July 25: Open My Eyes, Weekend of Grace, Dream Job

That innocence of mine is mostly gone now, although I felt almost the same pure rush last night.  I have seen many muskrats since I learned to look for them in that part of the creek.  But still I seek them out in the cool of the evening, and still I hold my breath when rising ripples surge from under the creek's bank.  The great hurrah about wild animals is that they exist at all, and the greater hurrah is the actual moment of seeing them.  Because they have a nice dignity, and prefer to have nothing to do with me, not even as the simple objects of my vision.  They show me by their very wariness what a prize it is simply to open my eyes and behold.

Dillard is all about amazement,  She won a Pulitzer Prize for writing about opening her eyes and observing amazing things.  It's kind of a dream job.  I would love to get up in the morning, have a bowl of oatmeal, pack my journal bag with my writer paraphernalia and a chicken sandwich, and then head out into the world to be struck dumb with awe.

I've had a great weekend of grace, though.  Stayed in a beautiful condo with a hot tub.  Spent a couple of days chasing my son up the steps to water slides (and nearly collapsing when I got to the top).  Had some quality time with my teenage daughter on top of a mountain (and got a picture for my Christmas cards).  This morning, I had breakfast al fresco one last time.  It was a clear, warm morning, and the landscapers were at work trimming hedges and pulling up weeds.  "Sorry about the noise," one of them said as he revved up his leaf blower.  I waved my hand.  "Everybody's got a job to do," I said, feeling a little like a rich lawyer or neurosurgeon.

Tomorrow morning, I return to work, registering patients, answering phones, and assembling medical records.  It's not my dream job, but I haven't seen too many advertisements in the classifieds for a poet/teacher/saint-in-training.  I've looked.  Yet, I'm working with one of my best friends, and I'm done by about three o'clock in the afternoon.  Now, I know that Oprah would tell me to follow my bliss, but I have a family to support.  Bliss don't always pay the bills.

I am a blessed man tonight, coming off a weekend of blessings.  And I have only four days of work ahead of me.  I may not be struck dumb with awe tomorrow.  Probably won't have a whole lot of time to write in my journal and see muskrats surfacing in a pond.  However, sometimes I see an albino deer ghosting through the woods on my way to work.

Like Dillard, Saint Marty is keeping his eyes open, ready to behold anything that crosses his path.

July 24: Lazy Sunday, Water Park Again, Classic Saint Marty

It was a lazy Sunday.  Woke up at 9 a.m.  That's late.  For me, anyway.  I took a shower and then had breakfast al fresco once more.  Oatmeal and blueberries.  The morning was not quite so humid.  It was overcast, and there was a breeze.

I sat outside, said my prayers.  Some mornings, I don't always allow myself enough time to read my devotions and say my prayers.  When I don't, I feel as if my whole day is a little off.  I wasn't off today.

We spent most of the day at the water park.  My daughter decided to be a typical 15-year-old girl.  She went on a couple water slides, spent a great deal of time in the hot tub, texting on her iPhone.  After 40 minutes, she announced that she wanted to return to our room to take a shower.  That would have meant that we spent about $5 per minute for her to be at the water park.  I informed her that she needed to spend a little more time being social with real people.  She begrudgingly stuck around for another hour-and-a-half.

That was the only bump in the road today.  Didn't have to rush anywhere.  We had a leisurely dinner.  I had a chocolate martini and a French dip sandwich.  Then, I made a couple of s'mores for my kids.  It is now a little after ten o'clock at night.  The hot tub is open.

I am not looking forward to the end of this weekend.  I don't know when I'm going to get another vacation.  Maybe in another five or six months.  That thought depresses me a little bit.  But I'm not going to get all melancholy.  Instead, I'm going to enjoy these last few hours in this lovely place in the woods.

Two years ago, I was contemplating hell, thanks to poet Billy Collins. 

July 24, 2014:  "Hell," Billy Collins, Bed

I'm looking forward to going to bed tonight.  The cool covers and pillows.  The fan blowing across us like some lost Alberta clipper.  Darkness, and the warmth of my wife's hand on my arm or shoulder.  That sounds like paradise to me right now.

Which explains why the poem below appealed to me tonight.  It's a hell of a poem (incredibly labored pun intended), and it touches upon many of Billy Collins' favorite subjects--the collision of poetry with life and love and the ridiculous.  And it has that breathless moment at the end when the poem opens up like a chrysalis.

Saint Marty would kill to write a poem like this.

Hell

by:  Billy Collins

I have a feeling that it is much worse
than shopping for a mattress at a mall,

of greater duration without question,
and there is no random pitchforking here,
no licking flames to fear,
only this cavernous store with its maze of bedding.

Yet wandering past the jovial kings,
the more sensible queens,
and the cheerless singles
no scarlet sheet will ever cover,

I am thinking of a passage from the Inferno,
which I could fully bring to mind
and recite in English or even Italian

if the salesman who has been following us--
a crumpled pack of Newports
visible in the pocket of his short sleeve shirt--
would stop insisting for a moment
that we test this one, then this softer one,

which we do by lying down side by side,
arms rigid, figures on a tomb,
powerless to imagine what it would be like

to sleep or love this way
under the punishing rows of fluorescent lights,
which Dante might have included
had he been able to lie on his back between us here today.

What fresh hell is this?