February 27: Comfortable but Suffering, Helphelphelphelp, Gratitude

Santiago prays . . . 

"Bad news for you, fish," he said and shifted the line over the sacks that covered his shoulders.

He was comfortable but suffering, although he did not admit the suffering at all.

"I am not religious," he said. "But I will say ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys that I should catch this fish, and I promise to make a pilgrimage to the Virgen de Cobre if I catch him. That is a promise."

He commenced to say his prayers mechanically. Sometimes he would be so tired that he could not remember the prayer and then he would say them fast so that they would come automatically. Hail Marys are easier to say than Our Fathers, he thought.

I pray all the time.  Sometimes, my prayer is formal.  A Hail Mary or Our Father, like Santiago.  Other times/most times, it's quick and dirty:  God, help me.  Or even quicker and dirtier:  Helphelphelphelp. 

This habit of prayer has been with me for a while.  I think I learned it as a kid by watching my mother, who was a prayer warrior.  She always had a rosary in her hand.  Often, when she was sitting in her chair with her eyes closed and I thought she was asleep, I would look more closely and see her lips moving.  Prayer was like breath to her.

The last time I found myself really drawn to pray was about two weeks ago, when I got into a car accident.  The instant my car started sliding into the path of an oncoming van, I found myself (as most people in similar circumstances do) uttering the most common prayer spoken by human beings.  It goes something like this:  "Shitshitshit, help!"  Or a similar iteration.

As the old saying goes, there are no atheists in foxholes.  In the face of great distress or peril, humans call out to the universe for help.  We rarely feel compelled to say "thank you" for anything.  For example, I've lived through another day.  All of the people I love and care about are still alive and healthy.  I did a fair bit of driving today and managed to avoid getting killed.  I went grocery shopping and have food to eat for the week.  This evening, I got together with friends for Book Club to discuss Amor Towles' The Lincoln Highway.  These are some of the blessings that I experienced today.

And, until this moment, typing this post, l haven't even given a thought to gratitude.  I say this without pride.  Expressing thankfulness is a healthy exercise.  Not only does it force you to focus on what's good, but it also keeps you humble.  Saying "thanks" acknowledges the assistance of some outside force of goodness in your life, whether it be God, a friend, or the sun rising in the morning.

So, tonight, in this hour, at this minute, within the confines of this very second, I say thanks for all the blessings that I've received today.  (See above list.)  And for all the blessings I had no idea I received today, and they are plentiful, right down to each breath I took and each convulse of my heart.

Yes, the world can be a terrible place, full of terrible people doing terrible things.  (I'm looking at you, Mr. Putin.)  Fire bombings of cities happen.  Car wrecks.  Cancer diagnoses.  Pandemics.  Death.  to quote Kurt Vonnegut, "So it goes."

But, the world is also full of beautiful people doing beautiful things.  Artists making art.  Poets making poetry.  Shelters and food pantries keeping homeless people warm and fed.  Musicians filling the universe with song.

If all you look for is the terrible, that's all you're going to find.  If you go out of your way to find beauty, you'll see it everywhere.  

Saint Marty was blessed with beauty today.

November 27: So It Goes, Good Friend, Good Daughter

Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles from the home I live in all year round, was shot two nights ago.  He died last night.  So it goes.

Martin Luther King was shot a month ago.  He died, too.  So it goes.

and every day my Government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam.  So it goes.

My father died many years ago now--of natural causes.  So it goes.  He was a sweet man.  He was a gun nut, too.  He left me his guns.  They rust.

This is quite the catalogue of death.  Of course, Slaughterhouse, in a lot of ways, is a catalogue of death.  Vonnegut wrote the book to somehow grapple with his war experiences, including the destruction of the city of Dresden.  Death is sort of inescapable.

Right now, I have a good friend whose daughter, the last I heard, was in a coma in the hospital.  Her daughter is also good friend of my family.  She was present when my son was brought to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit after he was delivered.  In a time when I was feeling more than a little unnerved, she was sort of an anchor for me.  She kept me laughing and calm.

I am not going to discuss the details here.  That is not my place.  I'm simply sending this story out into the world, asking for good thoughts, prayers, and hope.

Saint Marty is not ready for another "so it goes" right now.

October 9: Tell Me a Story, Exhaustion, Once Upon a Time

"Tell me a story," Montana Wildhack said to Billy Pilgrim in the Tralfamadorian zoo one time.  They were in bed side by side.  They had privacy.  The canopy covered the dome.  Montana was six months pregnant now, big and rosy, lazily demanding small favors from Billy from time to time.  She couldn't send Billy out for ice cream or strawberries, since the atmosphere outside the dome was cyanide, and the nearest strawberries and ice cream were millions of light years away.

 She could send him to the refrigerator, which was decorated with the blank couple on the bicycle built for two--or, as now, she could wheedle, "Tell me a story, Billy boy."

"Dresden was destroyed on the night of February 13, 1945," Billy Pilgrim began.  "We came out of our shelter the next day."  He told Montana about the four guards who, in their astonishment and grief, resembled a barbershop quartet.  He told her about the stockyards with all the fenceposts gone, with roofs and windows gone--told her about seeing little logs lying around.  There were people who had been caught in the fire-storm.  So it goes.

Billy told her what had happened to the buildings that used to form cliffs around the stockyards.  They had collapsed.  Their wood had been consumed, and their stones had crashed down., had tumbled against one another until they locked at last in low and graceful curves.

"It was like the moon," said Billy Pilgrim.

That is an astonishing story, one that Billy hasn't shared with anybody yet, except Montana Wildhack.  He shares it in a moment of intimacy, both of them naked, lying in bed.  Her six months pregnant, petulant with child.  Instead of a fairy tale, a happily-ever-after, Billy tells her about the horrors of Dresden.

So it goes.

I am going to tell you the story of exhaustion.  This past weekend, I celebrated my birthday, led a poetry workshop, corrected papers, wrote a poem, and helped my wife throw a birthday party for my son and his school friends.  Today, I worked a full shift in the medical office, conferenced with students for three hours, and put together a Midterm Exam.  Now, I am blogging.  Soon, I will go home and collapse.

So it goes.

So, once upon a time, there was a saint named Marty.  Marty worked all day and all night for four days straight, closing his eyes only to blink away the sand of sleep.  By the fourth night, Marty was just a shade, sitting in his dark office, ghosted by the light from his laptop screen.

And then Saint Marty slept happily ever after.  The end.

So it goes.

October 5, So It Goes, Saint Marty's Day, 50

Billy thought hard about the effect the quartet had had on him, and then found an association with an experience he had had long ago.  He did not travel in time to the experience.  He remembered it shimmeringly--as follows:

He was down in the meat locket on the night that Dresden was destroyed.  There were sounds like giant footsteps above.  Those were sticks of high-explosive bombs.  The giants walked and walked.  The meat locker was a very safe shelter.  All that happened down there was an occasional shower of calcimine.  The Americans and four of their guards and a few dressed carcasses were down there, and  nobody else.  The rest of the guards had, before the raid began, gone to the comforts of their own homes in Dresden.  They were all being killed with their families.

So it goes.

The girls that Billy had seen naked were all being killed, too, in a much shallower shelter in another part of the stockyards.

So it goes.

A guard would go to the head of the stairs every so often to see what it was like outside, then he would come down and whisper to the other guards.  There was a fire-storm out there.  Dresden was one big flame.  The one flame ate everything organic, everything that would burn.

It wasn't safe to come out of the shelter until noon the next day.  When the Americans and their guards did come out, the sky was black with smoke.  The sun was an angry little pinhead.  Dresden was like the moon now, nothing but minerals.  The stones were hot.  Everybody else in the neighborhood was dead.

So it goes.

That's a very long passage with a LOT of death in it.  The death of the guards and their families.  The death of the naked girls.  The death of neighbors and buildings.  The entire city of Dresden reduced to ashes and rock.

Today is Saint Marty's Day.  I have been receiving Saint Marty's Day wishes since early this morning, most people commenting on a specific number:  50.  That's right.  I have celebrated 50 Saint Marty's Days in my lifetime.  It's hard for me to wrap my mind around that number.

Now, I suppose I could get all maudlin and reflect on mortality.  I mean, that's the direction the Slaughterhouse passage points me in.  Everybody and everything in those few paragraphs, aside from Billy Pilgrim and his friends, are dead or in the process of dying.  So, it would be only natural for me to follow that particular path.

However, I do not want to think about death today.  I want to think about all of the blessings that have come into my life this past year.  I was named Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula.  I've been invited to give readings all over the U. P.  My kids and wife are healthy.  I'm healthy.  I have had no encounters with death so far this year.  I've reconnected with old friends, met many new friends.  Like I said, blessing upon blessing upon blessing.

Saint Marty's Day is a festival of gratitude for me this year.

April 1: Wild Bob, Lazarus, Appreciating Loss

There were pictures of castles and lakes and pretty girls on the walls.  This was the rolling home of the railroad guards, men whose business it was to be forever guarding freight rolling from here to there.  The four guards went inside and closed the door.

A little while later they came out smoking cigars, talking contentedly in the mellow lower register of the German language.  One of them saw Billy's face at the ventilator.  He wagged a finger at him in affectionate warning, telling him to be a good boy.

The Americans across the way told the guards again about the dead man on their car.  The guards got a stretcher out of their own cozy car, opened the dead man's car and went inside.  The dead man's car wasn't crowded at all.  There were just six live colonels in there--and one dead one.

The Germans carried the corpse out.  The corpse was Wild Bob.  So it goes.

Vonnegut treats death very matter-of-factly in Slaughterhouse.  A lot of people die.  Billy's wife dies.  Wild Bob dies.  Later in the book, Dresden is firebombed.  Lots of people shuffle off this mortal coil in the book.  And Vonnegut's response is simple:  So it goes.  Death happens.

I went to church tonight.  The Gospel reading was the story of Jesus bringing Lazarus back to life.  Of course, this passage contains the shortest sentence in the Bible:  "Jesus wept."  I always find that line really moving.  Jesus, the Son of God, who has the power to bring His friend back to life, reacts in a very human way to the death of Lazarus.  He cries.  Allows Himself to be overcome with grief.

I find great comfort in Jesus' tears.  In becoming flesh and blood, Jesus understands loss.  When my sister died, I read the story of Lazarus quite a few times.  I almost chose it as a reading for her funeral.  Eventually, I decided against it.  I don't know why.  I think it was because it was too personal to me.  Every time I reread the story of Lazarus in the days following my sister's death, I would burst into tears when I came to "Jesus wept."  I didn't want to share that response in public.  Not then.

Now, approaching the two year anniversary of my sister's death, I'm still moved by Jesus weeping at Lazarus' tomb, but it's not quite so . . . present.  I'm able to control my emotions better.  I am not Kurt Vonnegut or Billy Pilgrim.  I can't just say "So it goes" and move on with my narrative.  However, I understand the beauty of a life well-lived.  I can be grateful for loss because it makes me appreciate my friends and family members even more.

Saint Marty is thankful for everyone in his life, even the people who drive him a little crazy.

February 20: So It Goes, Craziness, Poetry Presentations

So it goes.

I forgot my copy of Slaughterhouse at home, so I cannot continue with the story this evening.  Instead, I quote one of the refrains of the novel--"So it goes."  Vonnegut usually uses the phrase after something ridiculous or catastrophic happens in Billy Pilgrim's life.  Billy's father dies in a hunting accident.  So it goes.  Billy's wife dies of carbon monoxide poisoning.  So it goes.  Billy becomes unstuck in time.  So it goes.  To me, the phrase is slightly fatalistic, as if the world is simply a series of unfortunate events (to borrow a phrase from Lemony Snicket).

My day has sort of been a "so it goes" day.  I found out I had to replace the battery on the car I bought last July.  So it goes.  I lost my I.D. badge in the medical office where I work.  So it goes.  As I was driving back to work, I got interviewed on my iPhone by a reporter about being Poet Laureate, nearly causing me to hit a parked car.  So it goes.  I found my badge under an envelope on my desk.  So it goes.  I have three hours of poetry presentations to listen to in my night class this evening.  So it goes.

I feel like I have been tightrope walking all day, craziness just one misstep away.  But, I have retained my good mood amid bouts of panic and anger and panic again.  That's just how my week days are.  By about nine o'clock tonight, I will be ready to become unstuck in time myself.

I have no idea what I said during my interview this afternoon.  I can only hope that the interviewer is kind and makes me sound somewhat intelligent, instead of a babbling idiot.  (If you can't tell, I have self esteem issues to go along with my lost I.D. and reckless driving.)

Saint Marty is thankful that the day is almost over.

January 9: So It Goes, Eyes of Gratitude, Word for the Day

He was treated in a veterans' hospital near Lake Placid, and was given shock treatments and released. He married his fiancée, finished his education, and was set up in business in Ilium by his father-in-law. Ilium is a particularly good city for optometrists because the General Forge and Foundry Company is there. Every employee is required to own a pair of safety glasses, and to wear them in areas where manufacturing is going on. GF&F has sixty-eight thousand employees in Ilium.  That calls for a lot of lenses and a lot of frames.

Frames are where the money is.

Bill became rich. He had two children, Barbara and Robert. In time, his daughter Barbara married another optometrist., and Billy set him up in business. Billy's son Robert had a lot of trouble in high school, but then he joined the famous Green Berets. He straightened out, became a fine young man, and he fought in Vietnam.

Early in 1968, a group of optometrists, with Billy among them, chartered an airplane to fly them from Ilium to an international convention of optometrists in Montreal. The plane crashed on top of Sugarbush Mountain, in Vermont. Everybody was killed but Billy. So it goes. 

While Billy was recuperating in a hospital in Vermont, his wife died accidentally of carbon-monoxide poisoning. So it goes.

This little synopsis of Billy Pilgrim's life can be a little frightening.  It emphasizes the randomness of tragedy, of which Billy seems to have more than his fair share. A nervous breakdown, Vietnam, airplane crash, carbon monoxide.That's quite the laundry list of catastrophe. Nobody would blame Billy if he just shut the windows in his house, closed the curtains, and stayed in bed all day.

Well, that's one way of looking at it. Examining the paragraph differently: Billy is a successful optometrist, rich and popular; he survives an airplane crash that killed every other passenger; Billy's son does not die in Vietnam--he's a "fine young man"; Billy does not die accidentally of carbon monoxide poisoning with his wife. So, in reality, Billy Pilgrim is a pretty lucky bastard.

Again, it's all a matter of perspective. Billy can choose to live in despair or gratitude. If I was Billy, I'm not sure which option I would select.  But I am NOT Billy Pilgrim. I haven't had a nervous breakdown (yet). My son is too young to serve in a war zone. I don't plan on taking any plane trips in the near future, and I don't think I have to worry about carbon monoxide in my house. I have chosen to make 2017 a year of gratitude. So it goes.

I think the world would be a much better place if viewed with eyes of gratitude. Instead of feeling deprived and wronged, people would feel satisfied and blessed. Not that there aren't injustices in the world to confront--racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, to name a few. There are. But, if all the homophobes or Islamophobes simply lived their lives in love and gratitude, they wouldn't hate gay people or Muslims. Ditto racists and sexists.

I am not a child of the 1960s. I shower. Wear shoes and socks. I can't remember the last time I flashed the peace sign to anybody. However, embracing love and gratitude is not just a hippie thing. It goes back a lot further. To Jesus Christ. To before Jesus Christ. In the Book of Daniel, there is this little passage: 
     . . . 
     Every shower and dew, bless the Lord.
     All you winds, bless the Lord.
     Fire and heat, bless the Lord.
     Cold and chill, bless the Lord.
     Dew and rain, bless the Lord.
     Frost and chill, bless the Lord.
     Ice and snow, bless the Lord.
     Light and darkness, bless the Lord.
     Lightnings and clouds, bless the Lord.
     Let the earth bless the Lord.
     . . . 
So, you see, the call for gratitude isn't new.  It's ancient. And, really, it's exhausting to live in a constant state of deprivation and anger, feeling wronged and cheated every minute of the day. The people who live like that just elected Donald Trump to be President of the United States.

So, gratitude is the word for the day, the week, the month, the year, the century, the millennium.

Tonight, Saint Marty is grateful for his wife, who keeps him sane and centered when he's going off the rails.

September 16: Poem on the Way, Reading Weekend

I know I said I was going to work on a new poem.  I am.  I will have it posted tomorrow afternoon/evening.  I started writing it this morning, but I couldn't get anything to really work for me.  So I scrapped the couple pages I've written.  I started writing a new poem about an hour os so ago.  I like what's coming out now.

Pretty much, I'm going to be spending my weekend reading for the classes I'm teaching.  I have to finish one book, get some notes taken on another.  It should be fairly simple stuff, but it will be time-consuming.  That I know.  It's only Friday, and the next couple of days are already claimed.  Somehow, I also have to look at some poetry submissions for the literary magazine I help edit, Passages North.  I don't know when I'm going to be able to do that.  I was thinking Saturday afternoon, but my daughter has a dance class at 2 p.m.  That pretty much takes care of tomorrow.

Saint Marty's weekend begins.  So it goes.