August 26: "Creatures," Marie Antionette, People Watching

Poets have strange ways of looking at the world.  I know I do.  When other people see a seagull eating a French fry, I see a reincarnated Marie Antionette gobbling a piece of cake.  If there is thunder rumbling in the distance, I hear God suffering from sleep apnea.  Where an oak stands with mustard-colored leaves in October, I recognize fists of light shadowboxing the clouds.

You see what I mean.  Poets just have a different way of understanding the universe.

Billy Collins writes about creature features . . . 

Creatures

by: Billy Collins

Hamlet noticed them in the shapes of clouds,
but I saw them in the furniture of childhood,
creatures trapped under surfaces of wood,

one submerged in a polished sideboard,
one frowning from a chair-back,
another howling from my mother’s silent bureau,
locked in the grain of maple, frozen in oak.

I would see these presences, too,
in a swirling pattern of wallpaper
or in the various greens of a porcelain lamp,
each looking so melancholy, so damned,
some peering out at me as if they knew
all the secrets of a secretive boy.

Many times I would be daydreaming
on the carpet and one would appear next to me,
the oversize nose, the hollow look.

So you will understand my reaction
this morning at the beach
when you opened your hand to show me
a stone you had picked up from the shoreline.

“Do you see the face?” you asked
as the cold surf circled our bare ankles.
“There’s the eye and the line of the mouth,
like it’s grimacing, like it’s in pain.”

“Well, maybe that’s because it has a fissure
running down the length of its forehead
not to mention a kind of twisted beak,” I said,

taking the thing from you and flinging it out
over the sparkle of blue waves
so it could live out its freakish existence
on the dark bottom of the sea

and stop bothering innocent beachgoers like us,
stop ruining everyone’s summer.

I spent most of today at Fall Fest at the university where I teach.  It was hot.  Near 90 degrees.  Thank goodness I was sitting underneath a tent.  Fall Fest is the annual back-to-school event where student organizations, local businesses, non-profits, and churches set up tables, trying to lure students into their fold with free candy, pizza, ice cream, bottled water, socks, tee shirts, and Koozies.  I attended representing the library.

I love people watching.  Assigning stories to the guy who walks by with so many piercings he could be melted down and made into bullets or coins.  Or the girl who's holding onto her friend's hand so hard their fingers are turning the color of birch bark.  Like Billy Collins spying creatures in wood grains, I sat at my table, imagining the couple with the tattooed faces are renegade cyborgs from the distant future.  The world is a constantly fascinating place, full of grinning stones and hollow-faced paneling and young people on the cusp of changing the world.  

And that's only the first day of teaching this semester for Saint Marty!

January 17: Sober Cannibal, First Day Teaching, Facing Fears

"Landlord, for God's sake, Peter Coffin!" shouted I. "Landlord! Watch! Coffin! Angels! save me!"

"Speak-e! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e!" again growled the cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scattered the hot tobacco ashes about me till I thought my linen would get on fire. But thank heaven, at that moment the landlord came into the room light in hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him.

"Don't be afraid now," said he, grinning again, "Queequeg here wouldn't harm a hair of your head."

"Stop your grinning," shouted I, "and why didn't you tell me that that infernal harpooneer was a cannibal?"

"I thought ye know'd it;- didn't I tell ye, he was a peddlin' heads around town?- but turn flukes again and go to sleep. Queequeg, look here- you sabbee me, I sabbee- you this man sleepe you- you sabbee?"

"Me sabbee plenty"- grunted Queequeg, puffing away at his pipe and sitting up in bed.

"You gettee in," he added, motioning to me with his tomahawk, and throwing the clothes to one side. 

He really did this in not only a civil but a really kind and charitable way. I stood looking at him a moment. For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal. What's all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself- the man's a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

"Landlord," said I, "tell him to stash his tomahawk there, or pipe, or whatever you call it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and I will turn in with him. But I don't fancy having a man smoking in bed with me. It's dangerous. Besides, I ain't insured."

This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and again politely motioned me to get into bed- rolling over to one side as much as to say- I won't touch a leg of ye.

"Good night, landlord," said I, "you may go."

I turned in, and never slept better in my life.

I love Ishmael's comment in this passage:  "Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian."  Of course, there is still a hint of racism involved.  Ishmael assumes, because of Queequeg's appearance (skin coloring and tattoos), that he is a cannibal.  Yet, Melville does something that's pretty remarkable then.  He compares a sober cannibal to a drunken Christian.  The cannibal wins this character contest.

Of course, there's also a lot of comedy in this little passage that ends chapter three of Moby-Dick.  But the comedy is at Ishmael's expense.  Queequeg is not the fool here.  Ishmael--with his prejudices and fears--comes out looking like the village idiot, and he quickly realizes his error in judgement.

Just finished teaching my first class of the semester--Introduction to Film.  It's one of my favorite courses.  Of course, we did all of the normal things--syllabus and introductions and such.  I always think of the first day as a sort of blind date.  The students don't know if they're going to like me, and I don't know what kind of student hand I've been dealt, either.  So, it's all about first impressions.  Sort of like Ishmael and Queequeg.

I think things went alright tonight.  We ended up watching Charlie Chaplin's City Lights for the last 40 minutes.  It's a great film to break the ice.  A little silly.  A little serious.  Slapstick and melodramatic.  By the end of class, the students were laughing and relaxed.  I count that as a success.  I think I came across as half-cannibal, half-drunken Christian.

Now, I have a couple hours to relax in my office until my daughter is done at her dance studio.  Time to decompress, think about the coming days.

A lot of my life is like Ishmael's first encounter with Queequeg.  I'm thrown into situations that give me stress and anxiety (like teaching a roomful of 35 jaded undergraduates), and I usually end up really enjoying myself.  It's a matter of not letting fear rule my choices.

If I had played it safe my whole life, I would be a plumber right now, spending my days cabling sewers and fixing leaky faucets.  There's nothing wrong with the plumbing profession.  It's hard, honest labor.  However, since my father and brothers and sister were all master plumbers, I wouldn't have been taking any chances if I had chosen the same line of work.  (I'd also be a lot more financially stable.)

Instead, I'm sitting in an office in the English Department of a university, having just finished talking about Charlie Chaplin with a bunch of young people barely older than my daughter.  I'm a poet.  This past December, I added radio performer to my list of credits.  My life has pretty much been about stepping out on ledges, looking down, and then leaping.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for his fears and where they have led him.

August 26: Feeling Better, First Day of Teaching, Magic 8-Ball Monday

I woke up this morning feeling a lot better than I have for a long time.  I'm still sore, but I'm not moving like a 95-year-old man on morphine.  I made some phone calls--scheduling doctor's appointments, canceling office hours at the university, arranging time off from my medical office job.  Then I did my lesson plan for teaching this afternoon.

I'm a little tired at the moment.  Perhaps I did a little too much, but I got so much accomplished.  I have a feeling I'm going to have to lie down before I teach.  I was planning on going for a walk after I was done typing this post, but I'm not too sure that's going to happen now.  First, a nap.  Then, maybe, a walk.

I'm not used to taking it easy.  I'm usually busy from the moment the alarm goes off until my head hits the pillow fifteen or sixteen hours later.  I like keeping busy.  Obviously.  I may take advantage of this down time and work on some new poems or my memoir or my 900-page study of the short stories of Flannery O'Connor.  Some slight diversion.

Well, it is Magic 8-Ball Monday.  I need to ask a question on this warm, humid morning.  Here goes:

Will I get to take the whole week off work?

And the answer from the Good Book of Salinger is:

While I was changing my shirt, I damn near gave my kid sister Phoebe a buzz, though.  I certainly felt like talking to her on the phone,  Somebody with sense and all...

Perhaps I need to listen to somebody with common sense.  My sister, who's a nurse, told me last night, "You just had major abdominal surgery.  Maybe you should take it easy for a while."


Saint Marty may have to follow that advice, even if he goes out of his head with boredom.

Do I stink?

August 27: First Day of Teaching, Firsts, "Carol" Dip Monday

Today is the first day of the fall semester at the university.  This afternoon, I will find myself in front of a classroom of 35 or so undergrads, all looking a little bored and anxious.  Generally, on the first day of class, most students just want a copy of the syllabus and a dismissal.  I do not do that.  I keep students on the first day until almost the bitter end.  Today will be no different.  I've never found a way to speed up my day one activities.  There's the usual business of rosters and syllabi and information sheets.  Then there's the less tangible class introductions where I get students to give me a little personal information about themselves.  These introductions take a while, but it's where I can connect on a deeper level with my students.

Now, a few of my colleagues wouldn't put a whole lot of emphasis on connection, especially on the first day.  I, however, think students need to know what they're signing up for.  If I'm taking a class from Stalin, I want to know right away.  That's why I try to let a little of my personality come through.  I may come off as weird or off-balance or off-color, but at least those undergrads know what they can expect for the next few months.  I sometimes worry that I turn some people off with my sense of humor.  But I think it's better to be turned off on the first day of class, when something can be done about it, than on the last day of class, when you're turning in your final exam.

Firsts are important.  First day of school.  First impression.  First communion.  First kiss.  First birthday.  First baby.  First girlfriend or boyfriend.  First sex.  First time reading Catcher in the Rye.  First time watching Star Wars.  First job.  First Diet Mountain Dew of the morning.  First piece of chocolate.  Firsts can shape your day, week, month, life, education, employment, faith, family.  That's why I fret about the first day of teaching a classroom full of new students.

Thus, my Carol dip question for this Monday is going to be fairly predictable:

Will my first day of teaching go well?

And the answer from the Inimitable is:

"They are not torn down," cried Scrooge, folding one of his bed-curtains in his arms, "they are not torn down, rings and all.  They are here:  I am here:  the shadows of the things that would have been, may be dispelled.  They will be.  I know they will."

There we go.  Scrooge is celebrating his life.  He's dispelling the shadows of the future and fully embracing his present circumstances.  He's full of joy and hope.

Looks like Saint Marty's going to have a good first day.

Not the impression I want to make on my students