September 16: "Genius," Boiling Point of Coal Tar, Sea of Tranquility

I'm not a genius.

I want to get that out of the way first.  Do I think I'm smart?  Yes, I do.  However, I can't change the oil on my car.  Don't know how to drive a stick shift.  Stay up way too late every night.  If you ask me what the boiling point of coal tar is, I wouldn't be able to tell you, and I have no idea if there was a second shooter on the grassy knoll.

However, I write a pretty good poem, and, given enough time and some chord sheets, I can play any song on the keyboard.  My singing voice is decent, and, every once in a while, I've been known to get some laughs on stage.

But I'm not a genius.

Here's what Billy Collins says about geniuses . . . 

Genius

by: Billy Collins

was what they called you in high school
if you tripped on a shoelace in the hall
and all your books went flying.

Or if you walked into an open locker door
you would be known as Einstein,
who imagined riding a streetcar into infinity.

Later, genius became someone
who could take a sliver of chalk and squire pi
a hundred places out beyond the decimal point,

or someone painting on his back on a scaffold,
or a man drawing a waterwheel in a margin,
or spinning out a little night music.

But earlier this week on a wooded path,
I thought the swans afloat on the reservoir
were the true geniuses,

the ones who had figured out how to fly,
how to be both beautiful and brutal,
and how to mate for life.

Twenty-four geniuses in all,
for I numbered them as Yeats had done,
deployed upon the calm, crystalline surface—

forty-eight if we count their still reflections,
or an even fifty if you want to toss in me
and the dog running up ahead,

who were smart enough to be out
that morning—she sniffing the ground,
me with my head up in the light morning breeze.

It has been a trying day.  I'm not going to get into any details, but I will say that God has a way of keeping you humble.  Don't worry.  Nobody is dead or dying.  I still teach at the university and program at the library.  My new collection of poems is still coming out at the beginning of October, and my puppy is snoring away peacefully in her cage.

Tonight's genius, for me, is the moon, which looks like a swan feather floating in the heavens.  I've always been an astronomy geek, and I spent a good deal of time, when I was younger, studying the lunar surface with my cheap telescope.  So I know all about the Sea of Tranquility and other maria.  

The moon reminds always me how small and insignificant human struggle is.  Compared to the rings of Saturn or the Andromeda Galaxy, my problems seem pretty . . . tiny.  I wish everyone in the world would spend just ten minutes outside every night, staring up at the stars and planets.  I think the world would be a much more peaceful place to exist.

Saint Marty is going to go look at the moon one more time before he brushes his teeth and closes his eyes.

July 22: "Genius," Hard Work, Bonnie Jo Campbell

Billy Collins defines genius . . . 

Genius

by: Billy Collins

was what they called you in high school
if you tripped on a shoelace in the hall
and all your books went flying.

Or if you walked into an open locker door,
you would be known as Einstein,
who imagined riding a streetcar into infinity.

Later, genius became someone
who could take a sliver of chalk and square pi
a hundred places out beyond the decimal point,

or a man painting on his back on a scaffold,
or drawing a waterwheel in a margin,
or spinning out a little night music.

But earlier this week on a wooded path,
I thought the swans afloat on the reservoir
were the true geniuses,

the ones who had figured out how to fly,
how to be both beautiful and brutal,
and how to mate for life.

Twenty-four geniuses in all,
for I numbered them as Yeats had done,
deployed upon the calm, crystalline surface—

forty-eight if we count their white reflections,
or an even fifty if you want to throw in me
and the dog running up ahead,

who were at least smart enough to be out
that morning—she sniffing the ground,
me with my head up in the bright morning air.

It's a word I don't use very often, because I'm not really sure how to define it or apply it.  How do you know people are geniuses?  Can they sit down at a piano and play "Rhapsody in Blue" without ever taking a single lesson?  Or recite pi to the 100th decimal place, as Collins writes?  Compose a sonnet sequence in the space of an hour or so?  Sculpt Michelangelo's "David" out of mashed potatoes?  Write a novel about Bigfoot that wins the Pulitzer Prize?  

I spent a good portion of today in the company of an old friend from grad school--Bonnie Jo Campbell.  I appeared on TV with her this morning, and she gave a reading/presentation tonight at the library.  At one point, we got stuck in a traffic jam for about a half hour, and so we had a lot of time to visit and catch up on each other's lives.

Bonnie is a writer.  She's been nominated for the National Book Award and has won a Pushcart Prize.  Her latest book, The Waters, was featured as a "Read with Jenna" selection on The Today Show.  Many people would call Bonnie a genius.  Except Bonnie.

During her presentation at the library this evening, Bonnie said she doesn't really believe in those kinds of labels--"genius" and "gifted" and "talented."  Instead, she believes in hard work and discipline when it comes to writing.  For example, The Waters (a brilliant novel) took Bonnie eight-and-a-half years to complete.  She kept on referring to the hundreds of drafts of the book she went through.  It sounded like a real struggle for her, physically and emotionally.

The next question that you're probably asking is "Why put yourself through that much stress and pain?"  I can answer that question for Bonnie, since I've been through sort of the same struggle with my manuscript of Bigfoot poems, which took me over 20 years (from first poem to last) to complete:  You do it because you HAVE to.  An idea takes hold of you, and nothing short of another ice age can stop you from bringing that idea to fruition.  

In between the first word embedded on the first page and the final punctuation mark on the final page, there are all kinds of challenges:  self-doubt, bad drafts, revisions of revisions of revisions, deaths, illnesses, marital strife, global pandemics, government insurrections.  In very few instances is there a straight line from "once upon a time" to "happily ever after."  Writing a book takes a lot of once upon a times.

And a lot of hard work.  If you define "genius" or "talent" of "giftedness" by the number of hours/days/weeks/months/years it takes to create or accomplish something, then Bonnie is a genius.  So am I.  So is every young person graduating from high school and college (that's, at minimum, at least 14 years of continuous labor).  

I do believe that a person can have a natural affinity for writing or music or art or sculpting or plumbing or mathematics.  That's just the way the human brain works.  But that doesn't mean that a person who can string words together more easily than others or sit at a piano and sight-read a concerto is a genius.  Nope.  My poems always go through multiple drafts.  Each blog post I publish goes through at least four or five versions before I release it into the world.  One of my lyric essays can take months to complete.

In short, here is the equation Saint Marty is proposing:  genius = time + hard work + luck.

June 20: Simulated Earthling Habitat, Zoos, Wishful Thinking

Billy was displayed there in the zoo in a simulated Earthling habitat.  Most of the furnishings had been stolen from the Sears Roebuck warehouse in Iowa City, Iowa.  There was a color television set and a couch that could be converted into a bed.  There were end tables with lamps and ashtrays on them by the couch.  There was a home bar and two stools.  There was a little pool table.  There was wall-to-wall carpeting in federal gold, except in the kitchen and bathroom areas and over the iron manhole cover in the center of the floor.  There were magazines arranged in a fan on the coffee table in front of the couch.

There was a stereophonic phonograph.  The phonograph worked.  The television didn't. There was a picture of one cowboy killing another one pasted to the television tube.  So it goes.

There were no walls in the dome, no place for Billy to hide.  The mint green bathroom fixtures were right out in the open.  Billy got off his lounge chair now, went into the bathroom and took a leak.  The crowd went wild.

A weird little section.  Billy as an exhibit.  Homo sapiens, relaxing, listening to music, pretending to watch TV, going to the bathroom.  Vonnegut is making a point here, I think.  He is satirizing our habit of capturing wild animals and turning them into entertainment.  Zoos.  Circuses.  Safaris.

I will admit that I like going to zoos.  One of my favorite things to do as a child was visit the Detroit Zoo.  We would spend an entire day there.  I could spend a couple hours just in the penguin habitat.  I loved going into the place where the tigers were in cages until one of the big cats actually lifted a leg and pissed on me when I was five or six.  Yes, I have been soaked in tiger urine.

I wonder what a Tralfamadorian exhibit for me would include.  A laptop computer, probably.  Journals and pens and a desk.  A television and DVD player with all of my favorite films, heavy on Christmas and River Phoenix flicks.  Books.  Lots of books.  Pictures of my wife and kids.  Those would be the essential things, if they were really trying to capture my essence.

I've never really thought about the things that really represent who I am.  Strange.  If I walked into a gorilla habitat, I would expect lots of tropical trees and fruits and rain, places to hide.  If I visited an elephant habitat, it would include a grassy savanna, maybe a mud hole to wallow in, and a river.  That's what I would expect.

How do I want to be described on my zoo plaque?  Good father.  Loving husband.  Loyal brother and son and friend.  Passionate.  Artistic.  Talented.  I wouldn't mind being called a genius, but that's probably pushing it.  Great writer.  Voracious reader.  Poet extraordinaire. 

Okay, I need to stop.  I'm venturing into wishful thinking.  If you want to see me in my natural habitat, stop by my house tonight.  I'll make us some popcorn, read you a poem or two, and pop Stand By Me into the DVD player.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for the zoo of his life.

October 2: Pope Francis, Cool Dude, Classic Saint Marty

Three short days.  Do you have your presents wrapped?  Are your cookies baked?  Is your tree decorated?  Are your cards mailed?  And don't forget to make your tapioca.

That's right.  Saint Marty's Day is almost upon us.  Just this morning, Pope Francis addressed the crowds at the Vatican.  My Italian's a little rusty, but I think he said something like, "That-a Saint Marty!  He's-a one cool dude!"  Tomorrow, the annual Macy's Saint Marty's Day parade will happen.  Balloons and floats.  Al Roker making jokes.  Tens of thousands of people lining the streets of New York, all waiting for the appearance of Saint Marty.

My kids are excited, too.  Just today, they gave me their Saint Marty's Day letters.  When I put my son to bed tonight, I read him 'Twas the Night Before Saint Marty's Day.  Yes, life goes on, with all its heartaches and troubles and woes.  But, there's also joy and celebration.  That's what Saint Marty's Day is all about.  Well, that and honoring the genius of Saint Marty.

Tonight's episode of Classic Saint Marty aired three years ago, when I was preoccupied with a few other things.

October 2, 2013:  Nose Was Bleeding, Call from Principal, Bipolar Worries

Then he really let one go at me, and the next thing I knew I was on the goddam floor again.  I don't remember if he knocked me out or not, but I don't think so.  It's pretty hard to knock a guy out, except in the goddam movies.  But my nose was bleeding all over the place...

Holden gets the crap beat out of him a couple of times in Catcher.  Stradlater, his dorm mate at Pencey Prep, does the honors in the above passage.  Holden is once again shooting off his mouth, and Stradlater punches him in the face.  I'm not saying Holden deserved the violence inflicted upon him, but he really doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut.

My son punched some kid in the nose today at school.  That was after he pulled some girl's hair on the playground and threw wood chips at the playground aide.  My wife received a phone call from the principal this afternoon.  After two really good days, my son had his worst day yet.

When I spoke to my son tonight, he couldn't or wouldn't tell me what happened on the playground.  Honestly, I'm not too sure he remembered the whole incident, especially what prompted it.  I think he pretty much lashes out in the heat of the moment.  It's like he has no impulse control.  The principal said he doesn't think my son understands that he's hurting people.  This evening, my wife asked me if I thought we were raising a sociopath.  I didn't know how to answer her.

My mind always goes to mental illness because of my experience with my wife's bipolar disease.  I know there are cases where small children develop bipolar.  I've read magazine articles about it.  Frankly, those stories about six-year-old boys and girls jumping out of windows frighten me a great deal.  And right now, my son's behavior frightens me.  I've had friends tell me, "He's just going through a phase."  I don't know where this violent streak is coming from.  Neither my wife nor myself are physical people.  I come from a family of hunters, and I hate guns.  I only got into a fist fight once in my entire school career.  I won the fight, but I felt guilty about it for weeks.

I know I said yesterday that I was giving all this up to God, putting my faith in Him.  Well, yesterday my son hadn't sent a classmate to the nurse's office.  Maybe I'm overreacting.  Maybe my son is going through a phase.  Or maybe my son has bipolar disorder.  I don't know.

But Saint Marty isn't going to sleep too well tonight.

My funny, beautiful boy

November 20: Deep in the Dung, E. B. White, Low Self Esteem

So Charlotte sang a lullaby, while crickets chirped in the grass and the barn grew dark.  This was the song she sang.

"Sleep, sleep, my love, my only,
Deep, deep, in the dung and the dark;
Be not afraid and be not lonely!
This is the hour when frogs and thrushes
Praise the world from the woods and the rushes.
Rest from care, my one and only,
Deep in the dung and the dark!"

I have always loved this passage.  The lullaby is so beautifully melancholy.  I can almost hear Charlotte singing it in a minor key, softly as dusk falls in the Zuckerman barn.  It captures the whole tone of the book.  An elegy to the power of love and friendship.

E. B. White is an incredible writer.  Not only is his prose fantastic, but his poetry is also pretty damn good, as well.  Over this past year of Charlotte's Web, I've been confronted by that fact over and over.  The book is genius in its simplicity.  Yet, there are moments like the one above, where White weaves in a complex, emotional depth.

When I read great authors like E. B. White, it makes me want to write.  Then, when I start writing, I kind of go into a tailspin of despair because I am not E. B. White or Robert Frost or William Faulkner.  It becomes an exercise in low self-esteem.

I'm going to be working on my Christmas essay again when I'm done with this post.  I am still struggling with it.  I can't seem to find the right voice.  I'm not sure what I'm looking for, but I'll know it when I find it.  It will just feel right.  I'm hoping tonight will be the night.

Wish Saint Marty luck.

A good affirmation