February 13, 2025: "Exclusive," Agape, "Mercy Is a Wound"

Love is a strange verb, full of nuances. I can love my wife or son or daughter, and also love pizza. Or I can love the poetry of Sharon Olds, and also love silence. The Greeks divided love into four categories: Agape (unconditional love), Eros (romantic love), Philia (brotherly love), and Storge (familial love).

Sharon Olds writes about Storge . . .

Exclusive

by: Sharon Olds

I lie on the beach, watching you
as you lie on the beach, memorizing you
against the time when you will not be with me:
your empurpled lips, swollen in the sun
and smooth as the inner lips of a shell;
your biscuit-gold skin, glazed and
faintly pitted, like the surface of a biscuit;
the serious knotted twine of your hair.
I have loved you instead of anyone else,
loved you as a way of loving no one else,
every separate grain of your body
building the god, as you were built within me,
a sealed world. What if from your lips
I had learned the love of other lips,
from your starred, gummed lashes the love of
other lashes, from your shut, quivering
eyes the love of other eyes,
from your body the bodies,
from your life the lives?
Today I see it is there to be learned from you:
to love what I do not own.

I love the conclusion Olds reaches in this poem about her daughter--the necessity for parents to love their kids, knowing full well those kids will eventually leave to search for their own versions of love.  Love can't really be owned.

I know this love post is early--Valentine's Day is tomorrow.  But there's no such thing as too much love, is there?  Plus, I didn't want to write another post tonight about Agent Orange and his partner, Apartheid.  (By the way, there are terms for the love of the Felon in Chief:  racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, homophobia.  If you want a blanket term that covers all the bases, just use stupidity.)

I want to talk about my puppy tonight, who truly is the poster child for agape.  It doesn't matter to her whether I've taken her for a walk, ignored her, or spent two hours scratching her ears and belly.  She will always crawl into my lap and lick my face until I start laughing.  In short, she loves unconditionally.  

We should all experience that kind of devotion every day.  Love that doesn't expect anything in return but more love.  I'm a pretty blessed person, because I have a lot of agape in my life--from my wife, daughter, son.  And puppy.  Of course, as the old saying goes, the price of great love is great sorrow.  If you love someone or something deeply, you will eventually experience the grief of losing that someone of something.  That's how it works.

 Saint Marty wrote a poem about puppy love for tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Choose a word and its antonym then write a poem that contrasts the two extremes.  Consult a dictionary or thesaurus to find all the synonyms for your opposite words, or simply rely on memory to construct your lists of opposites.  Pairing possibilities:

bright/dim

light/heavy

large/small

extrovert/introvert

Mercy Is a Wound

by: Martin Achatz

Mercy is a wound sometimes, the way

you take your old dog to the vet when 

she loses sight, control of her

bowels and bladder, when she looks 

at you with marbled eyes, sniffs

your palm because she can't rise

from her pillow, presses her 

hot tongue to your skin to make

sure you are her person, the one

who fills her water dish, scratches

her ears, invokes her name in morning

light, like she's answered prayer.

Let's say her name is Mercy,

and let's also say she knows 

she's so close to darkness

she can smell its clay in the air.

Pick Mercy up, carry her

to the car, wrap her in a blanket

if she shivers.  When you're

in the exam room with her, say

her name over and over:

Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.

And when the needle makes her

yelp, say her name again, quietly,

your lips right by her ear until

her eyes close, breathing slows,

paws cease twitching.  Tell her

she has been mercy in your life,

a Band-Aid or cool breeze 

on difficult days.  When you bring

her home, put her in the ground

under her favorite pine.  Visit her

as much as you can until winter

comes with its cold, wounding

blanket. 

November 20: Terrible Old Man, Selfish People, Throwing Up Blood

Terrible old man! thought Starbuck with a shudder, sleeping in the gale, still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose.

Starbuck could easily be thinking of Ebenezer Scrooge, Mr. Potter from It's A Wonderful Life, or Donald Trump.  As the first mate notes, the terrible old man is all about self-centeredness and ego.  A person who only thinks of himself and his purpose.

I don't understand selfish people.

My daughter's boyfriend is in the Boy Scouts.  Two summers ago, he was participating in a can drive to raise funds for a camping hike he was going on.  He went to a house and was confronted by an old man who decide to berate him for the Boy Scouts organization's decision to be more inclusive, accepting LGBTQ scouts/leaders and (GASP!) girls.  The old man was downright ignorant and mean to my daughter's boyfriend.

Prime selfishness.  An adult verbally abusing a young person to make himself feel superior and smart.  Of course, all this old man succeeded in doing was prove that he was a homophobic misogynist.

That's what all selfish people do--they expose their own fears and failings.  Lack of human compassion.  Racism.  Antisemitism.  Homophobia.  Misogyny.  Islamophobia.  Just plain lack of kindness and goodwill.  Selfish people are the bullies who shove you into high school lockers.  Who refuse to help coworkers who are sick.  Who, when you say "I was throwing up blood all last night," respond with something like "I got a paper cut last night, and then I peeled an orange and got some juice in the cut and it hurt really bad."

If you can't tell, there's a story behind this post that I won't share.  All I will say is kindness and compassion are pretty easy things to indulge in.  They make lives better, and they make you feel better about yourself.  Sure, selfishness may initially make your life easier.  You won't have to work late for a coworker or visit somebody in the hospital or drop your last dollar in a Salvation Army Christmas kettle.  However, in the long run, being selfish will alienate friends and family, irritate acquaintances, turn you into a Republican, and make you wear a MAGA hat.  Who wants that?

Sure, if you say "yes" all the time, you will be taken advantage of from time to time.  But I'll take that chance.

Saint Marty will always err on the side of kindness.

July 30: Heads or Tails, Religious Liberty Task Force, Jeff Sessions

"De balena vero sufficit, si rex habeat caput, et regina caudam." BRACTON, L. 3, C. 3.

Latin from the books of the Laws of England, which taken along with the context, means, that of all whales captured by anybody on the coast of that land, the King, as Honorary Grand Harpooneer, must have the head, and the Queen be respectfully presented with the tail. A division which, in the whale, is much like halving an apple; there is no intermediate remainder. Now as this law, under a modified form, is to this day in force in England; and as it offers in various respects a strange anomaly touching the general law of Fast- and Loose-Fish, it is here treated of in a separate chapter, on the same courteous principle that prompts the English railways to be at the expense of a separate car, specially reserved for the accommodation of royalty. In the first place, in curious proof of the fact that the above-mentioned law is still in force, I proceed to lay before you a circumstance-that happened within the last two years.

It seems that some honest mariners of Dover, or Sandwich, or some one of the Cinque Ports, had after a hard chase succeeded in killing and beaching a fine whale which they had originally descried afar off from the shore. Now the Cinque Ports are partially or somehow under the jurisdiction of a sort of policeman or beadle, called a Lord Warden. Holding the office directly from the crown, I believe, all the royal emoluments incident to the Cinque Port territories become by assignment his. By some writers this office is called a sinecure. But not so. Because the Lord Warden is busily employed at times in fobbing his perquisites; which are his chiefly by virtue of that same fobbing of them.

Now when these poor sun-burnt mariners, bare-footed, and with their trowsers rolled high up on their eely legs, had wearily hauled their fat fish high and dry, promising themselves a good L150 from the precious oil and bone; and in fantasy sipping rare tea with their wives, and good ale with their cronies, upon the strength of their respective shares; up steps a very learned and most Christian and charitable gentleman, with a copy of Blackstone under his arm; and laying it upon the whale's head, he says- "Hands off! this fish, my masters, is a Fast-Fish. I seize it as the Lord Warden's." Upon this the poor mariners in their respectful consternation- so truly English- knowing not what to say, fall to vigorously scratching their heads all round; meanwhile ruefully glancing from the whale to the stranger. But that did in nowise mend the matter, or at all soften the hard heart of the learned gentleman with the copy of Blackstone. At length one of them, after long scratching about for his ideas, made bold to speak,

"Please, sir, who is the Lord Warden?"

"The Duke."

"But the duke had nothing to do with taking this fish?"

"It is his."

"We have been at great trouble, and peril, and some expense, and is all that to go to the Duke's benefit; we getting nothing at all for our pains but our blisters?"

"It is his."

"Is the Duke so very poor as to be forced to this desperate mode of getting a livelihood?"

"It is his."

"I thought to relieve my old bed-ridden mother by part of my share of this whale."

"It is his."

"Won't the Duke be content with a quarter or a half?"

"It is his."

In a word, the whale was seized and sold, and his Grace the Duke of Wellington received the money. Thinking that viewed in some particular lights, the case might by a bare possibility in some small degree be deemed, under the circumstances, a rather hard one, ali honest clergyman of the town respectfully addressed a note to his Grace, begging him to take the case of those unfortunate mariners into full consideration. To which my Lord Duke in substance replied (both letters were published) that he had already done so, and received the money, and would be obliged to the reverend gentleman if for the future he (the reverend gentleman) would decline meddling with other people's business. Is this the still militant old man, standing at the corners of the three kingdoms, on all hands coercing alms of beggars?

It will readily be seen that in this case the alleged right of the Duke to the whale was a delegated one from the Sovereign. We must needs inquire then on what principle the Sovereign is originally invested with that right. The law itself has already been set forth. But Plowdon gives us the reason for it. Says Plowdon, the whale so caught belongs to the King and Queen, "because of its superior excellence." And by the soundest commentators this has ever been held a cogent argument in such matters.

But why should the King have the head, and the Queen the tail? A reason for that, ye lawyers!

In his treatise on "Queen-Gold," or Queen-pin-money, an old King's Bench author, one William Prynne, thus discourseth: "Ye tail is ye Queen's, that ye Queen's wardrobe may be supplied with ye whalebone." Now this was written at a time when the black limber bone of the Greenland or Right whale was largely used in ladies' bodices. But this same bone is not in the tail; it is in the head, which is a sad mistake for a sagacious lawyer like Prynne. But is the Queen a mermaid, to be presented with a tail? An allegorical meaning may lurk here.

There are two royal fish so styled by the English law writers- the whale and the sturgeon; both royal property under certain limitations, and nominally supplying the tenth branch of the crown's ordinary revenue. I know not that any other author has hinted of the matter; but by inference it seems to me that the sturgeon must be divided in the same way as the whale, the King receiving the highly dense and elastic head peculiar to that fish, which, symbolically regarded, may possibly be humorously grounded upon some presumed congeniality. And thus there seems a reason in all things, even in law.

So, this chapter is all about a law that makes no sense.  The king gets the head of the whale; the queen gets the tail.  Yes, Melville expends much energy in explaining the reasons behind this seemingly arbitrary doctrine.  Despite his best efforts, however, Melville doesn't really convince me that this law makes any sense, whatsoever.

Of course, there's a whole lot going on in the United States right now that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, especially when it comes to the federal government and the Justice Department.  Just this afternoon, I read that Attorney General Jeff Session established a "religious liberty task force" because, as he stated, "the cultural climate in this country--and in the West more generally--has become less hospitable to people of faith in recent years, and as a result many Americans have felt their freedom to practice their faith has been under attack."

Of course, what Sessions is doing is trying to defend discrimination against, among others, members of the LGTBQ community on the basis of religion.  Thus, the baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple will now be protected under the Trump Justice Department.  Businesses that refuse to provide access to legitimate healthcare treatment for women (for example, birth control) on the basis of faith would also be safe under this religious liberty task force.

I find this move alarming on many levels.  I believe in freedom of religion.  I don't care whether a person is atheist or Jewish or Catholic or Muslim.  They should all be allowed to practice their beliefs freely, without government interference.  But I also believe in the separation of church and state--a fundamental doctrine in the United States almost since its inception.  Remember, many of the earliest European settlers who came to North America did so to escape religious persecution.

So, no branch of government has any place in the practice of religion in this country.  And no religion has any place in any branch of government.  Today, Jeff Sessions has opened the door to legitimizing discrimination based on faith.  He has brought church and state together, and the founders of this country are rolling over in their graves.

Now, some people are jumping all over religions, blaming them for this new task force.  That would be a mistake, as well.  This religious liberty task force is the brainchild of Jeff Sessions and the entire Donald Trump regime, who have proven over and over that they condone racism, misogyny, homophobia, and Islamophobia in the name of patriotism.  They use the Bible as a tool for their hatred.  They are perverting the essential messages of Christianity to further their agenda.

So, I don't agree with Jeff Sessions or his boss.  But you can't blame Christianity for the state of this country.  It's not God's fault.  It's wrong-headed men and women.  Let's keep that in mind.  Terrible things have perpetrated on humankind and the planet in the name of science, as well.  I don't blame all of science for the practice of lobotomy, which was widespread in the first half of the 20th century.

It's easy to blame an entire religion for the actions of the Trump White House.  But that would be like blaming every Muslim for the bombing of the World Trade Centers.  It just doesn't work that way.

Saint Marty is thankful today for religion and government--and never the twain shall meet.

March 10: Isms and Phobias, Natasha Trethewey, "South"

America has a lot of problems right now.  Racism.  Sexism.  Homophobia.  Xenophobia.  Islamophobia.  There are so many -isms and -phobias running rampant in my country that it depresses me, but we can't get around it.

Of course, the United States was built on the land and backs of oppressed people.  Native Americans.  African Americans.  Chinese Americans.  Mexican Americans.  That's a part of our history.  Can't get around that, either.

Saint Marty isn't a big fan of Gone With the Wind, either.

South

by:  Natasha Trethewey

          Homo sapiens is the only species          to suffer psychological exile.
                  —E. O. Wilson

I returned to a stand of pines,

                            bone-thin phalanx

 

flanking the roadside, tangle

                            of understory—a dialectic of dark

 

and light—and magnolias blossoming

                            like afterthought: each flower

 

a surrender, white flags draped

                            among the branches. I returned

 

to land’s end, the swath of coast

                            clear cut and buried in sand:

 

mangrove, live oak, gulfweed

                            razed and replaced by thin palms—

 

palmettos—symbols of victory

                            or defiance, over and over

 

marking this vanquished land. I returned

                            to a field of cotton, hallowed ground—

 

as slave legend goes—each boll

                            holding the ghosts of generations:

 

those who measured their days

                            by the heft of sacks and lengths

 

of rows, whose sweat flecked the cotton plants

                            still sewn into our clothes.

 

I returned to a country battlefield

                            where colored troops fought and died—

 

Port Hudson where their bodies swelled

                            and blackened beneath the sun—unburied

 

until earth’s green sheet pulled over them,

                            unmarked by any headstones.

 

Where the roads, buildings, and monuments

                            are named to honor the Confederacy,

 

where that old flag still hangs, I return

                            to Mississippi, state that made a crime

 

of me—mulatto, half-breed—native

                            in my native land, this place they’ll bury me.

January 20: On the Third Day, Be Extra Kind, President Obama

And on the third day of wandering, somebody shot at the four from far away--shot four times as they crossed a narrow brick road.  One shot was for the scouts.  The next one was for the antitank gunner, whose name was Roland Weary.

The third bullet was for the filthy flamingo, who stopped dead center in the road when the lethal bee buzzed past his ear.  Billy stood there politely, giving the marksman another chance.  It was his addled understanding of the rules of warfare that the marksman should be given a second chance.  The next shot missed Billy's kneecaps by inches, going end-on-end, from the sound of it.

Roland Weary and the scouts were safe in a ditch, and Weary growled at Billy, "Get out of the road, you dumb motherfucker."  The last word was still a novelty in the speech of white people in 1944.  It was fresh and astonishing to Billy, who had never fucked anybody--and it did its job.  It woke him up and got him off the road.

There's something oddly sweet about Billy's reaction to this sniper attack.  Billy, who never expected to be shot at as a chaplain's assistant, is stunned into immobility, not sure what his response should be.  He's only twenty-one years old, a virgin in more ways than one.  For Billy, the world is still a kind place.  A beautiful orange that needs to be peeled.

Today, Donald Trump became President of the United States.  You may be expecting a post full of venom, mean humor, jabs at Trump's racism and sexism and homophobia and Islamophobia, not to mention his bad hair and thin skin.  I will not be doing that today.  I will try to take a more Billy Pilgrim approach and hope I don't get shot at.

I have friends who have been urging me to be extra kind to everyone today--Hillary supporters, Bernie supporters, and Trump supporters alike.  I suppose the idea is to combat hatred with kindness.  To dispel the darkness with a little light.  I understand that impulse and appreciate the advice, for I woke this morning feeling fairly . . . unhopeful.  I have tried for most of the day to avoid television screens and media posts.  Haven't even listened to NPR.

I cannot promise that, for the next four years, I will remain silent about Donald Trump.  In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that won't happen.  However, I am trying, as Samuel L. Jackson says at the end of Pulp Fiction, REAL HARD.

So, tonight, I wish everybody kindness and understanding.

Saint Marty is grateful tonight for President Barack Obama and his family.  For eight years of steady, calm, moral leadership.

November 30: Whatever For, Sandy Hook, Lesson in Faith

The question from agnosticism is, Who turned on the lights?  The question from faith is, Whatever for? . . .

That's a pretty big distinction Dillard makes.  Who? or Why?  I guess, as a person of faith, I have to go with the second:  Why were the lights turned on in the first place?  I've never really thought about faith like that before.  Of course, I've always had questions about God, but I've never doubted His existence (well, maybe once or twice as a teenager).  My big questions were things like "Why does God allow things like the Holocaust to happen?" and "Why do people have to suffer horrible diseases like cancer and AIDS?" and "Why does God allow people to put coconut in candy bars?"

I don't have any answers to any of those big questions, any more than Dillard does.  Terrible things happen every day.  Things without rhyme or reason.  I can't imagine that the Creator had a hand in Columbine or Sandy Hook.  The world is a really broken place.  God didn't break it.  Human beings did.  We break it every day through hatred and racism and xenophobia and homophobia and Islamophobia and any other kind of phobia you can name.

I have diabetes.  My wife suffers from bipolar disorder.  My life has been touched by a whole bunch of addictions--alcohol, prescription drugs, pornography, sex, food.  God didn't put those things in my life because he was testing me.  I'm not Job.  Sure, I could tear my clothes, throw ashes on my head, and shake my fist at the heavens.  I could go all Old Testament.  But that's not where God is, either.

God comes into the picture in how I react to the challenges in my life.  Do I lose hope and faith?  Turn my back on God when it feels like He's turned His back on me?  That's the easy thing to do, I think.  The big ole middle finger to the Master of the Universe.  Anger is simple and, in a strange way, satisfying.

The hard thing to do is to try to find God in the middle of a shitty situation.  That's where faith is really put to the test.  One of my sisters hasn't stepped foot in a church since my other sister's funeral in August, 2015.  She's that pissed.  Of course, she doesn't see that she's also absolutely miserable.  Happiness is always out of her reach.

This afternoon, I found out that I will be teaching two courses next semester at the university.  That news after a couple months of profound anxiety.  Plus, the classes are pretty good.  Ones that I've taught recently.  Now, at the end of this whole period of worry, I'm sitting in my office at the university, thinking to myself, "What a waste of time all that hand wringing was!"  I know that, if I had just laid my problem at God's feet, I would have saved myself a whole lot of misery.

Saint Marty was given a lesson in faith today.

Even Adam had questions

September 21: Serious Subjects, Richard Brautigan, "I Feel Horrible. She Doesn't"

If you can't tell by my last post, I'm trying not to take things too seriously tonight.

Sure there are things in this world that should be taken seriously:  poverty, hunger, disease, famine, war, racism, sexism, homophobia, addiction.  I will not be making jokes about any of those subjects.  They are worthy of earnest discussion.  Let's face it, though:  how many of us discuss poverty or homophobia over a large order of fries at McDonald's?

My daughter is not having a good night.  She just went to the AT&T store with my wife and sister to pick out a new phone, since her new Samsung Galaxy Note 7 was recalled for having a tendency to explode.  Well, something went down that did not please my daughter.  A phone was ordered for her.  I'm not sure if it was the phone she wanted or not.  All I do know is that there were tears, shouts, and slamming doors afterwards.

I want to tell my daughter that, whether she gets an iPhone 7 or 6s, it's not going to bring about gender equality in the world or cure cancer.  She's taking it way too seriously.

Maybe Saint Marty should let her read a Richard Brautigan poem.

I Feel Horrible.  She Doesn't

by:  Richard Brautigan

I feel horrible. She doesn’t

love me and I wander around

the house like a sewing machine

that’s just finished sewing

a turd to a garbage can lid.

Speaking of turds . . .