When I started this blog over ten years ago, I had no idea what I was doing. I wrote about saints and martyrs, birthdays and funerals. In the past, I even included a comic strip that I drew. I studied books and poets I love, and, most importantly, wrote about the messiness of life. ‘Cuz life is fucking messy.
The Nobel Prizes were announced this past week. I love watching and following these announcements because they are about honoring individuals and organizations and groups who have made significant, positive contributions to the world. It’s a celebration of humankind at its very best. Yes, the world can be a flaming pile of trash, but it can also be wonderful. Sometimes, this happens simultaneously.
Marie Howe writes about her entry into the wider world . . .
The Gate
by: Marie Howe
I had no idea that the gate I would step through
to finally enter the world
would be the space my brother’s body made. He was
a little taller than me: a young man
but grown, himself by then,
done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet,
rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold
and running water.
This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.
And I’d say, What?
And he’d say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.
And I’d say, What?
And he’d say, This, sort of looking around.
Sometimes, it does take another person to make you see the world clearly. In this poem, Howe’s brother is the catalyst. He reminds her to take time to appreciate the world and life, from the smallest of pleasures (a cheese and mustard sandwich) to the largest (actually being with someone you love—her brother).
The faithful disciple who instructed me to cheer up is my catalyst tonight. I do realize that my posts from the last few months have been difficult to read. Messy. That’s because my life over the last few months has been difficult to live. Messy. When you’re lost in a dark wood, it’s difficult to find the stars. For Dante, that process of finding joy took three really long books. And I doubt anyone told the great poet to cheer up after he completed Inferno.
But my disciple is right. I need to provide a little relief from all the darkness I’ve been writing about. Hear this, though: telling a person who is struggling with clinical depression to cheer up doesn’t work. I don’t choose to feel this sadness. No person would. I’m on a journey, just like Dante, and I have to get through all the circles of depression before I can start climbing toward the light.
Along the way, though, I can still celebrate the cheese and mustard sandwiches (to borrow an image from Howe) along the way. Tonight, my sandwich was that my 18-year-old son sat and watched a movie with me after we had dinner. It was a horror movie based on a Stephen King novella. My son really got into it, although he kept trying to figure out what was going to happen next. (He guessed some plot elements correctly.) After it was over, he got up, turned to me, said, “That was good,” then disappeared into his room upstairs.
It was almost like winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. A true blessing.
Saint Marty wrote a poem tonight based on this prompt: Write a poem that makes light of something serious . . .
Super El Niño Winter
by: Martin Achatz
It’s historic, they say, this warming brought on
by ocean temps and jet streams, but I don’t care
as I sit in a lawn chair in my backyard
this New Year’s Eve, slathered with enough SPF 50
to turn me into a ghost. Pina colada in one hand,
cell phone in the other, I try to remember where
I stashed my snow shovel in the garage last
April after I was sure no more blizzards were
being imported from Canada. Even the geese are
still here, mistaking Lake Superior for the Gulf Coast.
Here’s one strutting by me now, breast white
as a snowbank, waiting for that urge
to stretch his wings, join that arrow of honkers
flying south for the summer.
