December 21, 2024: "Dining Alone," Solitude, Winter Solstice

Because I'm a poet, solitude is essential at times.  To read and think and create.

In modern society, solitude is suspect.  Going to a movie alone attracts sympathy and stares.  Sitting on a bench alone, scribbling in a notebook, makes onlookers uncomfortable, as if you're an undercover FBI agent taking down names.  Dining alone is the ultimate transgression--smacking of isolation or mental illness or serial-killer-in-the-making.

Billy Collins reflects on the etiquette of eating dinner alone . . . 

Dining Alone

by: Billy Collins

He who eats alone chokes alone.

---Arab saying

I would rather eat at the bar,

but such behavior is regarded

by professionals as a form of denial,

so here I am seated alone

at a table with a white tablecloth

attended by an elderly waiter with no name--

ideal conditions for dining alone

according to the connoisseurs of this minor talent.

I have brought neither book nor newspaper

since reading material is considered cheating.

Eating alone, they say, means eating alone,

not in the company of Montaigne

or the ever-engaging Nancy Mitford.

Nor do I keep glancing up as if waiting

for someone who inevitably fails to appear--

a sign of moral weakness

to those who take this practice seriously.

And the rewards?  

I am thinking of an obvious one right now

as I take the time to contemplate

on my lifted fork a piece of trout with almond slices.

And I can enjoy swirling the wine in my glass

until it resembles a whirlpool

in a 19th-centruy painting of a ship foundering in a storm.

Then there are the looks of envy 

from the fellow on the blind date

and the long-married couple facing each other in silence.

I pierced a buttered spear of asparagus

and wondered if the moon would be visible tonight,

but uncapping my pen was out of the question

for writing, too, is frowned upon

by the true champions of solitude.

All that would have to wait

until after I have walked home,

collar up, under the streetlights.

Not until I would hear the echo of the front door,

closing behind me could I record

in a marbled notebook--

like the ones I had as a schoolboy--

my observations about the art

of dining alone in the company of strangers.

It is Winter Solstice--the longest night of the year.  The sun didn't rise until well past 8 a.m., and, by the time I left church at around 5 p.m. this evening, it was already getting dark.  

A little while ago, I stood in my backyard, gazing up into the heavens.  It's a clear, cold night--the kind that seems etched in glass.  I didn't see any moon, but the stars were bright as pearls.

It's easy to feel isolated and alone on this day.  Darkness has a way of making you feel like the first or last person on the planet.  Solitude is all around.  At the moment, everyone else in my house is asleep.  My son isn't screaming at his online gaming friends.  My puppy hasn't so much as moaned since she was put in her cage for the night and covered with blankets.  And my wife surrendered to sleep about an hour ago.

I'm feeling slightly exhausted myself.  (Nothing new there.  I've been exhausted for about a month now.)  My wife and I went Christmas shopping this afternoon.  This year, we are trying as best as we can to shop local.  Too many of the big chain stores and websites contributed to the campaign of the Felon in Chief.  So we decided local artists, artisans, writers, book stores, and art galleries would get our money over, say, Walmart or Amazon.  And it felt really good to know that we weren't helping with the downfall of democracy in this country.  Yes, I know I'm only one person, and whether I buy my son socks at Walmart is not going to destroy the Walton family fortune.  But that one solitary act of protest, if repeated hundreds of thousand of times, will make an impact.  Collective solitude in action.

Tomorrow, days start getting longer, light returning gradually to my part of this planet.  My hope is that the darkness that's ben sitting on my shoulders will gradually fade, as well.  In the meantime, I embrace my solitude.  Feel whatever emotion fills that space with me--sadness or anger or creativity or love.  I know that I'm really not alone and never have been.

Poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote, "I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people:  that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other."

Saint Marty is standing guard this dark night for all his disciples.  

June 12: Dance Recital Weekend, Tony Awards, Classic Saint Marty

I am at the other end of the Dance Recital weekend.  I have survived a week of rehearsals and two performances.  During the past five or six days, I have put about an extra two hundred miles on my car chauffeuring my kids back and forth.  I am tired and happy.  My kids did really well, and now my daughter is at Bible camp for the week.  Dropped her off about an hour ago.  I feel a little guilty in saying that I'm looking forward to a few days of relative calm.

I am a little exhausted at the moment.  I had little time to relax (unless you count dozing off in the auditorium during dance rehearsals).  Five days of work await me.  I have a feeling that it's going to be a very long week.  My only consolation is that tomorrow will be a relatively quiet day at my new job, and I will be working by myself.  Solitude.

Tonight, however, I will be watching the Tony Awards to see Lin-Manuel Miranda take home a boatload of prizes for Hamilton.  And I will be eating Scoop Fritos and cheese dip (it's sort of a tradition for me).  It will be a good night, full of people breaking into spontaneous songs on television.

The episode of Classic Saint Marty I have chosen to share today is only about a year old.  It was written during a time when there was still hope for my sister's recovery from brain lymphoma.  In fact, I don't think she'd received that diagnosis yet.  I was thinking a lot about miracles at the time and the need for them in my life.

June 16, 2015:  Weeping Building, Miracles, Sally Wen Mao, "Monstera Deliciosa"

In one slip of a second, anything seemed possible--had the moon risen and started to sing, had pyramids appeared over the Chrysler building weeping, Ives would have been no more surprised.

Ives has just had a near death experience.  As he walks the streets of Manhattan, he starts having visions of God's goodness.  Four colored winds spinning in the sky.  The sun, glowing red and huge.  Car horns sounding like celestial trumpets.  As the above passage says, anything seems possible.

I've been contemplating miracles recently.  Ives thinks of his near-death experiences as some kind of divine vision granted to him.  I'm not so sure that's accurate.  I think most people go through their days with blinders on.  Ives' blinders have simply been removed for a little while.  He's seeing the world from a God's-eye-view. 

I think I'm a lot like the blindered Ives.  Driving to work, talking to patients, eating lunch, walking to my car at the end of the day, I probably miss more miracles than contained in the gospels.  For instance, near the medical center where I work, there's a bike path in the woods.  I know there are albino deer in that forest.  One night, as I was leaving the university after teaching an evening class, I drove by a cemetery.  Near the cemetery fence was a family of deer.  When the headlights of my car spotlighted them, the deer leaped into the darkness, hurdling headstones and hedges like souls racing to heaven.

Everyday miracles.  I need to open my eyes and look around more often.  Maybe I'll see the moon singing or the university clock tower weeping.  Who knows?  The whole world is full of wonder.  Sure, I'm sort of stuck in a swamp of worry right now.  But I know that my very existence--my lungs' habit of breathing, my heart's habit of beating, my pores' habit of sweating--all of the things that keep me alive are impossible miracles of creation.

Sally Wen Mao's poem for tonight is about one of those miracles of nature that most people don't even stop to notice.

Saint Marty is taking some time tonight to give thanks for miracles.

Monstera Deliciosa

by:  Sally Wen Mao

I'm a monster because I poison the children.
They dance around me and my fronds flutter
with holes.  They invite:  Eat my fanged fruit.

Each scale will peel off easy, but if you eat it
unripe, it will steal your voice.  Your gums
will blister little stars.  You'll vomit, swell, tremble.

When ripe, it is sublime.  Better than banana,
soft mango, sweeter than wild yellow rambutan
coated in syrup.  It only takes one year.  Bite.

Bon appetit!

March 11: Abba Moses, Projectile Vomit, Kalahari Resort

I have been reading the apophthegmata, the sayings of fourth- and fifth-century Egyptian desert hermits.  Abba Moses said to a disciple, "Go and sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything."

Yes, Dillard talks about the necessity for silence.  For going to your cell, sitting there, and listening.  In silence, that's when you can hear the answers you need.  The what Dillard says.  When Abba Moses says.  What the Bible says.  That's what Jesus did in the Bible every once in a while.  He had to go away by Himself.

I am sitting in my house.  Alone.  My wife and kids are at the Kalahari Resort in the Wisconsin Dells.  It has been a very long day.  I didn't sleep last night at all.

At about midnight, my son came into our bedroom and threw up all over the floor.  I'm not talking a little urp.  I'm talking projectile vomit.  It's wasn't pretty.  And, for the rest of the night, he kept on throwing up.

I felt horrible for him, because I thought he wasn't going to be able to go on the trip.  In the morning, he kept throwing up until I gave him a dose of Motrin.  Between heaving his guts up, he kept crying.  No, actually, weeping.  Eventually, he stopped throwing up.  And, eventually, he got into the car with them and left.

I am quite lonely tonight.  I like solitude.  However, this is three days of solitude, interrupted by short moments of interaction.  I don't like being alone that much.  Work today was difficult.  Coming home to an empty house was difficult.  Writing this post hasn't been easy, either.  With all due respect to Abba Moses, my cell isn't teaching me anything this evening.

Maybe Saint Marty should just crack open the bottle of Bailey's in the cupboard.

Been there, done that . . .

August 15: Too Many People, Solitude, Lonely Fairy Tale

All in all, the Zuckermans' pigpen was the center of attention.  Fern was happy, for she felt that Charlotte's trick was working and that Wilbur's life would be saved.  But she found that the barn was not nearly as pleasant--too many people.  She liked it better when she could be all alone with her friends the animals.

I totally understand Fern's aversion to the crowds that show up to witness the "miracle" of Charlotte's web.  Fern is used to being alone in her uncle's barn.  The throngs of visitors disrupt her quiet days with Wilbur and Charlotte.  It would be like going into the woods for a quiet walk and finding yourself in the middle of the New York Marathon route instead.

I like people.  I like the students I teach.  I like the patients I register.  However, at a certain point in the day, I reach my people limit.  I don't feel like smiling and joking anymore.  I feel like grabbing a book, finding a quiet corner in a nearly deserted library, and being by myself.  Perhaps I have a limited reserve of goodwill.  Perhaps I'm a closet misanthrope.  I don't know.  But, 'round about one or two o'clock in the afternoon, I have to fight the urge to withdraw from the world.

I think that's why I relish my weekend time so much.  Friday through Sunday, I don't have to be friendly with everybody.  In fact, if I want, I don't have to be friendly with anybody.  I could be an absolute asshole.  Of course, I don't do that.  I will not go out of my way to be unpleasant.  However, I don't have to go out of my way to be pleasant, either.  I can just be me.  Period.

Once upon a time, a hermit named Herman lived on top of a mountain.  Nobody ever visited Herman, because the mountain was too difficult to climb and the air was too thin to breathe.  Herman preferred this arrangement.

In the morning, Herman rose at 8 a.m., ate a bowl full of pine cones, and then went for a walk around the mountaintop.  He made sure there was nothing near his house that would attract unwanted visitors.  He chopped down trees that were too beautiful.  Smashed up rocks that were too interesting.  Killed birds that sang too musically.  Herman the hermit made his mountaintop the most uninviting place in the world.

And nobody ever came to see Herman.

One day, Herman developed a massive bowel obstruction from eating too much tree bark and pine needles.  He suffered in bed for three days and then died alone.

Nobody mourned the passing of Herman the hermit.

Moral of the story:  make sure to eat enough fiber.

And Saint Marty lived happily ever after.

And constipated...

October 21: Saint Hilarion, Hermits, Solitude

Saint Hilarion is the patron saint today.  I like this guy.  Sure, he was holy, worked miracles, did all that normal, saintly stuff.  The thing that attracts me to Hilarion, however, is that he was in a constant state of retreat.  He lived in the desert in Egypt with Saint Antony for while.  Then he moved to Gaza and lived as an anchorite for 20 years.  For those of you who don't know, an anchorite is a religious hermit.  Of course, when you're a living saint, people tend to take notice, especially if you're curing people of fatal illnesses or levitating while you meditate.  Crowds of people started flocking to Hilarion.

So he fled to Egypt again.  Then to Libya.  Then to Sicily.  To Dalmatia,  To Cyprus.  Finally, to some "more deserted spot nearby."  He just wanted to be left alone.  It took one of his followers three years to find him once.  Three years.  All Hilarion wanted to do was lead a simple life, eat a few locusts, maybe some honey at the holidays, and pray.  He's like the Thomas Pynchon of saints.

I understand the desire to be left alone.  I think I've previously written a post or two about being a hermit.  Aside from a small group of friends, I could easily give up being a part of the throng of humanity.  Right now, as I sit at my desk typing, there are one or two people around me.  I have my earbuds firmly in my ears, my iPod blasting Christmas music to drown out the voices.  Oh, and my back is to everyone.  I think they get the message:  LEAVE ME ALONE.

Don't get me wrong.  I can kick back with the best of 'em.  This morning, however, I'm craving solitude.  I want to be Hilarion is some deserted spot.  Alone.  With a good book and some Bailey's Irish Cream mixed with hot chocolate.

Book Saint Marty a ticket to Cyprus.

For that long boat ride to Cyprus