July 27: "Mink," Book Club, Hunger

Mary Oliver encounters a . , , 

Mink

by:  Mary Oliver

A mink,

     jointless as heat, was

tip-toeing along

     the edge of the creek,

which was still in its coat of snow,

     yet singing--I could hear it!--

the old song

     of brightness.

It was one of those places,

     turning and twisty,

that Ruskin might have painted, though

     he didn't.  And there were trees

leaning this way and that,

     seed-beaded.

buckthorn mostly, but at the moment

     no bird, the only voice

that of the covered water--like a long,

     unknotted thread, it kept

slipping through.  The mink

     had a hunger in him

bigger than his shadow, which was gathered

     like a sheet of darkness under his

neat feet which were busy

     making dents in the snow.  He sniffed

slowly and thoroughly in all

     four directions, as though

it was a prayer to the whole world, as far

     as he could capture its beautiful

smells--the iron of the air, the blood

     of necessity.  Maybe, for him, even

the pink sun fading away to the edge

     of the world had a smell,

of roses, or of terror, who knows

     what his keen nose was

finding out.  For me, it was the gift of the winter

     to see him.  Once, like a hot, dark-brown pillar,

he stood up--and then he ran forward, and was gone.

     I stood awhile and then walked on

over the white snow; the terrible, gleaming

     loneliness.  It took me, I suppose,

something like six more weeks to reach

     finally a patch of green, I paused so often

to be glad, and grateful, and even then carefully across

the vast, deep woods I kept looking back.

Everyone has hunger in their lives, just like the mink.  The mink, it seems, is on the prowl for food, following the smells from all four directions, unsure which way will yield dinner.  Going north may offer up salmon or venison.  South, fried green tomatoes.  West, guacamole and chips.  East, hot dogs and chili fries.  Food is the mink's primary motivation.  He's chasing his nose.

Tonight, I met with my book club.  We had barbecue and talked about black cake and the end of the world.  This after a day of meetings and emails at the library.  It was good to sit in my friend's backyard, laugh, eat, talk, and relax.  Yes, you can unwind discussing dystopian literature--it's sort of like eating your last meal before being executed.  

Think about it--if you know it's your last day on this planet, what food would you choose to eat?  Who would you hang with?  I love grilled bratwurst.  Love talking literature with smart, funny people.  Love warm summer nights that stretch on and on, jointless as heat, as Oliver says.  Tonight was a perfect way to kick off the weekend.  With people I love, eating good food, talking about great writing (or bad writing--doesn't matter).

My book club has been meeting for over 20 years.  Members have come and gone.  Some moved away.  Some got busy raising growing families.  Some died.  My mother used to be a member, and my sister, Sally (although she never read the books--she just showed up for the food and to play with my kids).  The core group who show up have been my friends for over two decades.  They have seen me at my best and worst, and they still keep coming back for more.

The gathering broke up just as dark clouds stacked up in the sky.  By the time I hit my hometown's city limits, it was a full-on torrent.  The kind of storm that makes it impossible to see more than two or three feet in front of the car.  The rain was slicing through the air sideways, and the trees along the streets were a chaos of wind and lightning.

Sometimes, you don't know you're hungry until you start eating.  I didn't know how much I needed a meal of laughter and friendship until we sat down at the table with our plates.  Usually, at the end of long days, I become J. D. Salinger.  I don't want to talk to anybody or give people directions or be social in any way.  Tonight, I had a three-hour dinner conversation about healthcare and plagues and family and cults and secular saints, and it was like medicine for my exhausted mind and spirit.

Saint Marty gives thanks for literate friends who are more like family.  And for cleansing rain.  Hallelujah and amen.

November 25: Wild Cherry Trees, Thanksgiving, "Pepper"

 Merton wrestles with God . . . 

Back in the world, I felt like a man that had come down from the rare atmosphere of a very high mountain. When I got to Louisville, I had already been up for four hours or so, and my day was getting on towards its noon, so to speak, but I found that everybody else was just getting up and having breakfast and going to work. And how strange it was to see people walking around as if they had something important to do, running after busses, reading the newspapers, lighting cigarettes. 

How futile all their haste and anxiety seemed. 

My heart sank within me. I thought: “What am I getting into? Is this the sort of a thing I myself have been living in all these years?” 

At a street corner, I happened to look up and caught sight of an electric sign, on top of a two-storey building. It read: “Clown Cigarettes.” 

I turned and fled from the alien and lunatic street, and found my way into the nearby cathedral, and knelt, and prayed, and did the Stations of the Cross. 

Afraid of the spiritual pressure in that monastery? Was that what I had said the other day? How I longed to be back there now: everything here, in the world outside, was insipid and slightly insane. There was only one place I knew of where there was any true order. 

Yet, how could I go back? Did I not know that I really had no vocation?... It was the same old story again. 

I got on the train for Cincinnati, and for New York. 

Back at St. Bonaventure’s, where the spring I had already met in Kentucky finally caught up with me again, several weeks later, I walked in the woods, in the sun, under the pale blossoms of the wild cherry trees. 

It's a familiar story.  When God comes knocking, many people don't want to answer.  Other people run out the back door, into the woods, and find God waiting for them there, too, in the blossoms of cherry and apple trees.  God doesn't give up on you, even when you want to give up on God.

It has been a difficult month since my mother's passing, and I knew the holidays were going to feel very different this year.  Today is Thanksgiving in the United States.  We give thanks for the blessings in our lives--family, friends, health, jobs, pets, health, food, home.  Of course, God is the source of all those things we hold dear.

And, sometimes, God does things that we don't understand.  Like taking away one of those blessings.  Mothers.  Fathers.  Uncles.  Daughters.  Brothers.  Yes, God knocks on the door, and it's impossible not to answer.  Today, as I shared Thanksgiving brunch and dinner with people I love, I felt absence and loss.  But I also felt God with me, in the laughter of my niece and nephew and son and daughter.  In the drinks I shared with my sister-in-law (who's been my little sister for over 30 years) and her husband.  In the food my sisters prepared for dinner.  

God knocked on the door a month ago, and my mother answered.  

Saint Marty is thankful every day for the love he's had in his life.  Does have.

And a new poem for Thanksgiving . . .

Pepper

by:  Martin Achatz

I blacken my baked potato,
split its skin, pry it open with fork,
spoon in butter, sprinkle salt, then
a hurricane of pepper, so much
that the flesh of the potato looks
like a Milky Way of black stars,
pepper that hangs in the air, a cloud
of Mayfly hatch, fills my nose
with that delightful near-sneeze
moment when I feel the force of it
build in my head, rolling in
from the Atlantic with winds
that tear roofs off bayou shacks,
wash gators down Bourbon Street.
A pepper plague that makes me
believe in the Nile turning
to blood, in the Virgin birth.
Pepper you taste from Thanksgiving
grace until horns blast in
New Year's Day with the sound
my mother made when she took
her last breath and blew open
the gates of heaven.

November 17: Elizabeth Alexander, "Butter," Bounty

Butter 

by:  Elizabeth Alexander

My mother loves butter more than I do,
more than anyone. She pulls chunks off
the stick and eats it plain, explaining
cream spun around into butter! Growing up
we ate turkey cutlets sauteed in lemon
and butter, butter and cheese on green noodles,
butter melting in small pools in the hearts
of Yorkshire puddings, butter better
than gravy staining white rice yellow,
butter glazing corn in slipping squares,
butter the lava in white volcanoes
of hominy grits, butter softening
in a white bowl to be creamed with white
sugar, butter disappearing into
whipped sweet potatoes, with pineapple,
butter melted and curdy to pour
over pancakes, butter licked off the plate
with warm Alaga syrup. When I picture
the good old days I am grinning greasy
with my brother, having watched the tiger
chase his tail and turn to butter. We are
Mumbo and Jumbo's children despite 
historical revision, despite
our parent's efforts, glowing from the inside
out, one hundred megawatts of butter. 
_____________________________

Can't get around it:  one of the things everyone focuses upon around Thanksgiving is food.  After all, the holiday is all about giving thanks for the bounty in your life.  Food.  Friends.  Family.  The smell of turkey cooking in a steaming kitchen.  Pies sitting out on the back porch with Cool Whip, waiting for dessert.  Five people, chopping vegetables, setting out silverware and plates.  Glasses of wine.  And laughter and jokes and old stories.

This poem reminds me of all of that, and that's why I love it.

Saint Marty is kind of a sucker for butter, too.

November 15: Tralfamadorian Concept, Mobius Strip, Hope

Billy Pilgrim checked into the Royalton Hotel on Forty-fourth Street in New York.  He by chance was given a room which had once been the home of George Jean Nathan, the critic and editor.  Nathan, according to the Earthling concept of time, had died back in  1958.  According to the Tralfamadorian concept, of course, Nathan was still alive somewhere and always would be.

The room was small and simple, except that it was on the top floor, and had French doors which opened onto a terrace as large as the room.  And beyond the parapet of the terrace was the air space over Forty-fourth Street.  Billy now leaned over that parapet, looked down at all the people moving hither and yon.  They were jerky little scissors.  The were a lot of fun.

It was a chilly night, and Billy came indoors after a while, closed the French doors.  Closing those doors reminded him of his honeymoon.  There had been French doors on the Cape Ann love nest of his honeymoon, still were, always would be.

Billy turned on his television set, clicking its channel selector around and around.  He was looking for programs on which he might be allowed to appear.  But it was too early in the evening for programs that allowed people with peculiar opinions to speak out.  It was only a little after eight o'clock, so all the shows were about silliness or murder.  So it goes.

The Tralfamdorian concept of time, as I've written before, is not linear.  It's more like a Mobius strip, something continuous and looped so that it's possible to go back to the beginning by going to the end and vice versa.  In fact, I would say that time doesn't really exist for Tralfamdorians.  Time is a human concept.

Of course, the passage of time is how we understand the universe.  Things come into being, live for a little while, and then wink out of existence, never to be seen or heard again.  It's not very comforting, I know.  Yet, humans have come to terms with this temporality.  We've learned that letting go is a part of breathing and living and loving.  Change is a constant.

If you've read this post thus far, you're probably expecting me to say something slightly profound about eternity, maybe rage against the dying of the light, per Dylan Thomas.  Being a Christian, I don't think of death as anything final.  It's a step, like passing from one room to another, hopefully better, room.

That image of passage, however beautiful, doesn't comfort me much at the moment.  Unlike Billy, I have not been privy to glimpses of the future or past.  I don't know what going to happen to me in the next hour or day or week or year.  Billy has seen his future--including his own death--so he's not afraid of anything like bombs falling from the sky or planes crashing into mountains.

The best I can do this afternoon is give thanks for the breaths I'm taking right now, for the words that my fingers are tapping out of the keyboard.  I'm thankful for my class this evening.  For the students who show up to accept whatever knowledge I impart.  And I'm thankful for my car that will carry me home after I'm done teaching.

Of course, none of those things I just listed are guarantees.  They're merely hopes until they happen.  Human beings live on hope.  Hope for breath and food and sex and love.  We hope for all these things, each and every day.

Saint Marty is kind of addicted to hope.

April 24: One Year Turning, End of Semester, Quick Fairy Tale

Now, Ives watched one year turning into another and had already begun to miss Robert's and Caroline's childhood, perhaps more than they did themselves...

Yes, part of Ives' story is the inevitable passage of time, and the losses that accompany the movement of the hands of the clock.

I am under the gun tonight for time.  I have a university commitment in an hour I have to attend.  A celebration for the graduating MFA students.  Poetry.  Fiction.  Non-fiction.  And food.

So, tonight, I have a quick fairy tale for you all.

Once upon a time, a clockmaker lived in a tiny village in the middle of an immense forest.  The clockmaker's name was Gus.

One morning, Gus threw all of his clocks out of the window of his cottage.  When his neighbors asked why he had done it, Gus said, "I was drunk."

(I bet you thought I was going to say Gus wanted to make time fly.  I'm a little more original than that.)

Moral of the story:  Clockmakers can't hold their liquor.

And Saint Marty lived happily ever after.

No time tonight...