August 31: "Writing in the Afterlife," Eternal Punishment, Fluffing Clouds

I grew up with a Catholic concept of the afterlife:  Heaven, Hell, Limbo, Purgatory.  If you've read Dante's The Divine Comedy, you know what I'm talking about.  Of course, other world religions and mythologies have versions of the afterlife, as well.  Most of them involve places of eternal punishment and eternal reward.  

Billy Collins has his own poetic version of what comes after breath and heartbeat . . . 

Writing in the Afterlife

by: Billy Collins

I imagined the atmosphere would be clear,
shot with pristine light,
not this sulfurous haze,
the air ionized as before a thunderstorm.

Many have pictured a river here,
but no one mentioned all the boats,
their benches crowded with naked passengers,
each bent over a writing tablet.

I knew I would not always be a child
with a model train and a model tunnel,
and I knew I would not live forever,
jumping all day through the hoop of myself.

I had heard about the journey to the other side
and the clink of the final coin
in the leather purse of the man holding the oar,
but how could anyone have guessed

that as soon as we arrived
we would be asked to describe this place
and to include as much detail as possible—
not just the water, he insists,

rather the oily, fathomless, rat-happy water,
not simply the shackles, but the rusty,
iron, ankle-shredding shackles—
and that our next assignment would be

to jot down, off the tops of our heads,
our thoughts and feelings about being dead,
not really an assignment,
the man rotating the oar keeps telling us—

think of it more as an exercise, he groans,
think of writing as a process,
a never-ending, infernal process,
and now the boats have become jammed together,

bow against stern, stern locked to bow,
and not a thing is moving, only our diligent pens.

I wouldn't mind if the afterlife was a lot like today.  Sleeping in.  Leisurely breakfast of leftover prime rib on toast.  A walk with my wife and dog.  Cleaning the house (I'm not against a little work in Heaven--polishing stars, fluffing clouds, etc.).  Playing the pipe organ for Mass (no harps or lyres for me, please).  An evening of dinner and a movie with some best friends.  It was kind of perfect.

But I know that perfection for me is not perfection for everyone.  For example, Billy Collins' vision of the afterlife seems far from perfect--ankle-shredding shackles, an eternal sulfurous river of boats, rat-happy water, and a logjam of naked, suffering souls.  The one part of Collins' life-after-death that I wouldn't mind:  the writing.  The poem makes it into a kind of purgatory, scribbling away for eternity.  To others, that may sound like Hell (or at least Purgatory).  To me, it sounds like paradise.

Often, when priests or pastors begin their sermons during worship services, I take out my journal and pen.  For the next 15 or so minutes, I scribble away on a blog post or new poem or essay.  I've always thought of writing as a form of prayer.  Some of the shit that comes out on the page seems divinely inspired.  In fact, I believe that the best poems I write are all gifts from my Higher Power, however you want to define it.  

So, after I die, if I'm trapped naked in a boat with my journal and writing utensil (hopefully a fountain pen), that will be a really, really great afterlife.

In the meantime, Saint Marty will just keep writing poetry here on Earth.  Call it practice.  Hopefully, the River Styx has a few nice waterfalls to describe.

August 17: Preparations, Classic Saint Marty, New Cartoon

After I'm done typing this post, I'm going to work on my syllabi for the upcoming semester at the university.  I've already completed a lot of the preliminary stuff.  Looking up important dates, classroom numbers, exam times and days.  Now, I have to plug all those things into my existing syllabi, switch a few numbers around, and Presto!  Instant semester.

It's a tedious process.  Busy work, mostly.  However, it will keep me sane for the next three months.  I can't go into the fall feeling unprepared.  It causes way too much stress in my day-to-day existence.  Tonight, I'm registering my kids for dance.  Once I have those schedules figured out, I'll be able to set my university office hours.  That's the last piece of the puzzle.

I know none of these things is very interesting to any of my disciples.  That's my life right now, though.  I'm at an in-between place in my year.  No longer summer.  Not yet autumn.  I'm not ready to let go of August, and I'm not ready to grab hold of September.  Limbo.  That's where I am.

Today's Classic Saint Marty finds me in that same limbo.  Between chlorophyll green and frost yellow.

This episode aired almost four years ago, before Saint Marty was Saint Marty.

August 21, 2010:  Saint Pius X

Two days before I start to teach for the fall semester at the university.  The weather has been swerving from grey and raining to cool and sunny to humid and hot all weekend.  It is the end of summer, even though there's still two weeks of August left.  These last days of summer always fill me with melancholy.  I know, I know.  No big surprise.  I usually spend this time planning and preparing the next three months of work for myself.  Read this book this week.  Papers to grade the next week.  Quizzes to create that day.  Reading journals to review the following weekend.  I am no longer free to do what I want.  I have obligations, 50 students depending on me.  Lesson plans.  Schedules.  Deadlines.  Less day.  More night.  Basically, everything that is the opposite of May, June, July, and August.  And don't even get me started on Christmas music and programs at church.  Yes, it starts this early.  You thought Wal-Mart was bad.

It doesn't help that I just started rereading Cormac McCarthy's The Road for class, which is one of the coldest, bleakest novels ever written.  The first time I read it, I was sitting by a pool in the middle of July during a heat wave, and I still found myself getting chilled.  If you haven't read the novel, you should.  It's one of my favorites.  It's about a father and son trying to reach the Pacific Ocean in post-apocalypse America.  They're starving and desperate.  They encounter bands of cannibals who capture and keep people like livestock, harvesting them for food.  The father and son have a handgun with one bullet for protection.  Oh, and the father is dying of some ailment that causes fits of bloody coughing.  This all takes place in a landscape of charred trees and baked earth, where sunlight is a memory and everything and everyone is covered in grey ash.  Constant snow and rain.

So, throw that uplifting piece of literature on top of my already end-of-summer melancholia, and you have the recipe for a pretty shitty day.  I know I should feel blessed in my life.  I mean, I'm an English major with advanced degrees, and I have jobs that don't require me to run a deep fryer.  Let's make it even simpler:  I have jobs that allow me to pay my bills.  In this economy, that's pretty damn good.  I'm feeling sorry for myself when some people I know don't have the money to make their next house payment.  That's pretty fucked up.

I used to look forward to fall and winter, the shortening of the days, the long reach of the night.  I waited for the maple leaves to turn yellow and orange, the evenings to ice the throat when you breathe.  I've always been a lover of the dark.  That may shock some of you.  I never opened windows or curtains in my house.  I was the neighborhood Boo Radley, with kids walking by my property and whispering stories about the crazy English professor who only comes out under the cover of darkness.

Nowadays, I look forward to those long summer days, when the sun is in the sky at 5 a.m. and sticks around until nearly 11 at night.  I like the bright heat, opening windows and airing out the dead moats of autumn and winter.  I crave those dog days when just shifting in a chair from one ass cheek to another can make you break a sweat.  The thing is, in the hot months, I don't have to do anything that makes me sweat.  School's out, and, aside from punching the clock at my second job, I have the freedom to simply...do...nothing.  That freedom comes to a close tomorrow.

I don't do well with things ending, especially things that I've enjoyed, like vacations or friendships or movies or books.  It's a selfish impulse, wanting a happiness to continue forever.  In his last will and testament, today's saint, Pius X, who was one of the first popes of the 20th century, made the following statement:  "I was born poor, I have lived in poverty, and I wish to die poor."  Maybe, because of my mood, I read those words as meaning poverty of body, mind, and spirit.  Right now, I'm clinging to the happiness of the last month or so.  It has been a time of stability and relative peace in my usually chaotic day-to-day.  I've really enjoyed that.  But usually, when things are going that well, the earth shifts, and I find myself in poverty again.

Poverty is not a bad thing.  It brings you back to the basics, makes you realize what wealth really is.  Wealth has nothing to do with the tangible--money or possessions.  It has everything to do with the intangible (peace, love, security, hope), because the tangible always ends up slipping away, like sea water through your fingers.

Cormac McCarthy writes in The Road, "All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain.  Their birth in grief and ashes.  So, he whispered to the sleeping boy.  I have you."  It's a father cleaving to his son.  A man cleaving to something pure, something sacred, something intangible.  It's the way, I imagine, God cleaves to us.

Through pain.  Through darkness.  In light like summer.  That's unchangeable.  That's wealth.

Confessions of Saint Marty

December 7: A Make-Up Blog

NOTE:  This post was written on December 7.

Yes, I am trying to make-up for the two posts I missed earlier this week.  It’s the Catholic schoolboy in me.  I’m sure nobody noticed that I missed blogging on Tuesday and Thursday, but I have this whole guilt thing working on my psyche.  I don’t like disappointing people, even if they’re imaginary readers of my mediocre blog.

I still don’t know whether my daughter’s friends are going to show up tonight for her sleepover.  At the moment, I’m in this limbo space.  I have a meeting this afternoon with my financial adviser over what to do with my meager retirement savings.  I’m awaiting a phone call from my daughter’s dance instructor; my daughter forgot her schoolbag at the dance studio, and I have to pick it up for her.  I’m also waiting to pick up my Christmas bonus from the health care system for which I work:  a turkey.  Actually, I have to pick up seven turkeys for various employees in my department.  I don’t know what I’m going to be doing this evening.  Either I’m escorting a group of twelve-year-old girls to a movie, or I’m comforting my daughter whose friends let her down.

I don’t like being in limbo.  I like my days to be very planned-out.

Remember, Marty is the patron saint of the anally retentive.

These girls look like they can limbo...