ago, it seems that I was preoccupied with leftovers--food and poetry . . .

July 10, 2014:  The Dump, Poetry Dump, Leftovers

Below the apple orchard, at the end of a path, was the dump where Mr. Zuckerman threw all sorts of trash and stuff that nobody wanted any more.  Here, in a small clearing hidden by young alders and wild raspberry bushes, was an astounding pile of old bottles and empty tin cans and dirty rags and bits of metal and broken bottles and broken hinges and broken springs and dead batteries and last month's magazines and old discarded dishmops and tattered overalls and rusty spikes and leaky pails and forgotten stoppers and useless junk of all kinds, including a wrong-size crank for a broken ice-cream freezer.

OK, please try to recover from the shock of this paragraph.  Yes, E. B. White is describing a place where the Zuckerman's simply dump all of their shit in the middle of the woods.  Dead batteries.  Old magazines.  Broken bottles.  It sounds like a setting from Wall-E, not Charlotte's Web.

The reason I chose to start with this passage is because I submitted more poems for publication tonight.  I basically chose poems that I thought no editor would ever dream of publishing.  Stuff that I loved writing but probably belongs in some kind of poetry dump along with all the bad dirty limericks ever found on bathroom walls.  The leftovers.

I love leftovers.  As a kid, I always liked the B-side of records.  I once ate shrimp with lo mein for an entire week.  And I like obscure books and poems.  Offbeat stuff.  "The Pope's Penis" by Sharon Olds--my favorite poem of all time.  It's strange, weird, surprising.  The kind of thing you would find growing under a tree stump in a poetry dump.

I'm glad I took a chance tonight.

Saint Marty's been playing it safe way too long.

 

I think there's a poem underneath that bottle

Speaking of leftovers and poems:

Radio Jazz in the Morning

by:  Martin Achatz

Guitar lifts, runs, falls, trips over
My naked body, taps along arm,
Reaches down back, into vertebrae,
Makes juices flow and jump, my horn
Riff the air, sway, heavy now, light now,
My mind still with my wife in bed,
Her curves, hot breath, parted lips,
Ready for the jazz of fingers, bebop
Of hands on her skin, rhythm, bass
On breast, thigh, nipple, neck,
Mardi Gras of body on body, tongue
On her reed, slick music in mouth,
Passed from my tenor to her alto,
Her trumpet to my trombone,
Until we're jamming, unable to tell
Me from her, her from me, our voices
Rising, like Jesus on Easter morning,
Filling the world with sound, sweet sound,
Louie, Ella, Duke, Charlie, yeah, Bird,
Chasing Bird all the way to paradise.  Yeah.

July 7: Short Week, Tracy K. Smith, "The Soul"

One of my coworkers always walks into the office on Fridays and proclaims joyously, "It's Friday, bitches!"

I am so happy that this short week has come to an end.  I still haven't completely recovered from Independence Day festivities.  Tired.  All the time.  Tomorrow, it's another parade and more fireworks in the evening.  If I survive this weekend with my sanity intact, it will be a miracle.

I'm sort of craving silence and calm.  A good book or movie.  Gin and tonic to drink.  No plans.  No obligations.  Just rest.  A quiet time for the soul.

That sounds like a little piece of Saint Marty heaven.

The Soul

by:  Tracy K. Smith

The voice is clean.  Has heft.  Like stones
Dropped in still water, or tossed
One after the other at a low wall.
Chipping away at what pushes back.
Not always making a dent, but keeping at it.
And the silence around it is a door
Punched through with light.  A garment
That attests to breasts, the privacy
Between thighs.  The body is what we lean toward,
Tensing as it darts, dancing away.
But it's the voice that enters us.  Even
Saying nothing.  Even saying nothing
Over and over absently to itself.

July 5: Think About the War, Fireworks, Day After

When the beautiful people were past, Valencia questioned her funny-looking husband about war.  It was a simple-minded thing for a female Earthling to do, to associate sex and glamor with war.  

"Do you ever think about the war?" she said, laying a hand on his thigh.

"Sometimes," said Billy Pilgrim.

Billy doesn't really have to think about the war.  He keeps living it, over and over, back and forth in time.  Valencia has no idea that there's a chance, once she goes to sleep, Billy will jump back to Germany, Dresden, or Tralfamadore.  The war is constantly with Billy, whether he likes it or not.  He doesn't get a chance to suffer from PTSD, because the trauma is never post.  Always present.

I am exhausted tonight.  I was at an Independence Day fireworks display until after 11 p.m.  Got home, took a shower, went to bed.  The alarm went off at 4:45 a.m., and my day began.  So, I am operating on less than four hours of sleep, and my day still isn't over.  I have rehearsal tonight with my praise band, I think.  That will last until past eight o'clock, at which time I will come home and finalize the plans for a poetry workshop that I'm leading tomorrow night.  I'm not saying this day is going to give me PTSD, but I'm certainly not going to have any fun.

I'm feeling a little brain dead right now.  Usually, after I'm done working at the medical office, I get a second wind to prepare me for the afternoon and evening responsibilities/festivities.  About the only thing I have the energy for is a nap.  A long one.  If I close my eyes, I fear that they won't open again until tomorrow morning.

So, let me sum up the extent of my wisdom this evening:

1. Fireworks, good.
2. The day after, exhausted.

Saint Marty is going to be very thankful tonight for his bed.  Amen.

July 9: Night Risings, Race, Fireworks

Night risings and fallings filled my mind, free excursions carried out invisibly while the air swung up and back and the starlight rained.  By day I had watched water striders dimple and jerk over the deep bankside water slowed by the dam.  But I knew that sometimes a breath or call stirs the colony, and new forms emerge with wings.  They cluster at night on the surface of their home waters and then take to the air in a rush.  Migrating, they sail over meadows, under trees, cruising, veering towards a steady gleam in a flurry of glistening wings:  "phantom ships in the air."

Dillard watches with night risings and falling with her characteristic curiosity.  In Tinker Creek, she watches bugs walking on the water, witnesses hatches of colonies of winged insects.  They swarm and boil on the pond's surface, and then they launch like fireworks over meadows and trees.

Tonight, I will be attending a fireworks display one town down from me.  The community gathers by the lake, and there's music and food and pony rides.  Some bad garage bands, sometimes.  Of course, there are vendors hawking pizza and bratwurst and ice cream.  And, at dusk, the rockets start rising.

It's the end of a week-long celebration called Pioneer Days.  This morning, I ran the annual two-mile race organized by the local chapter of Big Brothers Big Sisters.  I was slow, slow, slow, but I still managed to take first place in my age group.  Then, there was the parade.  A huge assembly of trucks and floats and ambulances and firetrucks.  Lots of Tootsie Rolls being tossed at kids.

It's been a good day, and it will be a relaxing night, sitting on blankets by the beach with family a friends, waiting for the sun to set.  And then glistening wings of light in the sky, to steal an image from Dillard.

Saint Marty's feet are sore, but his heart is full.

July 5: Christ as Fish, Abundance of Grace, Go Fish

I am coming around to fish as spirit.  The Greek acronym for some of the names of Christ yields ichthys.  Christ as fish, and fish as Christ.  The more I glimpse the fish in Tinker Creek, the more satisfying the coincidence becomes, the richer the symbol, not only for Christ but for the spirit as well.  The people must live.  Imagine for a Mediterranean people how much easier it is to haul up free, fed fish in nets than to pasture hungry herds on those bony bills and feed them through a winter.  To say that holiness is a fish is a statement of the abundance of grace; it is the equivalent of affirming in a purely materialistic culture that money does indeed grow on trees.  "Not as the world gives do I give to you"; these fish are spirit food.  And revelation is a study in stalking:  "Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find."

This is one of my favorite passages in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek--Dillard discussing the abundance of grace.  Christ as fish.  How many times does Christ tell his apostles to cast their nets overboard?  And each time, the disciples haul up so many fish that it almost sinks their boats.  That's God's overwhelming abundance of grace.

It has been a long day.  I was up late last night at the fireworks.  Got to bed after midnight and rose at 4:45 a.m.  I am exhausted.  I need to write my posts, and then I need to do some grading for my online class.  (Of course, I'm having difficulty with the university's system.  It's not giving me access.)  And it's 84 degrees out, and I don't want to do anything but sit in my backyard and read a good book.

Despite my tiredness and technological frustration, I have an abundance of grace in my life tonight.  Fish all around me, so to speak.  I'm working at a job now with some of my best friends.  I don't want to ship my daughter off to a Filipino sweatshop tonight.  My son wants to go out for ice cream tonight.  And there's more fireworks this weekend.  Cast my net on the right side of the ship, and I shall find.

Fish, fish.  Saint Marty got his wish.

My reality--I need about ten liters of Diet Mountain Dew