November 19: "Promenade," Bigfoot Poem, Normal

I don't mind being strange.  Don't mind if people stare at me because I'm being too loud or too friendly or too anything.  I've never really been the posterchild for "normal."  Instead, I write poems about cryptids and immortal jellyfish.  

Billy Collins takes his bird for a walk . . . 

Promenade

by: Billy Collins

As much as these erratic clouds keep sweeping

this way and that over the roof 

of this blue house bordered by hedges and fruit trees,

and as much as the world continues to run

in all directions with its head in its hands,

there is one particular robin who appears

every morning on a section of lawn

by the front door with such regularity

he could be a lighthouse keeper or a clock maker.

He could be Immanuel Kant were he not so small

and feathered, whom the citizens set their watches by

a he walked through town with his hair curled.

It takes a lot to startle this bird--

only a hand clap will make him rise

to one of the low branches of the nearby apple tree.

So I am wondering if he would allow me

to slip a small collar around his neck

and take him for a walk, first around the house

then later, when more trust has been gained,

into town where we would pass the locals 

with their children and orthodox dogs in tow,

and I would hold the robin lightly by a string

as we waited to cross the street, then he would hop

off the curb and off we would go

not caring about what people were saying

even when we stopped at a store front

to admire our strange reflections in the window.

I really don't know what "normal" is.  Some people think voting for a convicted felon to be President of the United States is normal.  Or appointing a person who was investigated for sex trafficking to be Attorney General.  Normal is in the eyes of the beholder.

I am sitting in my living room at the moment.  The Christmas tree is glowing in the corner.  Everyone else has gone to bed.  It's raining, and the trees are gauzed with fog.  It's been a day fraught with meetings and grading and teaching.  I haven't really had any downtime until now.  

All that is normal for me.

So is writing a Bigfoot poem.  Putting up Christmas decorations the day after Halloween.  Getting up at 5 a.m. to catch the livestreamed announcement of the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Watching the same movie every night for three months straight.  Eating warm tapioca pudding.

This weekend, I ran into an acquaintance I hadn't seen in several years. I made an off-handed comment to her about the last couple weeks being particularly difficult for a lot of people.  My acquaintance looked genuinely confused.  When I mentioned the election, she smiled and said, "I think you and I are on opposite sides on that, but that doesn't mean we can't be friends."

I agree with my acquaintance.  I can still be friends with people who hold different political and social ideals.  My father was a lifelong Republican and member of the John Birch Society.  We couldn't have been more different, and yet we still loved each other.  (That doesn't mean we got along 100% of the time.  Ours was problematic relationship.)

Here are some other things that SHOULD be normal in the United States:  kindness, compassion, acceptance, charity, tolerance, respect, courtesy, equality, love.  Unfortunately, over half the people in this "Christian" country think otherwise.  Hate has become as normal as grass or snow.  One way or the other, you're eventually going to step in it.  

Buckle up, disciples.  It's gonna be a bumpy four years.

Saint Marty may make drinking a glass of wine every night his new normal.

January 28: "The Dog Has Run Off Again," Obedience, Shoulds

Mary Oliver tries to tame something wild . . . 

The Dog Has Run Off Again

by:  Mary Oliver

and I should start shouting his name

and clapping my hands,

but it has been raining all night

and the narrow creek has risen

is a tawny turbulence is rushing along

over the mossy stones

is surging forward

with a sweet loopy music

and therefore I don't want to entangle it

with my own voice

calling summoning

my little dog to hurry back

look the sunlight and the shadows are chasing each other

listen how the wind swirls and leaps and dives up and down

who am I to summon his hard and happy body

his four white feet that love to wheel and pedal

through the dark leaves

to come back to walk by my side, obedient.

I'm tired tonight.  Really tired.  Like Mary Oliver's dog, it feels like I've been running for a long time.  In the poem, Oliver isn't frantic in her efforts to find her missing canine companion.  She knows he is doing what he loves to do--chasing sunlight and shadows, pedaling his white paws through piles of dark leaves.  She doesn't want to deprive him of these moments of wild abandon in which he indulges his wolf nature.

In life, I think everyone learns to succumb to obedience.  Listen to parents.  Go to bed on time.  Eat vegetables.  Go to school.  Do what's expected.  Homework.  Tests.  Papers.  Due dates.  Obey teachers' directions.  Follow the rules.  Receive good grades.  Graduate from high school with a bunch of scholarships.  Follow the rules at college, listen to the professors' directions.  Graduate summa cum laude.  Apply for a good job.  Get hired.  Work hard.  Listen to the boss.  Get promoted.  Follow the company's business plan.  Get promoted again.  Work 30 or 40 years.  Retire.  Enjoy the few years remaining, doing whatever the heart desires.  Die.

That's life on a leash.

I'm not saying that this is necessarily the best way to live.  It's certainly the safest way.  The end, however, will always be the same.

I haven't lived an obedient life.  Like Oliver's dog, I've run off toward the rushing, rain-swollen stream.  If I had lived a life on a leash, I would now be working as a computer programmer somewhere, probably making a lot more money than I have ever made in my entire life.  Or I would have a PhD and tenure-track position at a university, making a lot more money than I have ever made in my entire life.  Or I would be running my father's plumbing business, spending my days fixing water heaters and furnaces, unclogging sewers, probably making a lot more money than I have ever made in my entire life.

However, I would be absolutely miserable, despite making a lot more money than I have ever made in my entire life.  (If you can't tell, lack of money has always been a part of my adult life.)

Rules are good.  Rules should be followed, to avoid things like insurrections and deaths during a global pandemic, among other things.  Sometimes, however, people misconstrue rules with shoulds.  As in, I really should make the bed.  Or I really should study something practical in college like computer programming or nursing.  Or I really should balance my checkbook.  (Do people still have checkbooks?)  Or I really should eat salad for dinner tonight.  You get the idea.

I've learned to avoid "should" thinking.  "Should" thinking is all about social expectations.  If everyone in the world stayed under the heavy thumb of "should" thinking, things like art and poetry and music and wonder wouldn't exist.  Think about it.  When was the last time someone told you that you should go out into the woods to see the snow in the branches?  Or you should go down to the beach to watch the sunrise?  Or you should write a poem or listen to a song?  People don't say things like that.

Instead, it's "you should do the dishes" or "you should eat grapefruit for breakfast" or "you should lose some weight."  These are expectations based on what is "normal."

And I'm here to tell you that I'd rather live an abnormal life and be happy than a normal life and be bored or, even worse, miserably lost.  Everyone has to be obedient sometimes.  Follow the rules of decorum and etiquette, at home or school or in the workplace.  However, it's not a bad thing to get a little . . . freaky every once in a while, as long as it does no harm to yourself or anybody else.

Today, I was pretty obedient.  I had a lot to get done, for work and school.  And all of that obedience left me exhausted.  In a little while, I'm going to get a little freaky.  I'm Zooming with a friend to record an episode of my podcast Lit for Christmas.  The format of that podcast can be summed up as follows:  I get drunk (lit), discuss Christmas literature, and write some poetry with my cohost.  

So, if you see me tomorrow, I may look a little rough.  Don't worry about me.

Saint Marty is just recovering from a night of not being on a leash. 

May 24: Barbecue, Normal, Poem from "Kyrie"

This afternoon, I had a socially distanced Memorial Day weekend barbecue at my parents' house.  My wife, kids, and I sat on the back porch, six feet away from my sisters and mother, and ate hot dogs and bratwurst and watermelon. 

We hadn't been together like that since mid-March.  Yes, we were careful, even though my sister, Rose, who has Down syndrome, really didn't comprehend the six-foot distance rule and tried several times to approach and hug us.  It wasn't "normal" by any means.  But it was as close as we could get to the Sunday dinners we used to have pre-pandemic.

I've heard people bridling against the term "new normal" recently.  Sometimes that bridling borders on anger.  I understand the emotions behind this reaction.  It's a symptom of mourning.  People are grieving all that has been lost because of Covid-19:  making a quick trip to the grocery store to satisfy your craving for Cheetos; stopping to check on your elderly parents on your way home from work; sitting in a church pew beside your neighbors on a Sunday morning and catching up; going for a walk and not having to wear a face mask; attending community parades and events.  All these things have become part of history for now.  The world has shifted, and not gradually.  The change was seismic.  A rift in the fabric of society that appeared almost overnight.  And it has left all of humankind reeling from the loss.

Yet I don't think it's healthy to maintain a death-hold on the "normal" we used to know.  Doing that will simply prolong the pandemic.  By refusing to put on that face mask, insisting on gathering in bars or restaurants or churches, people are not re-establishing normal.  They are just refusing to deal with their grief (and also spreading the virus more, pushing us toward another complete shutdown).  It's like setting a place at the dinner table for a person who has died.  It may feel comforting to cling to the habit, but the deceased person's chair will still remain empty.

So let's not think of "old" normal or "new" normal.  Let's not think of normal at all.  If you know my family, normal is not a word that comes to mind anyway.  Instead, let's think about how to respect each other, support each other, love each other.  That's what will get us all through this.

Tonight, I celebrate time spent with family.  Safely.  Filled with laughter and teasing.  The miracle of togetherness.

And for that, Saint Marty gives thanks.

poem from Kyrie

by:  Ellen Bryant Voigt

What were they thinking--everyone we knew,
in school, in church, took me aside
to praise--to me--my sister, as if
I were another of her parents,
or else they were, that proud and fond:
aren't you lucky, isn't she gifted,
doesn't she look grand in her new blue suit?
I had a new suit cut from the same bolt,
quick mind, good heart--vivid blossoms
in other light--yes yes, she did, she was,
what were they thinking?  Terrible,
to be the one who should have died.

May 20: Gentlemanliness, Hippie/Socialist Rebel, Normal

Young Thomas Merton settles into his new school . . .

Oakham, Oakham!  The grey murk of the winter evenings in that garret where seven or eight of us moiled around in the gaslight, among the tuck-boxes, noisy, greedy, foul-mouthed, fighting and shouting!  There was one who had a ukulele which he did not know how to play.  And Pop used to send me the brown rotogravure sections of the New York Sunday papers, and we would cut out the pictures of the actresses and paste them up on the walls.

And I toiled with Greek verbs.  And we drank raisin wine and ate potato chips until we fell silent and sat apart, stupefied and nauseated.  And under the gaslight I would write letters to Father in the hospital, letters on cream-colored notepaper, stamped with the school crest in blue.

After three months it was better.  I was moved up into the Upper Fifth, and changed to a new study downstairs, with more light, though just as crowded and just as much of a mess.  And we had Cicero and European history--all about the nineteenth century, with a certain amount of cold scorn poured on Pio Nono.  In the English class we read The Tempest and the Nun's Priest's Tale and the Pardoner's Tale and Buggy Jerwood , the school chaplain, tried to teach us trigonometry.  With me, he failed.  Sometimes he would try to teach us something about religion.  But in this he also failed.

In any case, his religious teaching consisted mostly in more or less vague ethical remarks, an obscure mixture of ideals of English gentlemanliness and his favorite notions of personal hygiene.  Everybody knew that his class was liable to degenerate into a demonstration of some practical points about rowing, with Buggy sitting on the table and showing us how to pull an oar.

There was no rowing at Oakham, since there was no water.  But the chaplain had been a rowing "blue" at Cambridge, in his time.  He was a tall, powerful, handsome man, with hair greying at the temples, and a big English chin, and a broad, uncreased brow, with sentences like "I stand for fair-play and good sportsmanship" written all over it.

His greatest sermon was on the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians--and a wonderful chapter indeed.  But his exegesis was a bit strange.  However, it was typical of him and, in a way, of his whole church.  "Buggy's" interpretation of the word "charity" in this passage (and in the whole Bible) was that it simply stood for "all that we mean when we call a chap a 'gentleman.'"  In other words, charity meant good-sportsmanship, cricket, the decent thing, wearing the right kind of clothes, using the proper spoon, not being a cad or a bounder.

There he stood, in the plain pulpit, and raised his chin above the heads of all the rows of boys in black coats, and said:  "One might go through this chapter of St. Paul and simply substitute the word 'gentleman' for 'charity' wherever it occurs.  'If I talk with the tongues of men and of angels, and be not a gentleman, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal . . . A gentleman is patient, is kind, a gentleman envieth not, dealeth not perversely, is not puffed up . . . A gentleman never falleth away.' . . ."

And so it went.  I will not accuse him of finishing the chapter with "Now there remain faith, hope, and gentlemanliness, and the greatest of these is gentlemanliness . . ." although it was the logical term of his reasoning.  

The boys listened tolerantly to these thoughts.  But I think St. Peter and the twelve apostles would have been rather surprised at the concept that Christ had been scourged and beaten by soldiers, cursed and crowned with thorns and subjected to unutterable contempt and finally nailed to the Cross and left to bleed to death in order that we might all become gentlemen.

Merton is pretty good at skewering the pretentious stuffed shirts of English (and French) society.  But he is able to do it without being mean.  He simply reports the facts and then follows them to their natural, absurd conclusions.  So, the passage from First Corinthians becomes an endorsement of English gentlemanliness instead of an exhortation to love and charity.

Of course, this also proves something else:  people have been using the Bible and Christian teachings for their own agendas since Christ was put in the tomb.  These days in the United States, you don't have to look too far to find people doing terrible things and justifying their actions by labeling them "Christian."  Frankly, I'm surprised that some "religious" group hasn't used the current pandemic as an excuse to say that the Lord hath loosed this plague upon us in punishment for allowing illegal immigrants to live within our borders or for sanctioning gay marriage.  Don't laugh.  It may happen.

Being a life-long Christian, I get a little tired of this kind of perversion of the teachings of Christ.  The Jesus I learned about in catechism told everyone to feed the hungry, take care of the poor and sick, shelter the homeless.  He was kind of a sandal-wearing, itinerant hippie/socialist rebel.  Peace and love.  Not war and hate.  Share what you have.  Distribute your wealth.  Because you can't buy your way into heaven.  If you've gone to Sunday school for any length of time, all of this should sound pretty familiar.

So, we have a world right now in crisis, brought to its knees by a microscopic organism.  Millions of people out of work.  Hundreds of thousands of people sick and dying.  Yet, the thing foremost on people's minds at the moment is being forced to wear masks in public, and, in conjunction with that, not being able to go to T. J. Maxx or Cracker Barrel.  I went to a Zoom meeting a few nights ago where someone said, "I just want things to go back to normal."

I want to consider that comment for a moment.  The normal that we had before this pandemic hit was a world on the brink of climate disaster.  Hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing oppressive governments because of (among other things) genocide.  In the United States, we had young people living under crushing student debt, and a healthcare system more concerned with profit than healing.  Rampant racism and homophobia and misogyny and Islamophobia.  All normal pre-pandemic.

I think we have an opportunity here to reconsider normal.  Maybe establish something closer to what the sandal-wearing hippie had in mind.  A normal based on love and charity instead of greed and power.  Where people realize that wearing a mask isn't an infringement on their rights, but an act of caring and respect.  Perhaps it will be a normal where wealth isn't accumulated and hoarded but distributed to the unemployed and under-employed.  Think of that--everyone watching out for each other, loving each other.  If you've gone to Sunday school for any length of time, that should sound pretty familiar.

I went for a long walk today with my son and puppy.  We hiked what's called the Iron Ore Heritage Trail, which is a 47-mile trail that stretches across the Marquette Iron Range in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.  We only hiked about four miles of it, from our hometown to the neighboring town.  It was a 70-degree day, and there was birdsong and insect song and wind song.  And we ran into other hikers, as well as bikers and picnickers.  Every person had a smile and kind word.  We all kept our six-foot distances out of respect and love, and the world felt right.  Kind.  Good.

This is a normal I wouldn't mind maintaining.  A miraculous, new one.  One that hippie from Nazareth would be proud of.

For that Saint Marty gives thanks today.

March 13-14: The Whole Miserable Journey, Normal, Be the Solution

Thomas Merton on the miseries of travelling with his family . . .

Perhaps the worst day of all was the day we climbed the Jungfrau--in a train.  All the way up I was arguing with Pop, who thought we were being cheated, for he contended that the Jungfrau was not nearly so high as all the other mountains around us, and he had embarked on the excursion on the more or less tacit assumption that the Jungfrau was the highest mountain around these parts:  and now look, the Eiger and the Monch were much higher!  I was vehement in explaining that the Jungfrau looked lower because it was further away, but Pop did not believe in my theory of perspective.

By the time we got to the Jungfrau joch, everybody was ready to fall down from nervous exhaustion, and the height made Bonnemaman faint, and Pop began to feel sick, and I had a big crisis of tears in the dining room, and then when Father and I and John Paul walked out into the blinding white-snow field without dark glasses we all got headaches, and so the day, as a whole, was completely horrible.

Then, in Interlaken, although Pop and Bonnemaman had the intense consolation of being able to occupy the same rooms that had been used only a few months before by Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, John Paul humiliated the whole family by falling fully dressed into a pond full of gold-fish and running though the hotel dripping with water and green-weeds.  Finally, we were all scared out of our wits when one of the maids, exhausted by the strain of waiting on so many hundreds of English and American tourists, fainted while carrying a loaded tray, and crashed to the floor in a tornado of dishes right behind my chair.

We were glad to get out of Switzerland, and back into France, but by the time reached Avignon, I had developed such a disgust for sightseeing that I would not leave the hotel to go and see the Palace of the Popes.  I remained in the room and read Tarzan of the Apes, finishing the whole book before Father and John Paul returned from what was probably the only really interesting thing we had struck in the whole miserable journey.  

People in close proximity to each other can get on each other's nerves.  Thomas Merton learns this the hard way--travelling through Switzerland with his grandfather and grandmother and little brother.  They argue.  Get sick.  Humiliated.  Exhausted.  Being that close to each other, with no escape, can drive a person to a little Edgar Rice Burroughs.  Escape comes in many forms.  Merton chooses literature.

I have had quite the day of busyness.  In this time of pandemic and mass hysteria, I went ahead today with all of my normal weekly activities.  I cleaned at church.  I practiced music for a Lutheran church service I'm playing for tomorrow morning.  I played for Mass this afternoon.  Had pizza for dinner.  It was . . . normal.

Yes, the future is uncertain.  More so than normal.  I have no idea what tomorrow is going to bring.  Or the next.  Everyone seems to have lost their minds a little at the moment.  We aren't confined to our homes.  Yet.  I can get into my car, drive to a store, and buy groceries if I need to.  (Don't know what's left on the shelves at Meijer anymore, but I can still drive there and see.)  There may come a time when that kind of freedom is curtailed a little.  Or a lot.  I don't know.

Here's the thing.  I love my family.  I want them safe, healthy.  I would do anything to insure that, including holing up for weeks with them in my house, living on Ramen and Netflix and poetry.  Would we get on each other's nerves?  Most certainly.  Would we yell at each other?  Yup.  Would I grab a book from my bookshelf--something by Dickens--and escape for a little while?  Indeed.  And, eventually, it would start to feel . . . normal.

I have good friends who are panicking right now, as are a lot of usually level-headed individuals.  The thing that worries me about this panic is that it may start to feel normal.  Living from one hysterical social media post to another.  Glued to our television sets, watching a map of the United States become saturated with outbreaks of COVID-19.  If any of my disciples reading this post remember the days following the 9-11 attacks in the United States, watching news reports 24 hours a day, seven days a week, became a national past time.  I see the current situation quickly developing into something similar.

I have a friend whose father is a retired police detective.  She told me once that one of her father's sayings is, "Safety is just a feeling."  As we all sit in our homes, with our pantries full of toilet paper and pasta and Gatorade, we feel safe.  Prepared.  And that's good.  Our families are ready for the zombie apocalypse.  It provides us some peace of mind, which really is in short supply at the moment in most places.

The people we love most are the ones who can drive us most crazy, as Merton points out in the passage above.  They know how to get under our skins and pluck our nerves like guitar strings.  Yet, those people are the reason we work and sweat and live and die.  They are what make our lives normal, however that is defined.  They are the reason we panic and worry when our normal lives shift or are threatened.  We want our loved ones to be safe, no matter how much they irritate us.

Here is what I have been doing to stem the wave of worry that is sweeping across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the world:  every time I begin to worry, I pray instead.  Worry isn't productive.  It helps absolutely nothing.  Prayer, on the other hand, allows me to feel as if I'm helping in some small way, instead of contributing to the national toilet paper shortage.

So, faithful disciples, huddled in your homes, waiting for the coronavirus to come knocking on your front doors, Saint Marty is praying for all of you.  Wishing you good health, abundant love.  Safety, in whatever form that takes.

Keep calm.  Wash your hands.  Check on your elderly neighbors.  Pray.  Be the solution, not the problem.

February 18: Funeral Hangover, Rough Draft, "Mom Gets Emergency C-Section Because Twins Were Fighting Inside Her Womb"

Well, I have had a few hours of sleep.  I'm still feeling really tired.  I've been telling people that I'm suffering from a funeral hangover.  All the emotions.  All the visitors and friends and family.  All the funeral home and church doings.  Now, all the leftovers and thank you notes.

I have taken two more days off work.  Right now, that doesn't seem like enough.  I've sort of been ambushed by sadness at various times throughout today.  My father was 90 years old.  He hadn't been doing well for a while.  I pretty much thought that I was prepared for this loss.  Yet, sitting in church this morning, listening to the hymns, I found myself overwhelmed.

I told myself that I wasn't going to write another blog post about the loss of my father today.  I'm not the kind of person who wallows.  After a loss, I try to reassemble the pieces of my life and move on.  That's more my style.  I want normal back.

So, my normal today is correcting quizzes, answering emails, reading a good book, watching the Winter Olympics, and maybe having a mug (or two) of special hot chocolate.  My daughter and her boyfriend are sitting on the couch, watching TV.  My son is taking a bath.  Tomorrow, my kids will go to school (if the weather doesn't turn sour); my wife will go to work; and I will teach tomorrow night.  Normal Monday.

Perhaps I have unrealistic expectations.  I mean, a death has a way of rewriting your life.  I guess I'm in the middle of a rough draft right now.  Not too sure about what my final draft is going to look like. 

Saint Marty has a poem for you tonight.  Rough or final draft?  You be the judge.

Mom Gets Emergency C-Section

Because Twins Were Fighting

Inside Her Womb *

by:  Martin Achatz

Love and hate come from the same egg,

conceived in moans and sweat,

split like wildfire by a dirt road

or the sky by a tongue of lightning.

They taste the same, sweet honey

with black sting, a slow tequila

burn in the belly, swelling, blind

as midnight surf, inevitable as death.

Love calls to hate with blood, plosive

heart driving jealous hunger into DNA

like a suicide bomber, dancing

on cartilage and bone in temple

thunder, arms growing fists,

lungs swimming with salt, promised

sobs.  Locked in a struggle as urgent

as sex, love and hate join, part, divide,

multiply, kick, and caress until

gestate violence rolls the mother

land, tears chromosomes and cells,

a civil war genetic in terror,

ancient as desert sand, as salmon

charging silver to the spawn,

that place of froth and foam

where mud and rib first coupled

and murder crawled from the sea,

naked and roaring for the black

heavens to open and rain

a rapture of fingers and light.

* title taken from Weekly World News

August 20: Nothin' to Shake a Stick At, New Cartoon

I didn't do nothin' to shake a stick at today.  Just a normal Saturday.  I had breakfast with my family and sisters, played with my son for a while on the playground, put my son down for a nap, went for a run, went to church.  I must sound like the most boring blogger in the world right now, but I am actually enjoying the lack of drama in my life.  I've lived a soap-opera existence for far too long.  I give thanks for the fact that my wife's bipolar seems under control, and with it her sexual and internet addictions.  Life is normal.

Of course, being a basically pessimisitc person, now that I've typed the paragraph above, I feel like I'm somehow daring God to do something to screw up my lovely boredom.  I try not to be a superstitious person, but I don't like saying things are going well for me.  It smacks of hubris.  I know my life can turn on a dime.  It's happened many times before.  For instance, the day after I defended my MFA thesis, I found out about my wife's sexual addiction.  The next year-and-a-half was pure torture.  I went from one of the best days of my life to one of the worst times in my life.  It happened in the space of a few hours.

Why am I typing this?  To remind myself to enjoy happiness, revel in the mundane, give thanks for the inconsequential.  Life can come along and bitch slap you back to hard reality in the flit of a hummingbird's wing.  Hug your old tennis shoe tonight.  A tornado may take it away from you tomorrow.

I have a new cartoon for you.  I think it's friggin' hilarious.

Saint Marty's going to go enjoy himself some Lawrence Welk now.

Confessions of Saint Marty