July 8, 2025: “Wonder,” Reality, “Good Humor”

Sometimes, the mind tricks you.

If you’ve been reading this blog in the last few days, you know that I’m dealing with many mixed emotions regarding my daughter’s imminent departure for medical school.  I’ve known this was her plan for quite some time.  Children grow up.  They move out and away.  And, hopefully, they find happiness and love.

Yet, my mind was playing a trick on me.  I didn’t really accept that my daughter was leaving until I stopped by her apartment tonight and saw her living room floor filled with packed boxes.  Shit got real for me then.  The best analogy I can come up with is reading about Pearl Harbor your whole life and then visiting the Arizona Memorial in Honolulu.  Gazing down into the water at the Arizona, which still contains the bodies of over 900 sailors and Marines, changes you.  You walk away with the weight of that moment in history sitting on your shoulders.

With wonder last night, I realized that my little girl (while she was always be my little girl) is a young woman now, independent, smart, and full of hope.  She knows what she wants, and she’s chasing it like a kid chasing an ice cream truck on a hot summer day.

Sharon Olds writes about wonder . . . 

Wonder

by: Sharon Olds

When she calls to tell me my father is dying

today or tomorrow, I walk down the hall

and feel that my mouth has fallen open

and my eyes are staring.  The planet of his head

swam above my crib, I did not understand it.

His body came toward me in the lake over the agates,

the hair of his chest lifting like root-hairs—

I saw it and I did not understand it.

He lay behind beveled-glass doors, beside

the cut-crystal decanter, its future

shards in upright bound sheaves.

He sat by his pool, not meeting our eyes,

his irises made of some boiled-down, viscous

satiny matter, undiscovered.

When he sickened, he began to turn to us,

when he sank down, he shined.  I lowered my

mouth to the glistening tureen of his face

and he titled himself toward me, a dazzling 

meteor dropping down into the crib,

and now he is going to die.  I walk down the

hall, face to face with it,

as if it were a great heat.

I feel like one of the shepherd children

when the star came down onto the roof.

But I am used to it, I stand in familiar

astonishment.  If I had dared to imagine

trading, I might have wished to trade

places with anyone raised on love,

but how would anyone raised on love

bear this death?

It’s a sobering little poem.  A grown child confronting the imminent death of a parent.  Most every person alive on this planet has faced or will face this experience.  It’s inevitable.  The only thing more inevitable than death is Republican stupidity.  

These kinds of huge, life-altering events fill me with wonder.  No poem or novel or prayer or essay or blog post can prepare you for it.  When my sister Sally died, I walked around in a state of wonder and sadness for weeks.  The cacophony of emotions was deafening in my head—each one beautiful and terrible at the same time.

I’m probably not explaining myself all that well.  You see, grief can be ugly and debilitating.  However, the experience of deep grief also means that you’ve experienced deep love.  That’s something to celebrate, and it uplifts and carries you through the darkness.  And that is wonder.

I’m on the cusp of grief right now.  I’m also on the cusp of joy for my daughter.  Those two emotions are not mutually exclusive.  They can coexist.  At the moment, grief is in the driver’s seat for me.  Ask me in a couple weeks, and I may have a different answer for you.

That’s my current reality, and like all realities, it’s complicated.  Nobody promised me sunshine and roses every day.  In fact, nobody promised that I’d be around today or tomorrow or next week.  It’s about embracing life fully, in all its beautiful ugliness, with every breath you take.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for today about a memory from his daughter’s childhood.  It’s based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Good Humor Ice Cream Truck:  Freewrite on this topic for five minutes.  In your freewrite, try to describe your childhood memories of summer evenings using all five of your senses.  What did the cooling asphalt smell like?  How did it feel on your tongue to lick the wooden Strawberry Shortcake stick?  Write a poem that allows the reader to experience your youthful memories,

Good Humor

by: Martin Achatz

My young daughter, body tan, sleek

as an otter, chased that sound

through our neighborhood on steamy

July days, dollar bills wadded

like used Kleenexes in her fist,

the music box chimes cutting

the stagnant air, windless trees,

as if a flock of arctic terns was

blown off course into our summer

and was now singing laments for

missing glaciers and ice and sea.

I see her now, disappearing around

the corner, auburn hair flashing

like a fox tail in the sun, and I know

she won’t slow down until she finds

that penguin nesting ground where

night never ends and a vanilla

moon rides in her hand, waning

under the shadow of her hungry tongue.

November 7: "Drawing You from Memory," Do Language, Joy

I keep seeing posts on social media about not losing hope and finding light in the darkness.  This Toni Morrison quote has been popping up quite a bit, too:  "This is precisely the time when artists go to work.  There is no time for despair.  No place for self pity.  No need for silence.  No room for fear.  We speak.  We write.  We do language.  That is how civilizations heal."

Billy Collins indulges in a little art . . . 

Drawing You from Memory

by: Billy Collins

I seem to have forgotten several features
crucial to the doing of this,
for instance, how your lower lip
meets your upper lip besides just being below it,
and what happens at the end of the nose,
how much does it shade the plane of your cheek,
and would even a bit of nostril be visible from this angle?
Chinese eyes, you call them
which could be the difficulty I have
in showing the flash of light in your iris,
and being so far away from you for so long,
I cannot remember what direction
it flows, the deep river of your hair.

But all of this will come together
the minute I see you again at the station,
my notebook and pens packed away,
your face smiling as I cup it in my hands,
or frowning later when we are home
and you are berating me in the kitchen
waving the pages in my face
demanding to know the name of this latest little whore.

Tonight at the library, I celebrated my new book of poems--A Bigfoot Bestiary and Other Wonders--with a reading.  Much work went into the event, and I certainly wouldn't have been able to pull it off without family and friends.  One of my best poet friends helped me plan the evening, acted as MC, and played guitar while I read.  Another best friend did the food--charcuterie board, cookies, cannoli cream, chocolate.  Still another best friend set up the merchandise table and took pictures.

Almost 80 people came for the reading.  So many friends and colleagues and family.  My sisters,  My wife's family.  My daughter and her significant other.  My son.  We all gathered to laugh, hug, and forget for just a little while what happened on Tuesday.  It was a balm for my hurting heart.

Collins' poem is all about distrust and anger and accusation.  I like to think the poems I read this evening were all about joy and love.  It was good to be a part of bringing people together, driving out the oppressive darkness of the last few days.

Yes, since Tuesday, I've felt like opening my front door, throwing out a lit match, and watching the world burn to the ground.  But my daughter sent me this text tonight:  "It was a wonderful reading, and I was so grateful to be there.  I don't know how I got so lucky to have you as my dad."

My daughter is an amazing, smart, compassionate young woman, and I'm not going to let Dementia Don and his cronies ruin her life and future.  I will speak.  Write.  Do language.  

Nobody fucks with the people Saint Marty loves.

December 11: "Why I Wake Early," Crazy Hours, Good Night

How Mary Oliver starts her days . . . 

Why I Wake Early

by:  Mary Oliver

Hello, sun in my face.

Hello, you who make the morning

and spread it over the fields

and into the faces of the tulips

and the nodding morning glories,

and into the windows of, even, the

miserable and the crotchety--

best preacher that ever was,

dear star, the just happens

to be where you are in the universe

to keep us from ever-darkness,

to ease us with warm touching,

to hold us in the great hands of light--

good morning, good morning, good morning.

watch, now, how I start the day

in happiness, in kindness.

I wake early, like Mary Oliver.  I don't, however, do it to start my day in happiness or kindness.  I do it because my son has to get to school and my wife to work.  Seeing sunrises is not a choice I make.  It is a happy benefit of the crazy hours that I keep.

As I sit on my couch typing this post, I can sense exhaustion overtaking me.  It has been a long day, and tomorrow's going to be a long day, and the next day after that, as well.  My long days aren't going to end until well past Christmas.  

This morning, I received an email from one of my best friends.  He attended a Zoom poetry workshop I led last night.  The theme for the workshop was "joy."  My friend apologized for not writing about joy in response to any of my writing prompts during the workshop.  Instead, he wrote very real, very human reflections about his unquiet spirit and mind.  

Tonight, I received an email from another of my best friends.  We've known each other for over 40 years.  She's been struggling with health issues, children issues, spouse issues.  Recently,, she spent several days in the hospital recovering from meningitis.  In her email, she talked about darkness, as well.  Of juggling eight balls at once, trying not to drop a single one of them.  Of craving rest and peace.

These two best friends are kind people.  Loving people.  Creative people.  They care about the mess of the world deeply.  And, like me, they don't put up with bullshit.  Yes, we love sunrises.  Yes, we think Donald Trump is a criminal.  Yes, we would do anything for each other.  My friends' emails were tonics to my tired spirit.

I will wake early again tomorrow morning.  Drive east, into the rising sun.  Smile and try to keep the darkness at bay.

But, right now, Saint Marty says good night to the world.  Good night, good night, and good night

January 29: "Bazougey," Joy, Forever Gifts

Mary Oliver writes about the deepest sting . . . 

Bazougey

by:  Mary Oliver

Where goes he now, that dark little dog

     who used to come down the road barking and shining?

He's gone now, from the world of particulars,

     the singular, the visible.

So, that deepest sting:  sorrow.  Still,

     is he gone from us entirely, or is he

a part of that other world, everywhere?

Come with me into the woods where spring is

     advancing, as it does, no matter what,

not being singular or particular, but one

     of the forever gifts, and certainly visible.

See how the violets are opening, and the leaves

      unfolding, the streams gleaming and the birds

     singing.  What does it make you think of?

His shining curls, his honest eyes, his

     beautiful barking.

Sorrow is a part of life.  That's what Oliver is getting at.  If you have happiness, you will eventually have sorrow.  Now, you can go around, trying to avoid sorrow.  Stay home.  Don't take any chances.  Of course, that means that you may never experience true joy.  Never find true happiness.

I know I've said all this in previous posts.  Joy and sorrow are two sides of the same coin, like light and dark, fear and courage, Donald Trump and sanity.  You can't have one without the other.  They sort of define each other.  (Okay, I think we could have all done without Donald Trump, but you get the idea.)

I know what you're thinking right now:  "Oh, no, Saint Marty's going to get all maudlin and depressing again about losing his sisters and brother and parents."  Sure, I could go down that road.  That's what you're expecting.

I'm not going to do that.  I'm going to focus on the other side of the coin:  joy.  I've just recovered from COVID.  My children are healthy and happy.  I have a partner I love and who loves me.  My dog is the cutest dog in the world.  I'm working a job I love.  Actually, several jobs that I love.  There's no snowstorm or blizzard on the horizon.  And, tomorrow night, I get to celebrate the life and poetry of one of my best friends.

This evening, my book club was supposed to meet at my house for our monthly dinner and discussion.  Because I have just recovered from COVID, we met via Zoom instead.  One member has described our book club as "the strangest book club in the world."  We have been going strong for close to 20 years.  Members have come.  Members have gone.  My mother was one of the inaugural members.  My sister, Sally, was a member, too.  (She never read the books.  She came to babysit my daughter, and then my son, while the rest of us talked and ate.)

Every time we get together now, I think of the people who aren't there any more.  At the moment, we are a small group.  But we love each other deeply.  We are family,  (Cue the disco music.)  So, tonight was joy.  Sally was there.  My mother was there.  All of our friends who've moved away were there.  Another of the current members once told a friend of hers, "I'm not allowed to leave book club.  Ever."  

Tonight, Saint Marty celebrates the forever gifts of his life--poetry, friends, family, and books that bring that bring us all together.

June 26: A Mile Deep, a Message, a Friend

Santiago is surrounded by beauty . . . 

He could not see the green of the shore now but only the tops of the blue hills that showed white as though they were snow-capped and the clouds that looked like high snow mountains above them. The sea was very dark and the light made prisms in the water. The myriad flecks of the plankton were annulled now by the high sun and it was only the great deep prisms in the blue water that the old man saw now with his lines going straight down into the water that was a mile deep.

Tonight, I received a message from a friend who is facing great struggles.  This person has been paddling a boat in stormy seas for quite some time, and, now, those seas have become even stormier and less predictable.  My friend is trying to navigate this uncertainty with grace and hope for whatever may happen.

This person has always been that bright shaft of sunlight piercing the darkest days.  When Donald Trump was elected, my friend, after wallowing in anger and shock and sadness for a little while, realized the damage following that path for four long years could do.  So, instead, my friend embraced an attitude of harmony and healing, dragging me, kicking and screaming, from that mile-deep 2016 abyss.

That's what this friend has done for me, over and over, during some of the most difficult times of my life.  When I've despaired and given up, my friend has taught me to sing and dance again.  Being brutally stubborn and pessimistic, I need that lesson frequently.

Now, it's my turn.  To point out wild June winds.  Send my friend Bigfoot embraces and energy.  Find those miracle moments that are abundant as dandelions in this world of summer green.  I need to dance and sing for my friend, as my friend has danced and sung for so long and for so many people.

Here is what I'm asking of you, faithful disciples, tonight:  think of something that brings you great joy. Feel the energy of that something,  Hold it in your hands.  Count its heartbeats.  Let it fill you up.  Then, release it like a beautiful red bird.  Send that joy into the universe.  For yourself.  For everyone you know.  

For Saint Marty's friend.

December 26: Absorbed in this Work, Day after Christmas, Joy

Merton returns to his life and writing, haunted by God . . . 

The weeks went on, and the weather began to show signs of summer when John Paul suddenly arrived at St. Bonaventure’s, on his way back from Mexico. The back seat of his Buick was full of Mexican records and pictures and strange objects and a revolver and big colored baskets, and he was looking relatively well and happy. We spent a couple of afternoons driving around through the hills, and talking, or just driving and not talking. He had been to Yucatan, as he had planned, and he had been to Puebla, and he had just missed being in an earthquake in Mexico City, and he had lent a lot of money to some gent who owned a ranch near St. Luis Potosi. On the same ranch he had shot, with his revolver, a poisonous snake some six feet long. 

“Do you expect to get that money back?” I asked him. 

“Oh, if he doesn’t pay me, I’ll have a share in his ranch,” said John Paul without concern. But at the moment he was heading back towards Ithaca. I could not be sure whether he was going to go to Cornell summer school, and finally get his degree, or whether he was going to take some more flying lessons, or what he was going to do. 

I asked him if he had kept in touch with this priest he knew there. 

“Oh, yes,” he said, “sure.” 

I asked him what he thought about becoming a Catholic. 

“You know,” he said, “I’ve thought about that a little.” 

“Why don’t you go to the priest and ask him to give you some instructions?” 

“I think I will.” 

But I could tell from the tone of his voice that he was as indefinite as he was sincere. He meant well, but he would probably do nothing about it. I said I would give him a copy of the Catechism I had, but when I went to my room I couldn’t find it. 

And so John Paul, in the big shiny Buick built low on its chassis, drove off at a great speed, towards Ithaca, with his revolver and his Mexican baskets. 

In the gay days of early June, in the time of examinations, I was beginning a new book. It was called The Journal of My Escape from the Nazis and it was the kind of book that I liked to write, full of double-talk and all kinds of fancy ideas that sounded like Franz Kafka. One reason why it was satisfying was that it fulfilled a kind of psychological necessity that had been pent up in me all through the last stages of the war because of my sense of identification, by guilt, with what was going on in England. 

So I put myself there and, telescoping my own past with the air-raids that were actually taking place, as its result, I wrote this journal. And, as I say, it was something I needed to write, although I often went off at a tangent, and the thing got away up more than one blind alley. 

And so, absorbed in this work, and in the final examinations, and in preparation for the coming summer school, I let the question of the Trappist vocation drop into the background, although I could not drop it altogether. 

I said to myself: after summer school, I will go and make a retreat with the Trappists in Canada, at Our Lady of the Lake, outside Montreal.

The day after Christmas is always a little melancholy.  Two months (sometimes longer) of decorating and shopping and baking and wrapping and planning.  One day (two if you're lucky) of lights and family and laughter and presents and relaxation.  Then, life returns to its normal grind, "Silent Night" fading into memory as fast as Santa on his way to Jamaica for some post-Christmas Eve downtime.

Of course, Jesus is still in the manger.  The magi are still on their way.  There are still twelve more days in this Christian season of light.  Kwanzaa just began.  Today is Boxing Day in Britain.  And Auld Lang Syne still hasn't been sung.  I have always believed, as Dickens via Scrooge says:  “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”

I will be honest.  Christmas joy has been elusive this year, which is unusual for me.  Most people who know me will vouch that I am Mr. Christmas.  My decorations go up right after Halloween, and they don't come down until well after Candlemas.  This year, however, I find myself dwelling more on Christmases past.  My mother's Christmas hams.  My sister's piles and piles of presents for my kids.  My father sitting in his chair, watching Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas" with Danny Kaye.  

Here's the lesson I want to pass along tonight--joy doesn't go away.  It's always there, like God.  Merton learns this.  God simply won't let go of Merton.  I've found moments of joy these last few days.  This evening, for instance, I went to a good friend's house to sing Christmas carols.  Outside, masked, and distanced.  It filled my heart, which has been fairly empty for most of Advent.  

So, music gave me joy tonight.  Music and friends.  That's what I have to pass along.  Joy takes many forms, many faces.  Like God.  Merton learns this.

Saint Marty learned it tonight, too.

June 26: Shades of the Color Blue, Coating of Silly, Okay

Arthur pages through The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy . . .

Ford had thoughtfully left him his copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to while away the time with.  He pushed a few buttons at random.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a very unevenly edited book and contains many passages that simply seemed to its editors like a good idea at the time.

One of these (the one Arthur now came across) supposedly relates the experiences of one Veet Voojagig, a quiet young student at the University of Maximegalon, who pursued a brilliant academic career studying ancient philology, transformational ethics and the wave harmonic theory of historical perception, and then, after a night of drinking Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters with Zaphod Beeblebrox, became increasingly obsessed with the problem of what had happened to all the ballpoints he'd bought over the past few years.

There followed a long period of painstaking research during which he visited all the major centers of ballpoint loss throughout the Galaxy and eventually came up with a quaint theory that quite caught the public imagination at the time.  Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades of the color blue, there was also a planet entirely given over to ballpoint life forms.  And it was to this planet that unattended ballpoints would make their way, slipping away quietly through wormholes in space to a world where they knew they could enjoy a uniquely ballpointed lifestyle, responding to highly ballpoint-oriented stimuli, and generally leading the ballpoint equivalent of the good life.

And as theories go this was all very fine and pleasant until Veet Voojagig suddenly claimed to have found this planet, and to have worked there for a while driving a limousine for a family of cheap green retractables, whereupon he was was taken away, locked up, wrote a book and was finally sent into tax exile which is the usual fate reserved for those who are determined to make fools of themselves in public.

When one day an expedition was sent to the spatial coordinates that Voojagig had claimed for this planet they discovered only a small asteroid inhabited by a solitary old man who claimed repeatedly that nothing was true, though he was later discovered to be lying.

There did, however, remain the question of both the mysterious sixty thousand Altairian dollars paid yearly into his Brantisvogan bank account, and of course Zaphod Beeblebrox's highly profitable secondhand ballpoint business.

Pure silliness of course.  I love the idea, however, of a planet of lost ballpoint pens.  Sort of like a planet of lost socks.  This passage just makes me smile for its sheer absurdity.  Sometimes, life needs to be dipped in a coating of silly and sprinkled with absurdity.  Today is one of those days for me.

This post will be one of those elliptical ones that I write sometimes where I am hovering above a subject that is possessing me but that I just can't write about.  Think of it as a missing ballpoint pen that is wandering around in the ballpoint planet of my head.

It will come as no surprise to the faithful disciples of this blog when I say that addicts and addictions have been a part of my life for a very long time.  Friends.  Family members.  Acquaintances.  People I love.  But that is not the subject of this post.

It will also not come as a surprise to the faithful disciples of this blog when I say that mental illness has been a part of my life for a very long time, as well.  Friends.  Family members,  Acquaintances.  People I love.  But that is not the subject of this post, either.

Ditto for poetry and Donald Trump and my daughter's high school graduation and my son's ADHD and the bills that are piled on my kitchen table.  None of these things are the subject of this post.  All of these things are stumbling around on their own mythical planets right now, and I will not pay attention to them this evening.

As I sit here, eating a chicken pot pie, I am thinking about resiliency and the ability to exist in difficult situations and remain positive and happy.  You may recall that I am working my way through a book about joy written by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama.  I am always struck by the passages in which these two figures talk about living through apartheid and exile, the darkest times of their lives, enduring difficulties that I can't even imagine.  Yet, every picture in the book shows these two men smiling, grinning, laughing, dancing.

As I look at those pictures, I think to myself, "I want me some of that."

How do they do it?  How do they remain so joyful?  Here is the answer that I've been hearing, over and over:  powerlessness.  Accepting that state.  Fear and anger and doubt and sadness--all of these emotions are products of trying to control situations that are simply out of your control.  The quicker you recognize your powerlessness, the quicker you will be on the road to happiness and joy.

This evening, when I got home, I was on the brink of something.  It wasn't joy.  Basically, I changed out of my work clothes, crawled into bed, and pulled the covers over my head.  It was a moment of feeling completely alone with some very dark thoughts.  It was a hole I dug for myself all day long, and I was at the bottom of it.  It was pretty deep.

After a couple hours, I got a text message from a really good friend who knows a few things about joy.  I responded to the text, telling my friend of my current state of mind.  My friend's words were pretty simple:  " . . . you're doing it, climbing out of the hole.  That's big, all you can ask of yourself, to reach for a better-feeling thought.  And know you are loved and have Big Love for yourself."  After a few more texts with my friend, I felt better.  Then I got an IM from another good friend, and we exchanged messages about poetry and happiness, mixed with some jokes.  And I felt better.

I am not completely out of the hole yet, but I can now see light.  I know that, in the situation causing me so much struggle, I am completely, totally, utterly powerless.  I understand why people turn to alcohol or drugs or cutting or suicide.  It's all about escape.  Lessening the pain.  A seeming way of taking control of the uncontrollable.  (The key word in that last sentence is "seeming.")

Tonight, God texted me and IMed me as I was spiraling.  He reminded me that I am loved.  That I am important.  That I make a difference, however tiny, in the world.

Saint Marty is okay, and okay is best he can do at the moment.

June 18: Dullish Gray, Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Joy

The planet of Magrathea is . . . underwhelming . . .

Five figures wandered slowly over the blighted land.  Bits of it were dullish gray, bits of it dullish brown, the rest of it rather less interesting to look at.  It was like a dried-out marsh, now barren of all vegetation and covered with a layer of dust about an inch thick.  It was very cold.

Zaphod was clearly rather depressed about it.  He stalked off by himself and was soon lost to sight behind a slight rise in the ground.

The wind stung Arthur's eyes and ears, and the stale thin air clasped his throat.  However, the thing that was stung most was his mind.

"It's fantastic . . ." he said, and his own voice rattled his ears.  Sound carried badly in this thin atmosphere.  

"Desolate hole, if you ask me," said Ford.  "I could have more fun in a cat litter."  He felt mounting irritation.  Of all the planets in all the star systems of all the Galaxy--many wild and exotic, seething with life--didn't he just have to turn up at a dump like this after fifteen years of being a castaway?  Not even a hot-dog stand in evidence.  He stooped down and picked up a cold clod of earth, but there was nothing underneath it worth crossing thousands of light-years to look at.

So, the crew of the Heart of Gold is not happy about where they have landed.  In fact, they are depressed, stung, stale, and irritated.  All of those words do not evoke joy or excitement.  They evoke day-after-a-nuclear-apocalypse.

Currently, I'm reading a book titled The Book of Joy.  It's about the meeting of two of the most important spiritual leaders of the twentieth century--the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.  They spend a week together, discussing one specific subject:  joy.  What it is.  How to cultivate it.  How to sustain it.  How to live it. 

I can honestly say that I have reread some of the Dalai Lama's pronouncements many times  They make sense, and then they perplex me.  Tutu, on the other hand, comes from a Christian tradition, and I understand his words much quicker.

You see, I'm seeking a way to embrace joy in my life.  For the last few months (for various reasons), I've been walking around in a dullish gray/dullish brown haze.  I've had moments of joy and happiness, but depression has had a strong grip on many of my days.

Tonight, I came across this little bit of knowledge from my reading:  "There are four independent brain circuits that influence our lasting well-being"--

1. "our ability to maintain positive states"--if you can do this, you're on the road to a joyful day
2. "our ability to recover from negative states"--obviously, negativity enters your day, but being able to resist staying in that abyss is another key to joy
3. "our ability to focus and avoid mind-wandering"--this circuit involves meditation and/or prayer and the ability to avoid the niggling voices of doubt and fear
4. "our ability to be generous"--this one involves cooperation, compassion, and empathy, with yourself and everyone else you encounter

I have to admit that I struggle with the second and third circuits.  A lot.  I tend to dwell on the negative, allow it to sometimes drive the car of my life.  And I am prone to those whispers of doubt and fear.  Many times a day, I will be doing something that brings me happiness and joy, and suddenly, some part of my brain says, "Yes, but . . ."  Fill in that blank with whatever dampens the spirit and brings darkness into the light.

That is my self-revelation for this evening.  I need to work on my well-being circuits.  Need to pray and meditate more, in whatever form works for me.  Most of the time, it's writing.  Plus, I need to somehow quiet my doubts and fears and suspicions.  All of those things are related to trying to control aspects of my life over which I have no control whatsoever.

This is what I plan to do tonight to combat these negative parts of myself:

1. I will write in my journal.  Lay all of my worries on the page, and then I will let them go.  Give them up to my higher power.
2. In doing that writing, I will give those whispering voices time to say what they want on the page, and then I will close my journal and silence them.

Saint Marty craves joy in his life.  Time to take a few steps in the right direction.

A face of joy . . .

January 1: Margaret Avison, "New Year's Poem," Feast of the Solemnity of Mary

New Year's Poem

by:  Margaret Avison

The Christmas twigs crispen and needles rattle
Along the window-ledge.
             A solitary pearl
Shed from the necklace spilled at last week’s party
Lies in the suety, snow-luminous plainness
Of morning, on the window-ledge beside them.   
And all the furniture that circled stately
And hospitable when these rooms were brimmed
With perfumes, furs, and black-and-silver
Crisscross of seasonal conversation, lapses
Into its previous largeness.
             I remember   
Anne’s rose-sweet gravity, and the stiff grave
Where cold so little can contain;
I mark the queer delightful skull and crossbones
Starlings and sparrows left, taking the crust,
And the long loop of winter wind
Smoothing its arc from dark Arcturus down
To the bricked corner of the drifted courtyard,
And the still window-ledge.
             Gentle and just pleasure
It is, being human, to have won from space
This unchill, habitable interior
Which mirrors quietly the light
Of the snow, and the new year.

_____________________________

A poem to start off the new year.

This morning I played the pipe organ for Mass--the Feast of the Solemnity of Mary.  It was cold and snowy, the aftermath of a little storm that blew in on New Year's Eve.  It was a peaceful, beautiful beginning.

Saint Marty is ready for joy, happiness, and laughter.

August 23: Love's Primal Scene, Maggie Nelson, from "Bluets"

The half-circle of blinding turquoise ocean is this love’s primal scene. That this blue exists makes my life a remarkable one, just to have seen it. To have seen such beautiful things. To find oneself placed in their midst. Choiceless. I returned there yesterday and stood again upon the mountain.

                    --from Bluets by Maggie Nelson

I have had a long day of work.  I had a long day yesterday.  Tonight, I plan on having a glass of wine and maybe watching an episode of Breaking Bad.  Outside the window right now, I'm staring at a raft of green.  The maples haven't been hit by frost yet, so they're still in full summer ecstasy.  I know the word "ecstasy" is a little overused, but it's the closest I could come to what I'm looking at.

I often worry about being sentimental in my writing.  Words like "joy" and "love" and "heart" and "ecstasy" are good clues that I'm lapsing into romance novel territory.  But those maple leaves are ferociously green and beautiful.

Like Maggie Nelson, Saint Marty sits here, on top of the mountain, gazing at love's primal scene.

March 5: A Pact, Ted, Matthew Gavin Frank, "Antebellum"

The world has signed a pact with the devil; it had to.  It is a covenant to which every thing, even every hydrogen atom, is bound.  The terms are clear:  if you want to live, you have to die; you cannot have mountains and creeks without space, and space is a beauty married to a blind man.  The blind man is Freedom, or Time, and he does not go anywhere without his great dog Death.  The world came into being with the signing of the contract.  A scientist calls it the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  A poet says, "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower / Drives my green age."  This is what we know.  The rest is gravy.

The world is a tough place.  As Dillard says, this little piece of rock we live on signed a deal with the devil.  From the day we are born, we are dying.  Freedom.  Time.  Death.  These are our constant companions.  And in the time we have on this planet, we must struggle, relax, mourn, rejoice.  That's what our green age is all about.

I have a friend right now who is in the struggle phase of his green age.  "Ted" has recently admitted to his physician that he has an addiction to prescription narcotics.  As expected, Ted's doctor will not prescribe Ted any more painkillers, and Ted is hurting, psychologically (mainly) and physically.  He's convinced himself that the only thing that will relieve his condition is a narcotic.

I know that Ted is hurting.  Addiction is a terrible thing.  It's debilitating, affecting work and family and health.  It's something that literally controls every waking moment of every day.  I feel terrible for Ted.  Yet, Ted has taken the first step to recovery:  admitting that he has a problem.  Now, he needs to follow through.  Get the help he needs.

I wish that life wasn't full of struggle.  I wish that Ted didn't have any pain.  That his back didn't hurt.  That he didn't have family problems and finance problems and work problems.  Aside from the back problems, I could be Ted.  We all could be Ted.  That's Dillard's point, I think.  The world is all about entropy, the gradual decline into disorder.  That's Ted's story right now.  That's all our story.

When you read this post, think about Ted.  About yourself.  About the world.  We've all signed on the dotted line.  I like to think, however, that the contract is with God instead of the devil.  There is the blind man, Freedom or Time, and his faithful dog, Death.  But God sends us other companions, as well.  Joy.  Relaxation.  Surprise.  Love.

Saint Marty and Ted need to party with those dudes a little more, and maybe have a steak dinner every once in a while with Matt Gavin Frank . . .

Antebellum

by:  Matthew Gavin Frank

The tornado inside Adromeda laid seeds
of clover in the sky.  We took the stubble
and dissolved it in the red wine, went into
the basement of the Genome Biology Building
for asylum.

Helene had gone to a funeral that Sunday--
the body of her first lover covered
in tobacco.  She said
that in burial
the screws of the corpse meet a pressure
of any blood not cleaned out,
they shoot into dirt like seeds.  The arms
quickly flare like a chicken's,
and in the downdraft of soil
the teeth clench as if to keep
the earth out.  He was finally rhetorical, she said.

Ernie spat on the floor, unwrapped the stolen corn
from the napkin, saying, "You saw
no such thing, Helene.,"  When I was small,
Helene said, I stood with my father
at Mount Hope Cemetery.  He was fresh
with mind and antebellum.  The crops
were rotting because of the windy season,
we pricked out fingers and let them drip
onto newspaper.  Alice, in a complicated

white dress, with the tornado dropping,
feigned a seizure and wiped
her cheek through the blood.
The rows of clay idols watched

and started to tip in the wind.  Over us,
these shuddering memorials:
A rooster smothering a swallow
and behind us, two dogs

tugging-of-war with a chrysalis,
and an angel cradling a squirrel
between her breasts.  She watched
the rooster tie the swallow in a knot
and in the quake, began
to step over the wind like a plot.

Because I could not stop for Death . . .

June 15: Doctor's Appointment, Father's Day, Classic Saint Marty

It's almost time for bed.  Midnight in Paris is almost over.  I can hear my wife in the kitchen, getting ready to go to sleep.  It's been a very nice Father's Day.  Tomorrow, I throw myself back into real life for another week.  It's funny.  I spend the majority of my time at a job that monopolizes my life.  Yet, I only really feel alive on the weekend, away from that job.  I'm actually looking forward to going to my doctor's appointment tomorrow afternoon because I get to leave work early (and be lectured about my weight by a physician with almost no personal skills, but that's another subject).

I know I'm not unusual in these feelings.  I have many friends, however, who are doing exactly what they want to do with their lives.  Their work isn't work.  It's joy.  Being in their company makes me anxious.  Jealous.  Unhappy.

But I don't want to go down that road this evening.  I want to enjoy these last few moments of the weekend.  Quiet, restful moments.

Today's Classic Saint Marty comes from Father's Day two years ago.

June 17, 2012:  Father's Day, Eggs and Hot Dogs, McDonald's

Today, I'm going to let my daughter and son write my post for me.  What follows below are letters they wrote to me today in honor of Father's Day.  For the record, I do love eating scrambled eggs and hot dogs, and I do not work at McDonald's.

Saint Marty wishes all the fathers out there a happy Father's Day.

From my daughter (11 years old):

My daddy is 36 years old.

His hair is brown and his eyes are brown.  My dad likes to wear a beret.  He loves to eat eggs and hot dogs.  He is smart because he knows how to be nice and care for everyone.  My daddy works hard at running and keeping us happy.  Daddy always tells me that he loves me, even when he's SUPER mad at me.  It makes my daddy happy when he sits down with the family, and he'll read to us.  If he could go on a trip, he could go to the tundra lodge with us.  I really love it when daddy laughs.  If I could give my daddy anything, It would be more love.  My favorite thing about daddy is that he is my loving, caring, smart, awesome daddy.

From my son (3 years old) with help from Mommy:

My Daddy is 3 and 4 years old.

His hair is brown and pink and his eyes are blue and purple and red.

He loves to eat strawberries, bananas, and Sissy's ice cream.  He is smart because he knows me and the crayons. 

My Daddy works hard at McDonald's.  (Sissy suggested that answer.)

It makes my daddy happy when he's with Mommy.

If he could go on a trip, he would go to the food store and get me 2 big trucks and a big, HUGE dump truck and I want a big, blue beep-beep.

If I cold give my daddy anything, it would be I don't know--I want to get Daddy a big truck for his birthday.

My favorite thing about my Daddy is I like to poop on him.  I like to give him a big, fat kiss.

Confessions of Saint Marty

October 15: Phoeb, Joy, Father's Prayer

She wakes up very easily.  I mean you don't have to yell at her or anything.  All you have to do, practically, is sit down on the bed and say, "Wake up, Phoeb," and bingo, she's awake.

Holden loves kids.  He loves their innocence, their lack of adult worries and cares.  All he wants to do with his life is protect kids from reaching the edge of childhood and falling into the abyss.  Holden realizes that adulthood isn't all it's cracked up to be.  In fact, adulthood is something to dread, fear, avoid at all costs.  Of course, Catcher is all about Holden's fall into this abyss of adulthood.  The abyss is a place where a young person can die of leukemia, where something that unfathomable can happen.

Tonight, I'm sitting in my living room.  It's a wreck.  My kids were home from school today, still recovering from our weekend in the Wisconsin Dells.  Tomorrow, they go back to school, and life returns to normal.  My daughter will complain and whine in the morning.  My son will go to school and stick crayons in his ears or try to lick some other kid on the playground.

They're normal children with normal problems.  I wish life for them could remain as simple as a page of math problems to complete.  Hot lunch or cold lunch.  Green behavior versus red behavior.  But his world is designed to become increasingly more complicated the longer you're here.  I don't want my son and daughter to remain children forever, but I wish they could somehow maintain their child-like joy in normal, everyday things.

Right now, I can hear my daughter giggling in her bedroom, talking with my wife.  I can't make out what they're discussing, but, every once in a while, there's a burst of laughter.  Tonight, my son went to dance class, and he had a great time moving and acting silly.  Adults worry way too much about looking foolish.  We worry about the opinions of other adults.  Job evaluations.  Parent/teacher conferences.  Pageviews on blogs.  We use these things to measure our self worth as workers, parents, writers.  We don't do anything purely for joy or happiness.

That's the attitude I'd like to save my children from.

Dear God of joy,

Yeah, it's me again.  I know I'm writing late.  Sorry about that.  I hope I didn't wake You up.  Although, it would kind of worry me if You were actually sleeping.  I kind of picture You as not needing a whole lot of sleep.  Like a college student during finals week, except You don't need the pizza or caffeine pills or espresso.

Anyway, I want to ask You to help my son and daughter hold on to their joy.  I see it every day in them.  In the way my son laughs when I read him a book that he's already heard 548 times.  In the way my daughter whispers and giggles in her bed at night.

I know they will both experience sadness, disappointment, heartbreak.  That's inevitable.  But, in the midst (that's right, I just used the word "midst") of all that pain, let them have light.  Let them stick crayons in their ears.  Let them explore the playground with their tongues.

Let them always know how much I love them, how I want to give them the world.  How they'll always be my babies.

Your loving child,

Saint Marty

Sometimes, you just gotta dance

April 6: Love and Joy, Psalm 29, Curse of Change

Well, I changed the poem from yesterday.  If you read my post yesterday, "Psalm 28" is now different.  Haiku is not a form I've worked with very much.  I understand compression and simplicity.  However, haiku is also about sound and rhythm.  All those things are supposed to congeal into this one moment of breathlessness.  I love haiku.  Admire haiku.  I'm just not very confident in my ability to compose haiku.  Of course, you're going to have to be the judge.

Tonight, my wife is working the afternoon shift at her new job for the first time.  She was hired to work afternoons, so it's something to which we're going to have to adjust.  It really complicates evenings.  For example, tonight, we had to hire a babysitter so that I could go to choir and band practice at church.  My wife works until 11:30 p.m. or so.  We're not even sure at the moment that this new job is even worth it.  We're definitely having to pay out a lot more money in daycare.  Now don't get me wrong.  I'm not some kind of male pig who wants his wife to stay barefoot and pregnant, cooking the cow I bring home at night.  That's not me.  It's just a matter of the job paying for itself and some of our bills, as well.  The jury is still out.  It's what I call the curse of change.  Change happens, and sometimes it works out.  Often times it doesn't, in my experience.

Today's psalm continues down the path I started yesterday.  Psalm 28 was based on the Mysteries of Joy from the Catholic rosary.  Psalm 29 is based on the Mysteries of Light.  The Mysteries of Light deal with the life of Christ.  They are:
1)  The Baptism of Our Lord by John the Baptist
2)  The First Miracle of Jesus at the Wedding of Cana
3)  The Proclamation of the Kingdom of Heaven
4)  The Transfiguration
5)  The Institution of the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist
I chose to make all of the haiku based on these mysteries into love poems.  I think they hold together well.  There's just something about connecting light and love and joy that really works for me.  I'm enjoying this test of my poetic abilities.  It's making me stretch and think a little more.

Tomorrow's mysteries are the Mysteries of Sorrow.  Obviously, there will be a drastic change in mood from the previous poems.

Speaking of moods, in my Good Books class today, I found myself talking about hope.  We've just finished reading The Road, and the question I posed to my students was about the conclusion of the novel.  I asked them if they thought the ending was ultimately hopeful or hopeless.  This question led into a discussion of hope in the abstract.  I told them that we all live for hope.  College students go to class in the hope of passing.  They go to college in the hope of getting a degree.  They get a degree in the hope of getting a job.  They get a job in the hope of making some money.  They make some money in the hope of having a nice life.  You get the idea.  Each and every day of a person's life is an exercise in hope.  I left class in a really good mood.

Saint Marty is full of hope today, and he hopes everyone has some joy and love in their lives tonight.

Psalm 29:  Mysteries of Light

1.  Baptism
She bathes
With cherry blossom soap
Pure, white milk

2.  First Miracle
I eat strawberries
Their tender flesh, their seeds
Wedding night

3.  Proclamation
Neruda at dusk
Whispers in his wife's ear
Holy sin

4.  Transfiguration
Kiss her fingers
Feel her breath
Transforming touch

5.  Eucharist
Her body
Given up for me
Sweet, sweet sacrifice

Mystery of Love