September 5: "Poetry," Illness, Reality Check

It has been a day of illness for me.  At first, I thought I was suffering from allergies--runny nose, cough, blocked ears.  As the day and my symptoms progressed (fever, aches, more mucous than Slimer from Ghostbusters), I surrounded myself with an Appalachian range of used Kleenexes and tissues.  My eyes are gushing, and my throat stings.

Before you ask, I did test for COVID.  Twice.  Both tests came back negative.  So, I can't even claim that distinction.  Basically, I just have a very nasty cold.  Annoyingly ordinary.  Nothing to write home or a poem about.  

Billy Collins tries to define poetry . . . 

Poetry

by: Billy Collins

Call it a field where the animals

who were forgotten by the Ark

come to graze under the evening clouds.

Or a cistern where the rain that fell

before history trickles over a concrete lip.

However you see it,

this is no place to set up

the three-legged easel of realism

or make a reader climb

over the many fences of a plot.

Let the portly novelist

with his noisy typewriter

describe the city where Francine was born,

how Albert read the paper on the train,

how curtains were blowing in the bedroom.

Let the playwright with her torn cardigan

and a dog curled on the rug

move the characters

from the wings to the stage

to face the many-eyed darkness of the house.

Poetry is no place for that.

We have enough to do

complaining about the price of tobacco,

passing the dripping ladle,

and singing songs to a bird in a cage.

We are busy doing nothing--

and all we need for that is an afternoon,

a rowboat under a blue sky,

and maybe a man fishing from a stone bridge,

or better still, nobody on that bridge at all.

I couldn't even be a poet tonight, even though Collins says that poets are "busy doing nothing."  I didn't even have the energy to do nothing.  I was supposed to lead an online poetry workshop this evening.  After debating with myself for close to an hour, I came to the conclusion that I would have looked like extra from The Walking Dead if I got on Zoom and tried to write with anyone.  

So I simply grabbed a pillow and blanket and fell asleep on the couch.  Every once in a while, I would climb to the surface of consciousness long enough to take a drink of water or blow my nose.

Eventually, I woke up and decided to type this post.  Now that I'm done, I'm ready to collapse.  Literally.  I think these last few weeks of little sleep and lots of work have caught up with me.  My body is giving me a reality check.  

Here's the reality:  Saint Marty is exhausted.

August 30: "The Literary Life," Poetry, Prime Rib

I woke up this morning, as the blues singers like to boast, and the first thing I thought of was my daughter's good news.  (If you don't know what the news was, read yesterday's post.)  It buoyed me as I set about doing what I needed to do today.

I didn't work at the library, believe it or not, but I did edit a podcast for the library this morning.  I also had to troubleshoot some technical issues for the library this evening.  Aside from that, it was all about the finishing details on my book manuscript for my editor.  I sent him my author pictures (thanks to my friend, Ronnie, for those); wrote a short biography and description for the back cover; and received my final blurb.  This weekend, I'm going to make one more pass through the manuscript for typographical errors, and then I'm planning on letting it go.

All of that took most of the morning and afternoon.  And then my family and I went out for a steak dinner (my daughter's choice) to celebrate.  That was my literary life today.

Here's Billy Collins' typical day in his literary life . . .

The Literary Life

by: Billy Collins

I woke up this morning,
as the blues singers like to boast,
and the first thing to enter my mind,
as the dog was licking my face, was Coventry Patmore.

Who was Coventry Patmore?
I wondered, as I rose
and set out on my journey to the encyclopedia
passing some children and a bottle cap on the way.

Everything seemed more life-size than usual.
Light in the shape of windows
hung on the walls next to the paintings
of birds and horses, flowers and fish.

Coventry Patmore,
I’m coming to get you, I hissed,
as I entered the library like a man stepping
into a freight elevator of science and wisdom.

How many things have I looked up
in a lifetime of looking things up?
I wondered, as I set the book on the piano
and began turning its large, weightless pages.

How would the world look
if all its things were neatly arranged
in alphabetical order? I wondered,
as I found the P section and began zeroing in.

How long before I would forget Coventry Patmore’s
dates and the title of his long poem
on the sanctity of married love?
I asked myself as I closed the door to that room

and stood for a moment in the kitchen,
taking in the silvery toaster, the bowl of lemons,
and the white cat, looking as if
he had just finished his autobiography.

Life rarely affords people real reasons to celebrate.  I suppose you can celebrate washing your car or mowing your lawn.  But I don't see too many people dancing because they've had colonoscopies or their wisdom teeth removed.  Nobody throws a party after cleaning the bathroom or defrosting the fridge.  Maybe we should celebrate the small things in life more, but we don't.

But, when your kids see their dreams come true, it's time for prime rib and bacon-cheddar fries.  That's what we did tonight.  And my daughter still looked stunned, as if she doesn't realize how amazing she is.  

That was Saint Marty's literary day:  podcast, poetry, and prime rib with his family.  

June 10: "Sunday Morning," Imperfection, "Haunted"

Billy Collins' cat waits patiently . . .

Sunday Morning

by: Billy Collins

Opening a book of poems

about flowers,

the cat amuses herself

while she waits for me to wake up.

Poetry has been distracting me all day.  Revising poems.  Arranging poems.  Reading poems.  Revising those poems again.  If I had a wealthy patron, I'd have zero problems just staring out my window and scribbling in my journal for extended periods.  I truly can amuse myself for hours and hours with poetry.

Tonight, I performed in a show at the library where I (you guessed it!) read poetry again, as well as acted in skits, sang, and told stories.  I was lucky enough to share the stage with some really talented writers, musicians, and actors, as well.

Near the end of the show (theme:  imperfection), I told a story about my sister and read the poem I wrote for her funeral.  As soon as I started speaking, I knew it was a mistake.  I could feel the emotion climbing into my throat to choke me, which it did.  I could barely speak by the end of it, and I felt like an idiot.

After the show, everyone was incredibly kind to me, with hugs and thank yous and words of encouragement.  And I still felt like an idiot.

Next time, Saint Marty is going to talk about something safe.  Like politics.

Haunted

by: Martin Achatz

I wonder if my sister's ghost

gets tired of my visits to her

grave, rolls over, pretends

to be resting in peace when

she sees my car pull through

the cemetery gates.

March 15: "Poetry," Aunt Aileen, Joy at My Joy

Billy Collins' writing process . . .

Poetry

by:  Billy Collins

As if it were not hard enough,

whenever my pencil

moves along the page,

the pink eraser end points up,

a little finger wagging,

reminding me of our appointment.

Writing has been my life since I was very young.  Words help me understand life, the world, my place in the world.  My memories are not preserved in snapshots and photos.  They are recorded in poems and short stories and essays and blog posts.  When I read one of my old poems, I experience all the emotions and sensations that inspired me to write it.  Poetry is my time capsule, I guess.

Of course, poems are revised and shaped.  Rarely do they emerge fully formed.  (It happens, but not very often.)  When I sit down to write anything, I'm not really about what is emerging on the page or screen.  I'm about what is beyond the veil of those words, that shining mansion on the hill, if you will.  Whatever that mansion is.  I approach it, eraser in hand, ready to make it as beautiful and true as I can.

Yesterday, I wrote about my Aunt Aileen.  I tried to approach her shining mansion as close as I could with my words.  I'm not sure I truly succeeded in capturing her spirit and importance in my childhood and young adulthood.  As always, truth is elusive, and I often feel like Ahab chasing the white whale.

Aunt Aileen took her last breath around 3:30 this morning.  

Nothing I write in this post will come close to paying due honor and homage to this woman.  She blazed through times of great joy and great heartbreak.  At least in my life. 

I'm going to type a phrase now that is fraught with problems--a phrase dependent on the fallibility of the human brain:  I remember.

I remember when I was struggling during a terrible breakup with my girlfriend (who has now been my wife for close to 30 years).  Aunt Aileen had met my future wife, liked her a lot.  (Truth be told:  Aunt Aileen liked everyone.)  I spent almost a month that breakup summer at Aunt Aileen's house downstate, moping, wallowing, crying.  I was not a fun person to be around.  I don't know how my aunt put up with me, but she did.  And she gave me a lot of ice cream.

My girlfriend and I eventually reconciled.  About a year later, at my sister's wedding reception, I was dancing with Aunt Aileen.  The DJ's music was loud, and I could barely hear what Aunt Aileen was saying to me.  She put her mouth close to my ear and said, "I'm so happy things worked out for you."

That's who Aunt Aileen was.  Wanting everyone to live their best lives.

I'm holding onto that--her joy at my joy.  Even though she struggled the last years of her life, physically and mentally, Aunt Aileen will always be, in my mind's eye, my dance partner that evening, celebrating my happiness.

The world is a little bit darker tonight for Saint Marty, and the heavens are a little bit brighter.

March 3: "Teenager," Johnny Carson, Poetry

Billy Collins remembers what it's like to be a . . . 

Teenager

by:  Billy Collins

Even a branch on an evergreen

may take an unexpected turn

up, down, or sideways

and grow substantial

in some weird direction.

Yes, being a teenager isn't easy.  You're not quite a kid anymore, but you're also not an adult.  You're in this limbo where everyone is trying to tell you what you should do, who you should be.  I started college when I was 17 years old.  I didn't know shit.  

On my first day at the university, I lost my car for about an hour.  Couldn't remember where I parked.  I desperately wanted to be a writer, but my mother convinced me to major in computer science instead.  "There's a future in computers," she said.  And she was right.  However, my evergreen branch grew in a substantially weird direction--English, grad school, poetry.

I think most adults forget the kinds of pressures teenagers face.  Somehow, when you hit senior year in high school, you're supposed to have it all figured out--education, job, career.  It was actually a little paralyzing for me.  I spent many a sleepless night watching Johnny Carson and reading The Catcher in the Rye.  

As the father of teenagers, I've tried to give my kids guidance based on my own struggles as a young adult.  I'm happy to report that neither of my offspring want to be poets.  My daughter is now a year or so away from medical school, and my 15-year-old son is talking about cyber security.  I don't see many sonnets in either of their futures.  And that's okay.  Like any parent, I just want my kids to be happy, no matter what.

Do I regret the weird direction my life took?  Absolutely not.  I will never make a six-figure salary.  Nor do I anticipate a day when I won't have to worry about car payments or mortgage payments or income taxes.  There's a chance I will never see a cent of the money I've paid into Social Security.  (By the way, that's my money.  Not the government's.  If Social Security is done away with, I expect a VERY LARGE check from the U. S. Treasury for all the money they owe me.  But that's the subject of another blog post.)

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that I want my kids to chase their dreams, no matter what.  I'm the son of a plumber, and I became a poet.  

What do the children of saints become?  

Saint Marty can't wait to find out.

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 23: Talk Aloud, One-Person Concert, Resurrection

Santiago talks to himself . . . 

He did not remember when he had first started to talk aloud when he was by himself. He had sung when he was by himself in the old days and he had sung at night sometimes when he was alone steering on his watch in the smacks or in the turtle boats. He had probably started to talk aloud, when alone, when the boy had left. But he did not remember. When he and the boy fished together they usually spoke only when it was necessary. They talked at night or when they were storm-bound by bad weather. It was considered a virtue not to talk unnecessarily at sea and the old man had always considered it so and respected it. But now he said his thoughts aloud many times since there was no one that they could annoy.

I've always talked to myself.  When I'm working in my office at the library, I mutter expletives, give myself pep talks.  Streaming a movie or TV show, I frequently have conversations with the actors on screen, especially if it's a horror flick ("No, no!  Don't go in there, you idiot!!")  If I'm writing a new poem, I am a virtual one-person concert, reading and rereading, humming, whispering, sometimes singing.  Because poetry is all about sound and music.  

Tonight, I spent most of the evening working on a new poem.  I often wonder if Mozart or Bach did the same thing when they were composing something.  Singing phrases over and over, trying out different words for their librettos.  I bet they were virtual symphonies, creating each instrument and movement.  Mozart whistling the piccolo part.  Bach humming the violin solo.  

I don't have a new poem to share this evening.  It is still under construction, so it's in no shape to put in this post.  My whole point is that talking to yourself is sometimes the only way to solve problems, whether it be a poem problem or math problem.  Putting breath to it makes it more concrete.  Tangible.  

I think that's why people sometimes don't want to talk about traumatic events that have happened to them.  To put words to such things brings them back to life.  Perhaps it's the breath in the lungs or the syllables on the tongue.  Suddenly, resurrection occurs, and the past is dragged into the present.  

Of course, poetry is all about truth.  Truth is sometimes joyous.  Sometimes, it's painful.  A poem can be both.  In fact, I think the act of writing a poem is an attempt to take dross and spin it into gold.  To create the beautiful ugly.  Putting words to something difficult is a way of gaining a little control over it.  Of making it less scary, more manageable.  

That's why I talk to myself.  I'm doing it right now, speaking the words that I'm typing.  It's my attempt to understand a universe that, at the moment, seems arbitrarily cruel and stupid.  Or maybe it's just the humans inhabiting it.  Language is my way of trying to figure out the truth.  My truth.  About suffering.  Love.  Joy.  Despair.

Saint Marty will probably be talking to himself for the rest of his life.

Photo by Christine Saari

June 10: Three Hundred Fathoms of Line, Gen Ed, Practicality Over Creativity

Santiago starts fishing . . . 

The boy had given him two fresh small tunas, or albacores, which hung on the two deepest lines like plummets and, on the others, he had a big blue runner and a yellow jack that had been used before; but they were in good condition still and had the excellent sardines to give them scent and attractiveness. Each line, as thick around as a big pencil, was looped onto a green-sapped stick so that any pull or touch on the bait would make the stick dip and each line had two forty-fathom coils which could be made fast to the other spare coils so that, if it were necessary, a fish could take out over three hundred fathoms of line.

Now the man watched the dip of the three sticks over the side of the skiff and rowed gently to keep the lines straight up and down and at their proper depths. It was quite light and any moment now the sun would rise.

It has been a long day.  Days are starting earlier and earlier, and the sun sets later and later.  I suppose Santiago would love all this daylight.  More time to be out on the sea.

Yes, I am talking about weather.  I am settling into summer right now.  This happens every four or so months.  Each semester, I rearrange my life, change my hours and schedule.  Different classes at different times, fall and winter.  Sometimes summer.  In a couple weeks, the second summer session at the university starts, and I'll start teaching a section of Intro to Film.

I spent quite a few hours today revising my syllabus to meet quality standards.  Something to do with the switch to a Gen Ed curriculum a few years ago.  If you don't know what that means, I'm not the person to explain it.  Long story short, Liberal Arts education is going the way of the woolly mammoth.  And that's not a good thing.

I don't have anything against STEM classes.  But, nowadays, there seems to be a devaluation of art and writing and music and poetry.  And math and physics and biology and other "hard" sciences are, for some reason, prioritized.  Poetry?  Forget about it.  Better to know how to program a computer or name all the bones in the human hand.  Practicality over creativity.

At the end of the day, however, most people don't sit down on the couch and consider commutative and binary operations in abstract algebra.  Nope.  They watch movies.  Read books.  Listen to music.  Go to plays.  Science may keep us alive, but art is what we live for.  What gives our lives meaning.

That's my wisdom tonight, as we approach the summer equinox.  After I'm done typing this post, I'm going to read some poetry before I go to bed.

Because Saint Marty needs to dream.

March 1: His Greatness and His Glory, Wonder, King Kong

Santiago makes a vow to kill something greater and more glorious than himself . . . 

"I had better re-bait that little line out over the stern," he said. "If the fish decides to stay another night I will need to eat again and the water is low in the bottle. I don't think I can get anything but a dolphin here. But if I eat him fresh enough he won't be bad. I wish a flying fish would come on board tonight. But I have no light to attract them. A flying fish is excellent to eat raw and I would not have to cut him up. I must save all my strength now. Christ, I did not know he was so big."

"I'll kill him though," he said. "In all his greatness and his glory."

Although it is unjust, he thought. But I will show him what a man can do and what a man endures.

I think human beings have a kind of innate urge to kill or eliminate wonder.  That's what Santiago is talking about doing in this passage.  He admires the great fish.  Knows that what he is about to do is, perhaps, wrong.  Like erasing a charcoal study by Leonardo da Vinci.  

Think of all the things that used to exist that no longer exist because of humankind.  The dodo.  Atlas bear.  Laughing owl.  Caribbean monk seal.  Caspian tiger.  Western black rhinoceros.  Golden toad.  I'm not even going to get into all the places on this planet that we have maimed  and mined and mutilated.  Close to 30 years ago, I visited Hanauma Bay in Hawaii.  It was beautiful, but, even then, the coral was bleaching white because of tourism and climate change.

Humans cannot simply admire and appreciate.  They must exploit and monetize the wonders of the world.  One of my favorite movies as a kid was King Kong.  The old one, with Fay Wray, although I got into the whole striptease Jessica Lange did with Kong in the 1976 remake.  That movie, for me, sort of encapsulates what is wrong with human beings.  Rather than simply being stunned and awed by Kong, Carl Denham has to capture and drag him to New York City, where he turns Kong into a Broadway sideshow attraction.  

There it is:  a human being putting a price tag on something wondrous and, in the process, destroying it.  It's a pretty good metaphor for our world today.  

I'm a poet.  I will never make a whole lot of money as a poet, unless something miraculous happens like Joe Biden choosing me as the poet at his next inauguration.  Or I win a Pulitzer or Nobel Prize.  Other than that, nobody is looking to put a price tag on what I do.  

But here's the thing:  poetry itself is the wonder business.  The best poems, the ones that leave me breathless and changed in some way, are all about capturing (in words) that feeling of seeing Kong for the first time.  Fearful.  Frightened.  Awestruck.  Dumbstruck.  Money does not even come into the poetic equation.  I can count on two hands the number of times I have received monetary compensation for being a poet.  Most poets are thrilled with a good brownie and a nice glass of wine as payment. 

I try to believe that humans can do better.  Be better.  Yet, wars are fought over oil.  Climate change continues practically unabated.  Every hour, three species disappear from the planet.  If you do the math, that's between 18,000 and 55,000 species vanishing a year.  All because humans prefer dollars over poems.

I have been writing poems about Bigfoot for close to five or six years now.  Because Bigfoot represents, to me, everything that is wondrous and mysterious in the world.  Bigfoot is my Kong.  If everyone had some kind of Bigfoot in their lives--something miraculous and indescribable--the world would be in much better shape.

If you have a Bigfoot or Kong, Saint Marty hopes you write a poem or song about it.  Or paint its picture.  Preserve the wonder in wonderful.

February 2: I Was Born For, a Calling, Poetry

Santiago engages in a little self reflection . . . 

"I wish the boy was here," he said aloud and settled himself against the rounded planks of the bow and felt the strength of the great fish through the line he held across his shoulders moving steadily toward whatever he had chosen.

When once, through my treachery, it had been necessary to him to make a choice, the old man thought.

His choice had been to stay in the deep dark water far out beyond all snares and traps and treacheries. My choice was to go there to find him beyond all people. Beyond all people in the world. Now we are joined together and have been since noon. And no one to help either one of us.

Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman, he thought. But that was the thing that I was born for. I must surely remember to eat the tuna after it gets light.

My favorite part of this passage?  That final paragraph, where Santiago questions being a fisherman and then makes that statement:  "But that was the thing that I was born for."  He is so sure in his belief.  There's no regrets about lost opportunities.  No old loves or stalled ambitions.  Santiago is doing what he was intended to do with his life.

I don't think a lot of people can say that about themselves.  I know I can't.  It has taken me a long time to get to the place I'm at right now.  Along the way, I've been a busboy, hospital housekeeper, painter, and bookseller.  I worked for over 25 years in the healthcare industry.  Through most of my adult life, I've taught university-level English courses, even when I was scraping blood off the floors of surgical rooms.  Aside from teaching, I can't say that I felt a calling to do any of those other occupations.  They were simply a means to an end--a way to pay the bills and support my family.

Now, I find myself working for the largest public library in the Upper Peninsula, scheduling readings and concerts and workshops.  Submitting grants to the National Endowment for the Arts.  Talking with doctors and art historians and United States Poets Laureate.  Some days, I sit in my office, wondering at my dumb luck.  To be able to do something you love and get paid for it, that's a true blessing.

Don't get me wrong.  I still struggle and stress.  Get angry and depressed.  That's all part of being a broken human in a very broken world.  My posts from the last few weeks have been a chronicle of pain and loss.  (Health crises.  A car accident thrown in for good measure.)  Every time I've faced challenges these last 14 or so days, I didn't fall on my knees and give thanks to my risen savior and Lord.  Nope.  I pretty much did what Santiago does in the passage above--question my actions and life choices.  

I am a poet.  I understand the world through words.  When I face difficulties in life, I turn to language.  Tomorrow night, I am leading a poetry workshop.  These past two weeks, I have been working on a poem that I will read at my sister's funeral this Saturday.  Poetry helps me make sense of senselessness.  I have been gifted with this ability.

Some people are fisherman.  Some are doctors.  Cooks.  Nurses.  Mechanics.

Saint Marty was born for poetry.  And chocolate.

December 3: Appreciate His Stature, Louise Glück, "Doe After a Blizzard"

 Merton becomes obsessed with William Blake . . .

I remember with what indecision I went on into the spring, trying to settle the problem of a subject with finality. Yet the thing worked itself out quite suddenly: so suddenly that I do not remember what brought it about. One day I came running down out of the Carpenter Library, and passed along the wire fences by the tennis courts, in the sun, with my mind made up that there was only one possible man in the eighteenth century for me to work on: the one poet who had least to do with his age, and was most in opposition to everything it stood for. 

I had just had in my hands the small, neatly printed Nonesuch Press edition of the Poems of William Blake, and I now knew what my thesis would probably be. It would take in his poems and some aspect of his religious ideas. 

In the Columbia bookstore I bought the same edition of Blake, on credit. (I paid for it two years later.) It had a blue cover, and I suppose it is now hidden somewhere in our monastery library, the part to which nobody has access. And that is all right. I think the ordinary Trappist would be only dangerously bewildered by the “Prophetic Books,” and those who still might be able to profit by Blake, have a lot of other things to read that are still better. For my own part, I no longer need him. He has done his work for me: and he did it very thoroughly. I hope that I will see him in heaven. 

But oh, what a thing it was to live in contact with the genius and the holiness of William Blake that year, that summer, writing the thesis! I had some beginning of an appreciation of his greatness above the other men of his time in England: but from this distance, from the hill where I now stand, looking back I can really appreciate his stature. 

William Blake died an unknown prophet.  A poet who walked and spoke with angels every day.  On his deathbed, he sang songs and celebrated.  It was years after his death that his reputation grew and he came to be recognized as the poetic giant that he is regarded as today.  When Merton becomes fevered with Blake's work, Blake was still regarded with suspicion because of his radical religious beliefs.  To this day, William Blake is still misunderstood by some, misinterpreted by others.

Tonight, I led a workshop based on the poetry of Louise 

Glück. She is a poet whom I've admired for years, but I've never really understood her. Her poetry is dense, full of mysterious emotion. Even after spending a few weeks preparing for this evening, I'm still not sure I get her.

But I'm not sure getting Louise Glück is the point. One critic said this about her work: "We feel before we understand, and we understand very little." That pretty much sums it up for me. I sit here, feeling much, understanding little. Like William Blake's contemporaries. However, I can imagine Louise Glück consorting with angels, like Blake.

In that vein, Saint Marty has a poem he wrote this evening during his poetry workshop. At least he thinks it's a poem.

You be the judge . . .


Doe After a Blizzard

by: Martin Achatz

My son noticed her first, splayed, bloody, broken by a neighbor's fence.

A dead doe, shining in the sunlight that always comes after a blizzard,

sunlight so strong it hurts to step into it. Sunlight that shouts.

The doe was haloed in that light, and my son, only five, said,

Fix it, daddy, reduced me to an Easter Island carving, stone face

immutable in the presence of suffering. I wanted to tell my son

I can't or She's gone or She's with God or some other

emptiness recited in church every Sunday so often that it has lost

its ability to comfort. Instead, I picked my son up, carried him

closer to the doe, whispered in his ear Isn't she beautiful?

I watched his face change, confusion give way to something

seraphic. Yes, he said, nodding. Yes, she is. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

November 26: A Different Order, Giving Thanks, "Pecan Pie"

 Merton being thankful for friends, a teacher, and poetry . . . 

Now I come to speak of the real part Columbia seems to have been destined to play in my life in the providential designs of God. Poor Columbia! It was founded by sincere Protestants as a college predominantly religious. The only thing that remains of that is the university motto: In lumine tuo videbimus lumen—one of the deepest and most beautiful lines of the psalms. “In Thy light, we shall see light.” It is, precisely, about grace. It is a line that might serve as the foundation stone of all Christian and Scholastic learning, and which simply has nothing whatever to do with the standards of education at modern Columbia. It might profitably be changed to In lumine Randall videbimus Dewey. 

Yet, strangely enough, it was on this big factory of a campus that the Holy Ghost was waiting to show me the light, in His own light. And one of the chief means He used, and through which he operated, was human friendship. 

God has willed that we should all depend on one another for our salvation, and all strive together for our own mutual good and our own common salvation. Scripture teaches us that this is especially true in the supernatural order, in the doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ, which flows necessarily from Christian teaching on grace. 

“You are the body of Christ and members one of another.... And the eye cannot say to the hand: I need not thy help: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.... And if one member suffer anything, all the members suffer with it; and if one member glory all the others rejoice with it.” 

So now is the time to tell a thing that I could not realize then, but which has become very clear to me: that God brought me and a half a dozen others together at Columbia, and made us friends, in such a way that our friendship would work powerfully to rescue us from the confusion and the misery in which we had come to find ourselves, partly through our own fault, and partly through a complex set of circumstances which might be grouped together under the heading of the “modern world,” “modern society.” But the qualification “modern” is unnecessary and perhaps unfair. The traditional Gospel term, “the world,” will do well enough. 

All our salvation begins on the level of common and natural and ordinary things. (That is why the whole economy of the Sacraments, for instance, rests, in its material element, upon plain and ordinary things like bread and wine and water and salt and oil.) And so it was with me. Books and ideas and poems and stories, pictures and music, buildings, cities, places, philosophies were to be the materials on which grace would work. But these things are themselves not enough. The more fundamental instinct of fear for my own preservation came in, in a minor sort of a way, in this strange, half-imaginary sickness which nobody could diagnose completely. 

The coming war, and all the uncertainties and confusions and fears that followed necessarily from that, and all the rest of the violence and injustice that were in the world, had a very important part to play. All these things were bound together and fused and vitalized and prepared for the action of grace, both in my own soul and in the souls of at least one or two of my friends, merely by our friendship and association together. And it fermented in our sharing of our own ideas and miseries and headaches and perplexities and fears and difficulties and desires and hangovers and all the rest. 

I have already mentioned Mark Van Doren. It would not be exactly true to say that he was a kind of nucleus around whom this concretion of friends formed itself that would not be accurate. Not all of us took his courses, and those who did, did not do so all at the same time. And yet nevertheless our common respect for Mark’s sanity and wisdom did much to make us aware of how much we ourselves had in common. 

Perhaps it was for me, personally, more than for the others, that Mark’s course worked in this way. I am thinking of one particular incident. 

It was the fall of 1936, just at the beginning of the new school year—on one of those first, bright, crazy days when everybody is full of ambition. It was the beginning of the year in which Pop was going to die and my own resistance would cave in under the load of pleasures and ambitions I was too weak to carry: the year in which I would be all the time getting dizzy, and in which I learned to fear the Long Island railroad as if it were some kind of a monster, and to shrink from New York as if it were the wide-open mouth of some burning Aztec god. 

That day, I did not foresee any of this. My veins were still bursting with the materialistic and political enthusiasms with which I had first come to Columbia and, indeed, in line with their general direction, I had signed up for courses that were more or less sociological and economic and historical. In the obscurity of the strange, half-conscious semi-conversion that had attended my retreat from Cambridge, I had tended more and more to be suspicious of literature, poetry—the things towards which my nature drew me—on the grounds that they might lead to a sort of futile estheticism, a philosophy of “escape.”

This had not invoked me in any depreciation of people like Mark. However, it had just seemed more important to me that I should take some history course, rather than anything that was still left of his for me to take. 

So now I was climbing one of the crowded stairways in Hamilton Hall to the room where I thought this history course was to be given. I looked in to the room. The second row was filled with the unbrushed heads of those who every day at noon sat in the Jester editorial offices and threw paper airplanes around the room or drew pictures on the walls. 

Taller than them all, and more serious, with a long face, like a horse, and a great mane of black hair on top of it, Bob Lax meditated on some incomprehensible woe, and waited for someone to come in and begin to talk to them. It was when I had taken off my coat and put down my load of books that I found out that this was not the class I was supposed to be taking, but Van Doren’s course on Shakespeare. 

So I got up to go out. But when I got to the door I turned around again and went back and sat down where I had been, and stayed there. Later I went and changed everything with the registrar, so I remained in that class for the rest of the year. 

It was the best course I ever had at college. And it did me the most good, in many different ways. It was the only place where I ever heard anything really sensible said about any of the things that were really fundamental— life, death, time, love, sorrow, fear, wisdom, suffering, eternity. A course in literature should never be a course in economics or philosophy or sociology or psychology: and I have explained how it was one of Mark’s great virtues that he did not make it so. Nevertheless, the material of literature and especially of drama is chiefly human acts—that is, free acts, moral acts. And, as a matter of fact, literature, drama, poetry, make certain statements about these acts that can be made in no other way. That is precisely why you will miss all the deepest meaning of Shakespeare, Dante, and the rest if you reduce their vital and creative statements about life and men to the dry, matter-of-fact terms of history, or ethics, or some other science. They belong to a different order. 

Nevertheless, the great power of something like Hamlet, Coriolanus, or the Purgatorio or Donne’s Holy Sonnets lies precisely in the fact that they are a kind of commentary on ethics and psychology and even metaphysics, even theology. Or, sometimes, it is the other way ’round, and those sciences can serve as a commentary on these other realities, which we call plays, poems. 

Happy Thanksgiving to all my disciples out there!

Merton and Martin are pretty much in agreement here.  Merton, by sheer luck, is thrown into a class where his life is changed.  He meets people who will have a profound influence on him.  A teacher who will shape his understanding of the world, and friends who will, eventually, lead him to his conversion and calling to poetry and religious life.  

I have had all of those things.  Well, I wasn't called to be a monk, but I was called into a church ministry (music) to which I've pretty much devoted a good portion of my adult life.  And my Mark Van Doren was a teacher (now colleague and friend) I met in my first year of graduate school.  I'll call her Professor B.  Professor B directed both my Master's thesis (a collection of short fiction) and my MFA thesis (a collection of poems).  She was the one who recognized the poet in me, when the idea of leading a life devoted to poetry seemed as foreign as joining the French Foreign Legion.

Poetry has, literally, saved my life so many times,  In times of struggle, when I couldn't feel God anywhere, poetry has brought me into His presence.  In joyful times, poetry has reminded me that God is celebrating with me.  In my normal, day-to-day existence of work and teaching and home, poetry makes those tiny moments of domesticity into things holy and sacred.  

Now, this day which, in the United States, is set aside for gratitude.  The pandemic has altered our lives, made it impossible to gather and give thanks the way we normally do.  Instead, we are expressing our love and thanks for each other by staying home.  While there won't be the physical immediacy of family and friends, we can still be present.  Raise each other up to the universe in praise and prayer and poetry. 

My mother is in the nursing home this year.  She has been there since late summer, when she fell out of bed and broke her hip.  First she went to the hospital for surgery, and then, from the hospital, she was transferred to a long-term care facility.  Most likely, she will never come home again.  We have not been able to see her, except for a short window visit.  On top of her mobility issues, she has macular degeneration and Alzheimer's, and she's extremely hard of hearing.  That means she's isolated from us not only physically, but also in memory, sight, and sound.

I don't know when, or if, I will ever be able to hold my mother's hand again.  Yet, I reach out to her this Thanksgiving.  I say a prayer of thanks for all that she's given me.  Remember all those Thanksgiving meals she cooked.  Turkey.  Mashed potatoes and gravy.  Stuffing full of sage and onion  Jell-O molds of quivering fruit.  Home-made loaves of bread.  Buttery corn and cranberry sauce.  Pumpkin and pecan pies.  All for love.  All for love.

She is with me now, as I type this post.  I'm not sure if I'm with her.  Not sure what part of me her mind allows her to have.  Maybe I'm five or six, a stubborn child who will only eat turkey and bread, no vegetables.  Or maybe I'm a teenager, more interested in finishing dinner so that I can meet up with friends.  Or maybe I'm an adult, handing over my infant son to her, so she can coo and rub his back until he falls asleep in her arms while I mash the potatoes for her.

There will be Thanksgiving with my mother today.  In my mother.  She will get her plate of turkey and stuffing.  Her pecan pie.  She will smile and say to the nurse who brings her dinner, "Thank you."  She taught me that.  To be grateful for everything you're given.

Wherever you are, whoever you are with, however you are celebrating, I wish you grace and gratitude.  Memories of Thanksgivings past to sustain you, fill you with love.  Peace of mind for this Thanksgiving present to satisfy your hearts hungry for togetherness.  And hope for Thanksgivings yet to come to carry you forward in joy and wonder.

Saint Marty gives thanks for Professor B this day.  For his friends and family.  His mother.  And for the poetry that binds us all together.

Pecan Pie

by: Martin Achatz

Mix eggs, sugar and Karo,
melted butter, vanilla from Mexico
in a bowl until it all runs
yellow as corn silk. Add pecans,
one-and-a-quarter cups. Fold
them into the gold syrup,
the way a farmer folds
manure into a field of hay
or my son folds a Tootsie Roll
under his tongue, plants it there,
lets it feed the furrows
of his young body. Pour this filling
into a shell, edges fluted
by my wife's hands, crimped
between thumb and forefinger
to peaks and troughs of dough.
Bake at 350 degrees.
Forty-five minutes to an hour.
You'll know when it's done.
The house will smell
brown and warm and sweet.
Dip a butter knife blade
into the center of the pie.
If it comes out hot and clean,
take the pie out of the oven. Put it
on the front porch to cool.
You can leave it there overnight.
It'll be waiting in the morning.
Cover it with a hand towel. Carry
it to your parents' house,
where your mother asks you
"Is it cold outside?"
over and over as you cut
the pie. "Yes," you tell her.
And "yes" when she asks again.
It is cold this Thanksgiving.
And, yes, pecan pie is her favorite.
Give her a large slice,
with extra Cool Whip
and a hot cup of coffee.

March 4: A Kind of Longing, Burning of Notre Dame, Love for a Friend

Merton falling in love with spires and steeples and stained glass . . .

"All the year round they live on bread and vegetables and bits of sausage," Father explained, "so now they don't want anything but meat."  And I supposed he had the right explanation.  But before the meal was half over, I got up from the table and staggered out into the air, and leaned against the wall of the barn, and watched the huge, belligerent geese parading up and down the barn-yard, dragging their tremendous overstuffed livers in the dirt, those livers which would soon be turned into the kind of pate de foie gras which even now made me sick.  

The feast lasted until late in the afternoon, and even when night fell some were still at it there in the barn.  But meanwhile the owner of the farm and Pierrot and Father and I had gone out to see an old abandoned chapel that stood on the property.  I wonder what it had been:  a shrine, a hermitage perhaps?  But now, in any case, it was in ruins.  And it had a beautiful thirteenth- or fourteenth-century window, empty of course of its glass.  Father bought the whole thing, with some of the money he had saved up from his last exhibition, and we eventually used the stones and the window and the door-arches and so on in building our house at St. Antonin.

By the time the summer of 1926 came around, we were well established in St. Antonin, although work on the house had not yet really begun.  By this time I had learned French, or all the French that a boy of eleven was expected to use in the ordinary course of his existence, and I remember how I had spent hours that winter reading books about all the other wonderful places there were in France.

Pop had sent us money, at Christmas, and we used some of it to buy a big expensive three volume set of books, full of pictures, called Le Pays de France.  And I shall never forget the fascination with which I studied it, and filled my mind with those cathedrals and ancient abbeys and those castles and towns and monuments of the culture that had so captivated my heart.

I remember how I looked at the ruins of Jumieges and Cluny, and wondered how those immense basilicas had looked in the days of their glory.  Then there was Chartres, with its two unequal spires; the long vast nave of Bourges, the soaring choir of Beauvais; the strange fat romanesque cathedral of Angouleme, and the white byzantine domes of Perigueux.  And I gazed upon the huddled buildings of the ancient Grande Chartreuse, crowded together in their solitary valley, with the high mountains loaded with firs, soaring up to their rocky summits on either side.  What kind of men had lived in those cells?  I cannot say that I wondered much about that, as I looked at the pictures.  I had no curiosity about monastic vocations or religious rules, but I know my heart was filled with a kind of longing to breathe the air of that lonely valley and to listen to its silence.  I wanted to be in all these places, which the pictures of Le Pays de France showed me: indeed, it was kind of a problem to me and an unconscious source of obscure and half- realized woe, that I could not be in all of them at once.

Reading this passage, I'm reminded of the day Notre Dame in Paris burned.  It was a place that had been on my bucket list.  One day, I told myself, I will walk into that place and be surrounded by almost 857 years of prayers and candles and art.  I remember imagining how it would smell--old wood mixed with incense mixed with wax mixed with something else.  Holiness?  Grace?  The ghosts of thousands and thousands of pilgrims?

Sadly, now, in my lifetime, I will never get that experience.  Notre Dame took 182 years to build.  It will probably take more years than I have left on this planet to restore it to something like its former glory.  I accept that.  Perhaps, one day, I will be able to stand outside what remains of Notre Dame in the future.  Maybe I'll still be able to smell the smoke and char of the fire.  See soot still clinging to the surrounding buildings.

I have always been drawn to places of worship--Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Jewish, Quaker, Muslim.  I love that attempt by human beings to create something that somehow touches the face of the Divine.  The ornateness of cathedrals.  The spartan simplicity of meeting houses.  I think almost any artistic endeavor--whether its cathedral building or portrait painting or poem writing--is an act akin to praying.  Art is the way we grapple with the human condition in all of its beauty and ugliness.

I haven't written a new poem in a while.  Coincidentally (or not), my prayer life has dwindled to nonexistent, as well.  I feel out of touch with God right now.  Like God has stepped away and left me to struggle alone.  I know that's not true.  God doesn't do that.  However, over the past year or so, I've experienced quite a few dark nights of the soul.  Sometimes these nights can produce some good poems.  Other times, like now, I can barely string words together for a daily blog post.

Tonight, it feels like Notre Dame is burning again.  Worry has plagued me, and, when that happens, I don't accomplish a while lot.  Instead, I go to bed, pull the blankets over my head, and just . . . sleep.  It's the only time when my mind calms down.

No poems tonight.  Too tired.  The one act of cathedral building I can do--sending out some love and prayers for one of my best friends who lost her puppy of 13 years yesterday.

Saint Marty loves you, Missy.  Please know that.  See that love, like the candles of Notre Dame, filling your darkness with light.

January 25-26-27: Knights Templars, Familial Love, My Mother

A little anti-Catholicism in Merton's childhood:

My grandparents were like most other Americans.  They were Protestants, but you could never find out precisely what kind of Protestants they were.  I, their own grandson, was never able to ascertain.  They put money in the little envelopes that came to them from Zion church, but they never went near the place itself.  And they also contributed to the Salvation Army and a lot of other things:  so you could not tell what they were by the places which they helped to support.  Of course, they had sent my uncle in his boyhood to the choir school of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, on the rock above Harlem, which was then a peaceful bourgeois neighborhood.  And they sent John Paul there too, in due course.  Indeed, there was even some talk of sending me there.  Yet that did not make them Episcopalians.  It was not the religion that they patronized, but the school and the atmosphere.  In practice, Bonnemaman used to read the little black books of Mary Baker Eddy, and I suppose that was the closest she got to religion.

On the whole, the general attitude around that house was the more or less inarticulate assumption that all religions were more or less praiseworthy on purely natural or social grounds.  In any decent suburb of a big city you would expect to run across some kind of a church once in a while.  It was part of the scenery, like the High School and the Y.M.C.A. and the big whale-back roof and water-tank of the movie theater.

The only exceptions to this general acceptability of religions were the Jews and the Catholics.  Who would want to be a Jew?  But then, that was a matter of race more than of religion.  The Jews were Jews, but they could not very well help it.  But as for the Catholics--it seemed, to Pop's mind, that there was a certain sinister note of malice connected with the profession of anything like the Catholic faith.  The Catholic Church was the only one against which I ever heard him speak any definite bitterness or animosity.

The chief reason was that he himself belonged to some kind of a Masonic organization, called, oddly enough, the Knights Templars.  Where they picked up that name, I do not know, but the original Knights Templars were a military religious Order in the Catholic Church, who had an intimate connection with the Cistercians, of which the Trappists are a reform.  

Being Knights, the Knights Templars had a sword.  Pop kept his sword first in the closet in his den, and then, for a while, it was in the coat closet by the front door, mixed up with the canes and umbrellas and with the huge policeman's club which Pop evidently believed would be useful if a burglar came around.  

I suppose that at the meetings of the Knights Templars to which Pop went less and less frequently, he heard how wicked the Catholic Church was.  He had probably heard that from his childhood up.  It is what all Protestant children hear.  It is part of their religious training.

I have to say that it surprises me that Merton's grandparents had such a strong bias against the Catholic Church, since Merton is often touted for possible canonization.  Of course, a lot of saints' families did nasty things to them.  The father of sister saints Agnes and Clare tried to forcibly remove them from their convent, dragging Agnes by her hair.  Thomas Aquinas was imprisoned for two years in a fortress by his family, and they sent a prostitute to tempt him.

People can do a lot of bad things in the name of familial love, up to, and including, years of imprisonment, it seems.  My mother, when I was a senior in high school and had no clue what I wanted to study in college, said to me one day, "I think computers would be good.  Lots of money in that."  So, when I went to the university, I got a full-ride scholarship to study computer science and math.  I took classes in Pascal programming; Calculus I, II, and III; abstract algebra; and artificial intelligence.  Fives years of my life I devoted to computers, all because my mother told me to.  Granted, my mother didn't pull out my fingernails or teeth to get me to do it.

Of course, I now work in a cardiology office and teach composition, mythology, film, and poetry at the university.  I can't remember the last time I put together lines of computer code.  When I have an issue with my computer at work, I don't roll up my sleeves and figure out what's going on.  I pick up the phone and call the IT department.

When I decided to switch my major from Computer Science to English, my mother was not very happy.  If she could have, she probably would have hired a prostitute to change my mind.  As luck would have it, I was pretty gifted with words.  My mother knew this, but she just came from a generation that equated happiness with money, not poetry or devotion to God (although, had I become a priest or monk, my mother would have accepted that happily).

My mother has been proud of all my accomplishments--from grad school to teaching to writing.  Eventually, I came to understand that all my mother really wanted was for me to be happy in whatever I ended up doing.  She didn't care if I could write lines of elegant programming.  Or wrap a disk around and axis and calculate its volume.  All she really cared about was that I smiled a lot, laughed a lot, and had a lot of love in my life.

Eventually, the families of saints do one of two things:  1) they accept the saint's choices and become Catholics (and sometimes saints) themselves, or 2) they kill the saints, burn them alive, or cut off their heads. 

Thank goodness Saint Marty's mother didn't have a sharp sword in the coat closet.

October 9: Hell of a Quote, Hi, Earth-Shattering, Poetry

The way I've been composing my Hitchhiker's posts since we finished the book last week is fairly simple.  I take the book in one hand and begin flipping through the pages, without looking.  Then, at some point, when the impulse hits me, I stab my finger at a particular page and paragraph, again without looking.  Surprisingly, my finger usually lands on a passage that speaks to me in some way.  This is what my finger found this evening:

"Hi," he said to a small knot of creatures from the press who were standing nearby wishing that he would stop saying Hi and get on with the quotes.  He grinned at them particularly because he knew that in a few moments he would be giving them one hell of a quote.

Of course, this is about Zaphod Beeblebrox, President of the Imperial Galactic Government, just before he is about to steal the Heart of Gold spaceship with his girlfriend, Trillian.  Nobody else knows what is about to happen.  The press is there to report on the unveiling of the Heart of Gold, nothing more.  The entire universe is about to be surprised.

I think most of my days are like this.  I show up to work or teaching, planner in hand, book/laptop bag on my shoulder, thinking that it's going to be like any other day.  I say "hi" to people, make jokes, go about the business of my life.  I don't expect anything earth-shattering to happen.  I save the earth-shattering stuff for when I sit down to write.  At least, I try to.

You see, I'm of the opinion that anything can be earth-shattering.  For instance, I'm pretty hungry right now.  I'm eating a piece of leftover pizza for dinner.  On another day, in different circumstances, I wouldn't really be paying too much attention to this slice.  However, because of my empty stomach, and because I just worked eight hours and then taught for another two and am getting ready to teach for another three-and-a-half hours, eating this triangle of pizza is turning into a pretty earth-shattering experience for me.

For me, that's what poetry is all about.  Finding the earth-shattering in the everyday things in life.  Like pizza.  Or a drink of water.  Or a stick of pepperoni.  Or a discarded Band-aid.  Whatever.  The best poems--the ones I love the most--are about these kinds of mundane experiences, when the poet is suddenly contemplating string theory while tying her shoes.  That is the kind of poetry that unhinges my head from my shoulders.

Two days ago, I wrote what I think is the finished draft of a poem.  It had been sitting on a page in my journal, collecting dust, since August.  I didn't think it was very good, so I sort of abandoned it.  For some reason, I felt myself drawn back to it on Monday.  I reread it and saw something breathing on the page.  So I decided to shape it, give it life.

It's a poem about my son.  And it's about authenticity.  And joy.  And time.  And seeing something earth-shattering.  At least, that's what I think it's about.  Sometimes, writers are the worst people for understanding what they've written.  Because most of what writers do is instinctual.  I let my mind go where it needs to go, create whatever beautiful mess it needs to create.  If it ends up being a poem, all the better.

I've decided to include it below, let you be the judge.  Is it a poem or just a beautiful mess?  A piece of pizza or the meaning of life?  Both?  Neither?

Take a bite of this poem, and tell Saint Marty if it changes you in any way.

Harvest Time

by:  Martin Achatz

He begged me for just ten more minutes

before he had to shower, wash off

the math and lunchroom and homework

of the day.  He stands in the backyard

by the woodpile, holds a stick

the size of his arm, swinging

it through the dusk.  Wild chops

that guillotine the swarm of mosquitoes

in front of his face.  Then he turns, swings

in the other direction, towards the neighbor’s

house.  The arc bisects the navel orange

sun.  Back and forth he threshes the air,

the way I saw a Russian peasant boy

in an old newsreel slash down wheat

with a scythe.  All the time my son

does this, his mouth moves.  He’s talking

or shouting or singing.  I can’t hear

him through the kitchen window.

But he’s smiling a smile that is all him.

A smile he saves just for himself.

I’ve never seen it before.  It’s not meant

for my eyes or anyone’s eyes.  I turn

away from the glass.  Let him be

his own, harvesting these last

golden bushels of daylight.

September 7: Being a Cop, Passions, Secret to a Happy Life,

Zaphod and crew have a run-in with some interstellar cops in the middle of an identity crises . . .

Near them on the floor lay several rather ugly men who had been hit about the head with some heavy design awards.

Half a mile away, four figures pounded up a corridor looking for a way out.  They emerged into a wide open-plan computer bay.  They glanced about wildly.

"Which way you reckon, Zaphod?" said Ford.

"At a wild guess, I'd say down here," said Zaphod, running off down to the right between a computer bank and the wall.  As the others started after him he was brought up short by a Kill-O-Zap energy bolt that cracked through the air inches in front of him and fried a small section of adjacent wall.

A voice on a bullhorn said, "Okay, Beeblebrox, hold it right there.  We've got you covered."

"Cops!" hissed Zaphod, and spun around in a crouch.  "You want to try a guess at all, Ford?"

"Okay, this way," said Ford, and the four of them ran down a gangway between two computer banks.

At the end of the gangway appeared a heavily armored and space-suited figure waving a vicious Kill-O-Zap gun.

"We don't want to shoot you, Beeblebrox!" shouted the figure.

"Suits me fine!" shouted Zaphod back, and dived down a wide gap between two data process units.

The others swerved in behind him.

"There are two of them," said Trillian.  "We're cornered."

They squeezed themselves down in an angle between a large computer data bank and the wall.

They held their breath and waited.

Suddenly the air exploded with energy bolts as both the cops opened fire on them simultaneously.

"Hey, they're shooting at us," said Arthur, crouching in a tight ball.  "I though they said they didn't want to do that."

"Yeah, I thought they said that," agreed Ford.

Zaphod stuck a head up for a dangerous moment.

"Hey," he said, "I thought you said you didn't want to shoot us!" and ducked again.

They waited.

After a moment a voice replied, "It isn't easy being a cop!"

It isn't easy being anything.  I'm sure a nurse would say that it isn't easy being a nurse.  A college student would say it isn't easy being a college student.  Ditto a heart surgeon.  Ditto the school custodian.  In my working life, I've learned that most people think their jobs are the most important and most difficult.  Doesn't matter the job.

For example, I could say that it isn't easy being a contingent college professor.  No health benefits.  Working semester-to-semester with no guarantees of re-employment every four months, and the full-time faculty get paid twice (sometimes three) times as much as you for teaching the same class.

Or I could say that it isn't easy being a church organist.  The compensation for all the hours spent planning, practicing, and playing is minuscule.  And, come Christmas or Easter--the high holidays--the stress and demands triples or quadruples.  Plus, you have to work EVERY weekend, sometimes playing two or three services. 

Every person in every occupation has similar tales.  The truth of the matter is that a job is a job.  It can be stressful or stress-free, tiring or energizing, sad-ful or joyful.  A job is what you make of it.  A person who works at McDonald's can take just as much pride in his labors as a brain surgeon.  That's the simple truth.

I'm lucky, in a way.  I get to do what I love--teach writing and literature and film.  I don't do it full-time (which would be my dream job), but I still get to do it.  I love being in a classroom full of young minds.  Love feeling the weird, funky energy they impart.  I can honestly say that teaching is what I was meant to do with my life.

I would say that most people stumble through their lives, never really knowing what their purposes are.  They never find that one thing that fulfills them.  It's not about money or fame.  It's about passion.  Most people I encounter have no idea what their passions are. 

Me?  I'm passionate about poetry and writing and movies and books.  My mother was passionate about quilting.  She loved it.  My father was literally passionate about plumbing.  He truly loved what he did.  He kept the tools of his trade in his trucks up until the time he couldn't drive anymore.  I think the people who are most unhappy and dissatisfied with their lives are the ones who have no idea what they're passionate about.

When you don't know what puts a fire in your belly, then you turn to other, unhealthy preoccupations.  Addictions even.  Because the addiction fills that void.  Temporarily.  But pretty soon the drug wears off, alcohol transitions to hangover, sexual partner of the day goes away.  What's left?  The same emptiness that you were looking to fill.  So it's more drugs or more alcohol or another sexual partner.  It's a pretty vicious circle.

I count myself lucky.  I know my passions.  And, because I know them, I'm a better person.  That is the real secret to a happy life.

This message has been brought to you by Saint Marty.  Husband.  Father.  Brother.  Poet.  Teacher.  Organist.  Blogger.  Thinker.  Friend.

January 23: Useful Thing, Taking a Nap, Cold Temperatures

A little information from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.  Partly it has a practical value.  You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy River Moth; set it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it around your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you--daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

You'll have to forgive me if I stop there with the towel passage.  There's more to come tomorrow.  However, I find myself quite tired tonight.  I just got back from a liturgy-planning meeting at church.  It was important stuff, but, after working and teaching and coming home to clean the bathroom, I did not have attention to spare.  The only thing that kept me going at the meeting were the snacks and wine.  That's right.  There was alcohol.  (Well, it was a Catholic gathering.)  So, I sat eating cheese and crackers and Chex mix and drinking red wine.

That passage from Hitchhiker's is all about the uses of the towel, focusing on its versatility.  I, on the other hand, do not feel very useful at the moment.  In fact, I'm barely awake right now.  All I can think about is taking a nap.  My wife and son and daughter aren't home, so the house is completely silent.  I could do it.

. . .

I'm back.  Took about a 45-minute snooze.  And now it's almost 10 p.m.  Just checked my weather app.  There's a huge storm blowing in.  And then, for the next week or so, temperatures that aren't going to climb much above a single degree.  In fact, some days the high temps aren't going to get above -6.  I have a feeling my kids are going to have a few days off school next week.

This weekend, in the midst of this arctic freeze, I head west to Calumet for a couple days.  I don't think I'll be packing any towels, just a couple sweaters and a bathing suit.  I'll be performing in a radio show on Saturday evening.  Lots of rehearsal time on Friday night and Saturday afternoon.  I simply hope that my voice will hold out, and that I won't have a coughing fit during the recording.

That's what's on my mind tonight.  Towels.  Naps.  Cold temperatures.  Coughing.  I know it's not exciting.

Tomorrow night, it's poetry.  A workshop that I'm conducting, come high water or snowstorm.  Poetry doesn't take a day off.

And neither does Saint Marty.