November 20: "The Unfortunate Traveler," Vacation, Art

This is not going to be an angry post about the Felon in Chief.  Nor is it going to be about MAGA-hat-wearing mouth breathers.  I figure everyone needs a vacation from that circus.  (This statement doesn't mean, however, I will give up voicing my constant shock and disappointment over his idiotic cabinet appointments and outright lies.)

Billy Collins visits France . . . 

The Unfortunate Traveler

by: Billy Collins

Because I was off to France, I packed 

my camera along with my shaving kit, 

some colorful boxer shorts, and a sweater with a zipper, 

but every time I tried to take a picture 

of a bridge, a famous plaza,

or the bronze equestrian statue of a general, 

there was a woman standing in front of me 

taking a picture of the very same thing, 

or the odd pedestrian blocked my view, 

someone or something always getting between me 

and the flying buttress, the river boat, 

a bright café awning, an unexpected pillar. 

So into the little door of the lens 

came not the kiosk or the altarpiece. 

No fresco or baptistry slipped by the quick shutter. 

Instead, my memories of that glorious summer 

of my youth are awakened now, 

like an ember fanned into brightness, 

by a shoulder, the back of a raincoat, 

a wide hat or towering hairdo— 

lost time miraculously recovered 

by the buttons on a gendarme’s coat 

and my favorite, 

the palm of that vigilant guard at the Louvre.

I hosted a concert at the library this evening.  A good musician friend of mine gathered three of his friends and put on a show.  I wasn't sure how many people to expect, since it was the middle of the week and the weather turned cold and rainy after dark.  (By the way, it's now snowing in my neck of the woods.)  

Well, I guess a lot of people needed a vacation from the insanity of the Felon in Chief, too.  Over 90 people attended.  We all sat, listened, sang along, whistled, clapped.  Just what the doctor ordered.

It was good medicine--the kind that may just get us through the next four or so years.  

Because that's what art can do--lift you up, make you feel less alone or scared or angry or sad.  Art brings people together--whether its music or words or painting or acting or telling jokes or juggling cotton balls.  Art doesn't care about what color your skin is, who you love, how you worship, or where you're from.

All that matters is that you're a human being with a beating heart.

Saint Marty was filled with hope this evening.

August 2: Loosen Up, Still Breathing, Vacation

Santiago's hand cramps . . . 

His left hand was still cramped, but he was unknotting it slowly.

I hate a cramp, he thought. It is a treachery of one's own body. It is humiliating before others to have a diarrhea from ptomaine poisoning or to vomit from it. But a cramp, he thought of it as a calambre, humiliates oneself especially when one is alone.

If the boy were here he could rub it for me and loosen it down from the forearm, he thought. But it will loosen up.

Everyone's body eventually betrays them.  That's what aging and mortality is all about.  I can't do stuff that I could easily do ten years ago.  Like run long distances or ride roller coasters without throwing up.  As the years pass, time slowly chips away at us, carving small and large losses.  Those losses remind us that we are still breathing, alive.

I'm on vacation now.  I worked for about nine hours today, finishing up loose ends at the library.  By the time I left my office, I was really beat.  Still am.  When I was younger, I could easily stay up until 3 a.m., sleep for a couple hours, get up at 6 a.m., work all day, go home, write a poem, jog a few miles, and stay up to watch reruns of Kolchak:  The Night Stalker.  Not any more.

My life is pretty complicated.  I maintain a schedule that can be exhausting.  My friends often worry about me and my lack of rest and sleep.  I push myself to my limits frequently.  On a good night, I probably get, on average, about five solid hours of sleep.  On a normal night, between three and four hours.  When I am in a blue funk, as I am now, sleep evades me.  That doesn't mean I'm not tired.  It means, when I put head to pillow, my mind finds 27 topics that need my immediate attention.

But I'm hoping to find moments of rest these next few days.  I'm traveling to the Chicago area on Thursday to take my family to Great America.  That means many hours in a car followed by many hours trying to avoid a case of vertigo.  That upside is that I'm not driving.  That means I will have no choice but to relax for almost a full day.  Maybe even nap.

And that will be a blessing for Saint Marty's tired old body and mind.

April 30: Naked Line of His Backbone, Last Day of the Month, Grading

Santiago is tired . . . 

He unstepped the mast and furled the sail and tied it. Then he shouldered the mast and started to climb. It was then he knew the depth of his tiredness. He stopped for a moment and looked back and saw in the reflection from the street light the great tail of the fish standing up well behind the skiff's stern. He saw the white naked line of his backbone and the dark mass of the head with the projecting bill and all the nakedness between.

He started to climb again and at the top he fell and lay for some time with the mast across his shoulder. He tried to get up. But it was too difficult and he sat there with the mast on his shoulder and looked at the road. A cat passed on the far side going about its business and the old man watched it. Then he just watched the road.

April has been quite a ride.  Almost 30 days of events for the Great Lakes Poetry Festival.  Plus, some personal struggles with my son at school.  And I have to say, on this last day of the month, I am bone weary, to the point of fever dream exhaustion.  I wouldn't be surprised if I start hallucinating.

Worked a few hours this morning, in preparation for my vacation next week.  Now, I am doing my final grading.  Papers.  Exams.  I have until Tuesday to get everything done.  It's going to be a long few days.

Saint Marty's koan for tonight:  if you fall down in the street on your way home, finish grading that stack of papers.

August 12: Slowing Down and Clearing Up, on the Balcony, Warm Summer Days

Already has it been related how the great leviathan is afar off described from the mast-head; how he is chased over the watery moors, and slaughtered in the valleys of the deep; how he is then towed alongside and beheaded; and how (on the principle which entitled the headsman of old to the garments in which the beheaded was killed) his great padded surtout becomes the property of his executioner; how, in due time, he is condemned to the pots, and, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, his spermaceti, oil, and bone pass unscathed through the fire;- but now it remains to conclude the last chapter of this part of the description by rehearsing- singing, if I may- the romantic proceeding of decanting off his oil into the casks and striking them down into the hold, where once again leviathan returns to his native profundities, sliding along beneath the surface :is before; but, alas! never more to rise and blow.

While still warm, the oil, like hot punch, is received into the six-barrel casks; and while, perhaps, the ship is pitching and rolling this way and that in the midnight sea, the enormous casks are slewed round and headed over, end for end, and sometimes perilously scoot across the slippery deck, like so many land slides, till at last man-handled and stayed in their course; and all round the hoops, rap, rap, go as many hammers as can play upon them, for now, ex officio, every sailor is a cooper.

At length, when the last pint is casked, and all is cool, then the great hatchways are unsealed, the bowels of the ship are thrown open, and down go the casks to their final rest in the sea. This done, the hatches are replaced, and hermetically closed, like a closet walled up.

In the sperm fishery, this is perhaps one of the most remarkable incidents in all the business of whaling. One day the planks stream with freshets of blood and oil; on the sacred quarter-deck enormous masses of the whale's head are profanely piled; great rusty casks lie about, as in a brewery yard; the smoke from the try-works has besooted all the bulwarks; the mariners go about suffused with unctuousness; the entire ship seems great leviathan himself; while on all hands the din is deafening.

But a day or two after, you look about you, and prick your ears in this self-same ship! and were it not for the tell-tale boats and try-works, you would all but swear you trod some silent merchant vessel, with a most scrupulously neat commander. The unmanufactured sperm oil possesses a singularly cleansing virtue. This is the reason why the decks never look so white as just after what they call an affair of oil. Besides, from the ashes of the burned scraps of the whale, a potent lye is readily made; and whenever any adhesiveness from the back of the whale remains clinging to the side, that lye quickly exterminates it. Hands go diligently along the bulwarks, and with buckets of water and rags restore them to their full tidiness. The soot is brushed from the lower rigging. All the numerous implements which have been in use are likewise faithfully cleansed and put away. The great hatch is scrubbed and placed upon the try-works, completely hiding the pots; every cask is out of sight; all tackles are coiled in unseen nooks; and when by the combined and, simultaneous industry of almost the entire ship's company, the whole of this conscientious duty is at last concluded, then the crew themselves proceed to their own ablutions; shift themselves from top to toe; and finally issue to the immaculate deck, fresh and all aglow as bridegrooms new-leaped from out the daintiest Holland.

Now, with elated step, they pace the planks in twos and threes, and humorously discourse of parlors, sofas, carpets, and fine cambrics; propose to mat the deck; think of having hanging to the top; object not to taking tea by moonlight on the piazza of the forecastle. To hint to such musked mariners of oil, and bone, and blubber, were little short of audacity. They know not the thing you distantly allude to. Away, and bring us napkins!

But mark: aloft there, at the three mast heads, stand three men intent on spying out more whales, which, if caught, infallibly will again soil the old oaken furniture, and drop at least one small grease-spot somewhere. Yes; and many is the time, when, after the severest uninterrupted labors, which know no night; continuing straight through for ninety-six hours; when from the boat, where they have swelled their wrists with all day rowing on the Line,- they only step to the deck to carry vast chains, and heave the heavy windlass, and cut and slash, yea, and in their very sweatings to be smoked and burned anew by the combined fires of the equatorial sun and the equatorial try-works; when, on the heel of all this, they have finally bestirred themselves to cleanse the ship, and make a spotless dairy room of it; many is the time the poor fellows, just buttoning the necks of their clean frocks, are startled by the cry of "There she blows!" and away they fly to fight another whale, and go through the whole weary thing again. Oh! my friends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life. For hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from this world's vast bulk its small but valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done, when- There she blows!- the ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other world, and go through young life's old routine again.

Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, two thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed with thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage- and, foolish as I am, taught thee, a green simple boy, how to splice a rope.

I completely understand this chapter from Moby-Dick.  It's about work that never ends.  The crew finishes with one whale--the killing, towing, skinning, beheading, boiling, barreling--and cleans the ship from stem to stern.  Then all the crewmen wash and change their clothes.  Everything is done, and they are ready for a little rest and relaxation that doesn't involve knives and blood and viscera when they hear the call--"There she blows!"  And it all starts over again.

I am not going to spend an entire blog post today reflecting on work.  I'm on vacation, sitting on the balcony of my hotel room.  It's close to 80 degrees, but I'm in the shade.  It's not humid, and there's no wind blowing.  It's calm and beautiful.  The cicadas are still sawing away at the air.  I wouldn't mind if this moment would go on forever.

After breakfast this morning, I went for a little walk around the grounds.  I saw ducks swimming in the pond.  Admired the water fountain.  Tiptoed around some goose crap.  It's strange.  Usually this place is crazy busy--people always checking in or checking out, Jaguars and SUVs parked out front.  At night, the crowds are usually loud and a little drunk.

This year, it has been really subdued.  Yes, there were a couple conventions going on, and, the other night, there was a wedding reception.  For the most part, however, the grounds have been quiet, and the water park has been empty.  No waiting in long lines for the water slides.  Last night, we sat outside under the Perseids and watched Finding Nemo.  It was 11 o'clock when the film ended, and, as we walked back to our hotel room, there were only a few people sitting outside, sipping drinks, talking quietly.

It's been really peaceful, which is exactly what I was looking for.  I'm sort of half-expecting someone to shout "There she blows!", and the entire hotel to descend into chaos.  Hasn't happened yet.  Instead, I have this morning--well, afternoon now.  Just a little past 12 p.m.  Saw a little V of geese honking by just now.  And, just across the parking lot a little ways, the leaves of a maple tree are starting to blush a little red.  A hint of autumn.

Saint Marty is thankful today for warm summer days without a whale on the horizon.

August 11: Albert Garcia, "August Morning," Green Contentment

August Morning

by:  Albert Garcia

It’s ripe, the melon

by our sink. Yellow,

bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes

the house too sweetly.

At five I wake, the air

mournful in its quiet.

My wife’s eyes swim calmly

under their lids, her mouth and jaw

relaxed, different.

What is happening in the silence

of this house? Curtains

hang heavily from their rods.

Ficus leaves tremble

at my footsteps. Yet

the colors outside are perfect--

orange geranium, blue lobelia.

I wander from room to room

like a man in a museum:

wife, children, books, flowers,

melon. Such still air. Soon

the mid-morning breeze will float in

like tepid water, then hot.

How do I start this day,

I who am unsure

of how my life has happened

or how to proceed

amid this warm and steady sweetness?

_________________________

It is 11:20 in the morning.  I haven't really accomplished anything, and I'm not really upset about it.

I woke up early this morning and listened to the sounds of my family in our hotel room.  There was a TV playing downstairs.  My sister is an early riser.  My son farted in his bed.  Every once in a while, I heard my wife shift, her sheets rasp.  No sounds from my daughter's room.

That is what August summer mornings should be.  Quiet.  Filled with a green contentment.

Saint Marty could stay on vacation for the next twelve months of his life.

January 2: Meditation and Water, Unconscious, Vacation

Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries- stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.

But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd's eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies- what is the one charm wanting?- Water- there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers get sea-sick- grow quarrelsome- don't sleep of nights- do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing;- no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not. And as for going as cook,- though I confess there is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board- yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls;- though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge bakehouses the pyramids.

No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the fore-castle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honor, particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off in time.

Herman Melville's whale book is long and full of these kinds of reflections and ruminations on water and work and art and food and mythology.  All these things sort of swim around in this ocean of words.  It's weird and beautiful and, in a lot of ways, post-modern before there was a modern.  Ishmael is restless, craving the sea.  He doesn't want responsibility.  He wants the anonymity and rootlessness of oceans and lakes.

I sort of understand Ishmael's urges.  Any person with any kind of life burden can understand what Ishmael means when he says, ". . . meditation and water are wedded for ever."  Every night, when I go to bed, my mind takes me to oceans.  Last week, when the water lines of my house kept freezing, I was bombarded by the sound of water.  When I fell asleep, I dreamed my bed was adrift in a desert of blue.  All I could see, from one horizon to the other, were waves and sun.

It's a subconscious thing.  There's something about water, and what swims beneath, that excites and frightens most imaginations.  Jaws works because it plays into our most basic anxieties of the unknown.  Melville's white whale is just one big symbol for our most secret obsessions and needs.  Those things that drive us.

I'm sitting on my couch right now.  It's a little after 11 o'clock.  Snow is falling.  The wind is picking up.  Tomorrow, a storm is in the forecast.  My kids, in the oceans of their hearts, are praying for an extended Christmas vacation.  Two days of bad weather and wind chills.  Enough to cancel school for the rest of the week.

The white whale in my ocean tomorrow will be reading and cleaning.  I am hosting the Christmas meeting of my Book Club this weekend.  I have a book to finish and a house to put in order.  Not to mention food to buy and prepare.  It's my last holiday hurrah before I have to head back to dry land.

You can't stay at sea forever.  Eventually, you have to return home and resume your normal life.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for his time off, away from the dry land of his jobs and work.

April 4: War Would End, Wisconsin Dells, Getting Away

During the night, some of the locomotives began to tootle to one another, and then to move.  The locomotive and the last car of each train were marked with a striped banner of orange and black, indicating that the train was not fair game for airplanes--that it was carrying prisoners of war.

The war was nearly over.  The locomotives began to move east in late December.  The war would end in May.  German prisons everywhere were absolutely full, and there was no longer any food for the prisoners to eat, and no longer any fuel to keep them warm.  And yet--here came more prisoners.

Billy is captured by the Germans near the end of World War II.  He will only be in prison a few months.  In a way, Billy is lucky.  There is a sense of finality in these two paragraphs, as if the battles are already over and everybody is just waiting for a truce to be declared.

For the last couple of days, I've been pretty angry about something that happened on Sunday.  It has sort of consumed me, made me supremely tired.  Monday morning I woke up feeling exhausted.  This morning, I woke up feeling exhausted.  I am tired of being tired.  So, today, I am calling a truce.  I am not going to dwell on Sunday's events today.  I am going to try to rest, regain some sense of balance.

This weekend, I am going on a trip to the Wisconsin Dells.  My daughter has a dance competition at the Kalahari Resort.  That means a few days of water slides and amusement park rides and virtual reality games.  And a lot of driving.  When I get home on Sunday night, I have a feeling I'm going to be much more tired than when I left.

I am looking forward to getting away, though.  I'm not going to be able to leave last Sunday completely behind, but I am going to try.  As I said, it's time for a truce with my anger.  I'm sure, when I get back on Sunday, l will find all my negative energy where I left it.

For today, however, Saint Marty is thankful for the upcoming cessation of the hostilities of his mind.

July 7: Bawling with Newness, Compromise, Dust Bunnies

Anything can happen; any pattern of speckles may appear in a world ceaselessly bawling with newness.  I see red blood stream in shimmering dots inside a goldfish's tail; I see the stout, extensible lip of a dragonfly nymph that can pierce and clasp a goldfish; and I see the clotted snarls of bright algae that snare and starve the nymph.  I see engorged, motionless ants regurgitate pap to a colony of pawing workers, and I see sharks limned in light twist in a raised and emerald wave.

It's a paragraph about miracles, about the infinite possibilities that exist in the universe.  Everything is full of wonder, from a tiny drop of blood in the tail of a fish to a curl of an ocean wave swarmed with shark shadow.  Dillard seems to encounter grace in the very dust bunnies beneath her bed.  I can imagine her writing about the skin and dirt and dust that tumbleweed together in the shadows under her box spring to make those creatures of neglect.

I am trying to see wonder tonight.  I have placed myself in a situation for the next few days that makes me uncomfortable.  I've compromised, and I'm not sure it was a good compromise.  But I'm stuck and can do nothing to change the course of my weekend.  Thus, I'm on the hunt for grace and wonder.

The closest I can come tonight is a planned vacation that I will be taking in about two weeks.  It's just going to be a long weekend at a resort in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan.  It's a large complex with restaurants and a water park.  In the evenings, there's usually campfires and performers (magicians and jugglers and artists).  I've been down there once or twice before.  It's beautiful and disconnected from all of the dust bunnies of my life.  I suppose there's grace and wonder in that.

I also have not had one argument with my daughter this evening.  That's not grace.  That's a bona fide miracle on par with the raising of Lazarus or the feeding of the multitudes with the loaves and fishes.  There were no screaming matches between her and her seven-year-old brother, and she has not once made me feel like the dictator of a small, Eastern European country.  Blessing and grace and wonder in all of that.

The neighbors are setting off fireworks right now.  Leftovers from the Fourth of July perhaps.  I hear hissing and crackling, followed by steady concussions.  Boom.  Boom.  Boom.  Sssssss.  Boom.  Boom.  Sssss.  Darkness is falling.  There's a beer in the fridge.  A leftover from when my book club met last week.  Perhaps I will crack that open after I'm done with this post.  Grace in leftovers.

Saint Marty will take grace any way he can.

April 15: Queen Mary, Grand Rapids, Vacation

When I look across the street, I can't believe my eyes.  Right behind the road's shoulder are waves, waves whipped in rhythmically peaking scallops, racing downstream.  The hill where I watched the praying mantis lay her eggs is a waterfall that splashes into a brown ocean.  I can't even remember where the creek usually runs--it is everywhere now.  My log is gone for sure, I think--but in fact, I discover later, it holds, rammed between growing trees.  Only the cable suspending the steers' fence is visible, and not the fence itself; the steers' pasture is entirely in flood, a brown river.  The river leaps its banks and smashes into the woods where the motorbikes go, devastating all but the sturdiest trees.  The water is so deep and wide it seems as though you could navigate the Queen Mary in it, clear to Tinker Mountain.

Spring is rushing into Tinker Creek, a great brown sea that rewrites the entire landscape.  It's probably something that happens every year.  Downing weak trees, washing away pastures.  When all is said and done, after the snow has melted and runoff charged through, Tinker Creek will settle into summer.  New and wide.

Greetings from Grand Rapids.  It has been a long day of travel.  As we drove, we passed through valleys where spring runoff had flooded pastures, the waves practically lapping at the roads.  Yes, like Dillard, I saw quite a few bodies of water that looked big enough for the Queen Mary to come sailing by.

It was a relatively painless journey.  Yes, my seven-year-old son had a few meltdowns.  Yes, my daughter wanted to abandon her brother at a Subway in Gaylord, Michigan.  And, indeed, my wife over-packed yet again.  We came down here with a small grocery store in the back of my sister's van.

The members of our Grand Rapids landing party include myself, my wife and daughter and son, my sister, and my daughter's boyfriend.  We have three days of dance competitions and eating and shopping ahead of us.  I'm going to try to make the best of my time down here, because it will probably be the only vacation I get this summer.  (By the way, it is seventy degrees down here.  For a Yooper, that sort of feels like July.)

I am happy.  I'm with people I love.  The weather's great.  I'm about a half mile away from a Barnes & Noble.  Tomorrow, I get to see my daughter dance and have a really good steak dinner, hopefully.

Marty is a very happy saint this evening.

My daughter and her boyfriend

March 18: "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," God's Love Number Twenty-Nine, Vacation

Ives kneeling, the choir started to sing "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," and his head tipped back.

Ives is at the end of his life.  He's tired, but happy.  At peace.  After decades of pain and grief, Ives can listen to music, pray, attend church without the torment of grief and anger.  In some ways, he has reached a kind of enlightenment, backed up by a church choir.

It has been another really long day.  My head hurts, and all I can think about is getting to Friday morning.  I will be getting the hell out of town for a few days.  No work.  No teaching.  Just eating, reading, drinking, and more eating.  Oh, and my daughter's dance competition.

I have not reached any kind of enlightenment like Ives.  For the past three or four days, I've been praying that I can somehow give my worries over to God.  After all, I can't control whether I get one or two classes to teach in the fall.  I can't control where I'm told to work in the medical office.  Yet, I'm losing sleep, getting headaches because I'm powerless.

So, tonight, with my head throbbing and my eyes burning, I'm grateful for the promise of some time off.  A vacation.  That's God's love number twenty-nine.

Maybe Saint Marty will find some enlightenment on the road.

I wonder if they sell enlightenment at Starbucks

July 28: The Countdown, Vacation, "Web" Dip

The countdown has begun.  In five days, my vacation will begin.  At 5 p.m. on Friday, I will be free for a glorious nine days.  That may not sound like much, but I only take two weeks off a year.  The first week of January.  The first week of August.  No phones to answer.  No classes to teach.  Nobody telling me what I have to do.

As a kid, I remember the two weeks my family used to spend at a camp in the middle of the woods in Gay, Michigan.  No electricity.  Pit toilet.  Sauna.  At night, we could hear the surf of Lake Superior in the dark.  It was a rustic experience, something I try to avoid as an adult.  But, for a really young boy, it was like vacationing at Hogwarts (even though Harry Potter wouldn't come into existence for about 20 more years).  We were all witches and wizards in Hagrid's hut by the Forbidden Forest.  (OK, I'm not going to push that comparison any further.)

As an adult, I think the thing I'm looking forward to the most is reading a book that a friend of mine recently published.  I know that doesn't sound exciting, but I don't usually get to do much pleasure reading.  This book will be 320 pages of pleasure.

My question this Web dip Monday is,

Will I have a good vacation?

And the answer from the pig is,

"Everybody in!" called Mr. Arable.  He started the motor.  The ladies climbed in beside him.  Mr. Zuckerman and Lurvy and Fern and Avery rode in back, hanging onto the sideboards.  The truck began to move ahead.  The geese cheered.  The children answered their cheer, and away went everybody to the Fair.

Well, that's sounds promising.  Cheering geese and children.  The excitement of the Fair.  Ferris wheels and corn dogs.  That's pretty much a summer paradise.


Saint Marty's going to have a really good vacation.  Four more days.

Maybe I should get a new swimsuit

July 24: Finding Words, Book Bag, Scraps

Then the oldest sheep spoke up.  "I agree that there should be something new written in the web if Wilbur's life is to be saved.  And if Charlotte needs help in finding words, I think she can get it from our friend Templeton.  The rat visits the dump regularly and has access to old magazines.  He can tear out bits of advertisements and bring them up here to the barn cellar, so that Charlotte can have something to copy."

The oldest sheep does convince the rat to go on a word hunt for Charlotte.  Templeton comes back with several choices, including CRUNCHY and PRE-SHRUNK and RADIANT.   The first two words are rejected pretty quickly, but Charlotte uses Templeton's third offering, which he found on a package of soap flakes.

Recently, I've felt a little like Templeton.  I've been gathering words without doing a whole lot with them.  Thursdays, I'm supposed to discuss a book I've been carrying around in my book bag.  I haven't been following through on this promise recently because I haven't been reading a whole lot.

In my book bag right now, I have an old Time magazine with a big article on summer book releases.  (I haven't read the article.)  I have my writing and drawing journals.  I have Fannie Flagg's new novel, which I have to finish by next Thursday for my book club.  (I'm about 50 pages into it.)  I have a poetry collection by Billy Collins.  (I will use this book for my second post this evening.)  And I have my grade book from the university.  Even Templeton wouldn't find a whole lot of interest in that collection of miscellany.

So, you see, that's why I haven't been writing any book reviews.  I haven't had the time.  At most, I've read a paragraph here, a page or two there.  Scraps, basically.  I have a week of vacation coming up and a list of things I want to read during those seven days.  That list includes at least one novel and a book written by a friend of mine.  Big plans.

I'll probably end up still reading scraps, anyway.  I'll want to spend time with my wife and kids.  My wife will probably force me to do something out of my comfort zone, like get in the car and drive three hours to go to a zoo that has tigers and horseflies.  Swimming.  I will certainly take my kids swimming.  My son has been begging to go to an actual beach.  He has no idea that last winter's deep freeze can still be felt in the lakes.  Lake Superior didn't completely thaw until June.  The waters are glacial.

I will have to be satisfied with scraps, but larger scraps.  Whole poems.  Entire chapters.  Maybe even a couple late-night binges where I gobble up a hundred or so pages.

Saint Marty can't wait.

She is in my book bag

August 5: Readings in Paradise and Rudyard, Vacation Tomorrow, Magic 8-Ball Monday

We (me, my wife, and kids) got back from our little poetry trip a little over an hour ago.  It was a great excursion to the eastern Upper Peninsula, and the people I met at the readings were kind and supportive.  I even sold a couple of books.

In Rudyard, Michigan, I read with mystery novelist Steve Hamilton, novelist Sue Harrison, poet Keith Taylor, and poet/short story writer/playwright Ron Riekki.  In Paradise, it was Steve Hamilton and Keith Taylor again.  We were joined by poet Julie Brooks Barbour.  It really was an honor to read with all these accomplished writers.  They were all so gracious.  I met some old friends and made some new ones.  Keep an eye out for a couple reviews of some books I picked up on this trip.

Tomorrow morning, I head below the Mackinac Bridge for a little vacation with my family.  When I say little, I mean little.  But I'm going to enjoy every second away from the worries and cares of the last few weeks.  You'll forgive me if I only post once daily this week.  I'm trying to scale back, relax.

Which brings me to my question for Magic 8-Ball Monday:

Will my garbage get picked up tomorrow as usual?  (I'm not going for anything deep.  Remember, I'm taking it easy on myself this week.)

And the answer from Holden Caulfield is:

...All these angels start coming out of the boxes and everywhere, guys carrying crucifixes and stuff all over the place, and the whole bunch of them--thousands of them--singing "Come All Ye Faithful" like mad...

I have no idea what that quote has to do with garbage, but I know my garbage is going to get picked up tomorrow morning.  So, I guess maybe the angels are my garbage guys.  Maybe.


Saint Marty doesn't really care.  He's on vacation.

He looks like an angel to me

March 14: Some Dough, Blue as Hell, Economic Ignorance

After they left, I started getting sorry that I'd only given them ten bucks for their collection.  But the thing was, I'd made that date to go to a matinee with old Sally Hayes, and I needed to keep some dough for the tickets and stuff.  I was sorry anyway, though.  Goddam money.  It always ends up making you blue as hell.

Yes, this little piece of wisdom from Holden isn't exactly warm and fuzzy.  In fact, it's the opposite of warm and fuzzy.  Cold and prickly, maybe.  Anyway, money, if you don't have enough of it, sucks.  That's what Holden is saying, and I agree with him.

The only time money doesn't make me feel "blue as hell" is when I don't think about it.  When I go on a vacation, I don't think about money.  I will actually walk into a Barnes & Noble, see a book I want, and buy it without worrying about the cost.  I will let my daughter buy hats and clothes she wants.  I eat what I want, where I want, and don't scrutinize the prices on the menus very much.  That's what a vacation is for.  Time off from my normal, day-to-day worries and frustrations.

Of course, I just had a vacation at the beginning of January.  Two full weeks of economic ignorance.  I went out to breakfast with my wife.  I saw The Hobbit at the movie theater, and bought a big buttered popcorn and candy.  I even allowed myself to sleep in until 7 a.m. one day.  It was bliss.

My next vacation is coming at the end of May, when I go downstate with my daughter to her dance competition.  We'll stay at a hotel that's next to a outlet mall.  We'll buy tons of stuff that we really don't need and eat a lot of food that we really can't afford.  It will be a welcome blessing from what I'm experiencing right now, which is economic panic.

Money can make you blue as hell if you let it, as Holden says.

Saint Marty wishes he could be on vacation every day of his life.  He would sleep a heck of a lot better until he filed for bankruptcy.

This pretty much says it all

January 2: A Good-By, Small Moments, Day One

This morning is the first official morning of vacation for me.  Normally, I would be at the office right now, registering patients, putting together charts, thinking about the upcoming weekend.  When I'm at work, I think about being at school.  When I'm at school, I think about being at home.  When I'm at home, I think about being at work.  And when I'm on vacation, I think about the work I would normally be doing at the office.  It's a strange, vicious circle.

I got my kids off to school this morning.  I was actually looking forward to getting up with my daughter when I went to bed last night.  My alarm went off, and I got out of bed, made breakfast for her, and turned on the TV.  Then I actually woke the sleeping beast.  She was tired and cranky and whiny.  She kept saying things like, "I don't want to go to school" and "I'm not hungry" and "I don't feel good."  I responded with things I think every parent has said:  "Well, we all have to do things we don't want to do" and "It's only a three-day week" and "Once you eat something, you'll feel better."  By the end of our time together, she was screaming at me about her shoes and her lunch and the color of the sky and the injustice of the health care system in the United States, and I was dreaming about being at the office.

Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye is being kicked out of his boarding school at the beginning of the novel.  He's standing on top of a hill on campus, trying to figure out how to say goodbye to the place.  He hates leaving somewhere without feeling a sense of closure.  Then, he strikes upon this:

I was lucky.  All of a sudden I thought of something that helped me know I was getting the hell out.  I suddenly remembered this time, in around October, that I and Robert Tichener and Paul Campbell were chucking a football around, in front of the academic building.  They were nice guys, especially Tichener.  It was just before dinner and it was getting pretty dark out, but we kept chucking the ball around anyway.  It kept getting darker and darker, and we could hardly see the ball any more, but we didn't want to stop doing what we were doing.  Finally, we had to.  This teacher that taught biology, Mr. Zambest, stuck his head out of this window in the academic building and told us to go back to the dorm and get ready for dinner.  If I get a chance to remember that kind of stuff, I can get a good-by when I need one--at least, most of the time I can...

It's a tiny moment.  Simple and unimportant.  But it provides the comfort Holden's seeking at this point in the story.  He's able to say his goodbye with that memory in his pocket.

This morning, in the midst of my daughter's drama, my four-year-old son came up to me and tugged on my hand.  "Daddy?" he said.  I looked down at him.  He was in his winter coat and boots.  He backpack was on the floor beside him.  My daughter was shouting in the kitchen.

"What do you want, buddy?" I said.

"Can you come out to the bus with me?" he said, and he smiled.

I nodded, took him by the hand, and walked outside with him.  His bus was waiting.  He gave me a hug and kiss and climbed the steps onto the bus.  I watched him get buckled into his seat.  Then, he started waving at me and my wife.  He kept waving until the bus pulled away from the front of our house.

That is the moment I'm going to hold onto this morning.  I'm going to try to forget my daughter's back-to-school hysterics.  I'm going to think of my son's face, smiling, and his hand waving.  The trust and love of that one, simple moment of goodbye.

Saint Marty's day is off to a good start.

He made it all worth it

December 27: One Day Left, Holden by a Nose

I have one day left of work for the year 2012.  Less than 24 hours.  I thought for a while, when my wife lost her job last month, I was going to cancel my vacation.  I could get a lot of extra hours in those two weeks.  However, after much deliberation and soul-searching, I decided to keep my time off.  It will make for a tight January, financially, but I need a break before I have to start dealing with college students again.

I’m not going anywhere for my vacation.  I’m not doing anything.  I’m not making any plans.  I want to read.  I want to write.  I want to relax and not worry about anything.  (That last thing is not going to happen.  I will worry.  Can’t help it.  It’s in my DNA.)  However, I will de-stress my life as much as possible without heavy alcohol use.  By this time tomorrow night, I plan to have my feet up, a cup of spiked hot chocolate in my hand, and an episode of The Walking Dead on the DVD player.

By the way, the last time I checked, Holden Caulfield is still ahead by a nose in the 2013 Book Race.  To be honest, I’ve received only one response, but it was from a person whose judgment I trust.  I’m waiting to see if I get any other book suggestions, but, at the moment, it looks like The Catcher in the Rye will be the book of choice for next year.

If you don’t like J. D. Salinger, you better let Saint Marty know pretty soon. 

J. D. Salinger by a nose so far

December 17: Resentment, "Carol" Dip, Job

I have a confession:  there is a part of me that resents the fact that my wife is able to stay home and take care of our children.  I know she didn't choose to be pink slipped.  The day she lost her job, she called me, crying, and said, "I'm not sad about getting fired.  I'm sad about not being able to help you with money.  I know how hard you work."  All I think about right now is how to pay the next bill or buy the next Christmas present.

Since she joined the ranks of the unemployed, my wife has been visiting my son's classrooms and going to Bible study at church on Tuesdays.  She's catching up on the laundry, and dinner is usually made by the time I get home from work.  But, when my alarm goes off at 4 a.m. every morning and I have to drag myself out of bed, there's a part of me that gets a little bit angry.  I can't remember the last time I slept past 6:30 a.m.  I'm tired.  I was thinking of canceling my vacation at the beginning of January because I could earn a lot of overtime pay if I worked, but I can't bring myself to do it.  I am really looking forward to having two full weeks off.  Now, I feel guilty about my vacation.

I've said before that I know I'm lucky for having the jobs that I do.  Not many Americans have jobs that give them health insurance and paid time off and vision coverage.  Many people would kill for the kind of benefits that I have.  I'm lucky.  I'm blessed.  I'm grateful.  There, I've said all the things I should say.

But I'm still resentful and tired.  I don't want to get up at 4 a.m. for the rest of my working life.  I want a normal existence.  One job with decent hours and pay and benefits.  Of course, my choice would be to work for the university as a full-time instructor.  It's the one thing I do in my professional life that provides me with a sense of fulfillment.  I love being on campus and teaching.

I bet you can guess what my question for Carol dip Monday is going to be:

Will I get a full-time teaching job at the university this coming year?

And the answer (although I don't hold out too much hope) from Scrooge and company is:

...What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in 'em through a round dozen months presented dead against you?

Hmmmmm.  Paying bills without money.  Balancing my books and having every item for a year listed as a debt or liability.  Sounds pretty bleak.

Looks like Saint Marty's going to be setting his alarm to 4 a.m. for another year.

My least favorite time of day

August 3: All Day To-Morrow, Vacation, Plans

"You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?" said Scrooge.

Of course, this little piece of dialogue is Scrooge's famous response to Bob Cratchit wanting Christmas day off from work.  It's  a classic Scrooge move, feeling abused by Bob's request for a vacation.  Christmas is a losing proposition for Scrooge.  He doesn't get any work out of his clerk, but he still has to pay Bob.  It seems mightily unfair to Scrooge.  If I didn't know any better, I'd swear Scrooge was a Republican.

Next week, I'm on vacation.  As with most of my vacations, I have already made a few plans.  On Monday, the praise band I play keyboard for is performing at a local church camp.  That's going to take all night long.  I'm supposed to go to a movie with a close friend, and I'm going to try to get my family together with an old college friend and his family.  I also want to clean out a corner of my dining room and maybe organize my attic a little bit.

I'm not sure if I'm the only person who does this kind of planning for a vacation.  I'm trying to be realistic.  I may not get to the attic.  I'm determined to get to the dining room corner, and I really want to go to a movie with my friend.  The only thing that's definite is Monday night's band performance.  I should also get an oil change for my car, which is always a scary experience.  The garage always finds something wrong that's incredibly expensive to fix.

Sometimes working is less stressful than being on vacation.  When I'm on vacation, which happens only twice a year, I feel obligated to squeeze in as much extracurricular activities as I can.  In doing so, I usually end up exhausted.  I go back to work not feeling rejuvenated or refreshed.  I go back to work needing a vacation from my vacation.

I know this vacation scheduling practice of mine is not healthy.  I tend to be a Type A personality, in case you haven't noticed.  I like having fun, but I have to fit it into my day.  Fun cannot screw up my normal activities.

Saint Marty needs some time off to plan his time off.

No room for surprises

December 30: V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N

I'm caught up with work and ready to head out the door for vacation.  Never fear, I'm not taking a vacation from the blog, just the rest of my life.  I am so looking forward to some time off.  This morning nearly killed me.  Now, it's off for lunch with my sister and then grocery shopping for New Year's Eve.

Saint Marty is cutting loose.

Can you tell I need a vacation?

December 30: Book Club, Almost Vacation, First Entry

A book club member.  Image changed to protect identity.

Last night, our book club meeting went really well.  We got together.  We ate.  We talked about our favorite Christmas presents.  We talked about our hopes for the new year.  Oh, yeah, we also talked about the book we read.  With our book club, sometimes the book takes a backseat to other topics.  We usually get around to the book.  Usually.

Today is my last day of work before vacation begins.  I have a lot to accomplish still.  I have to take down the Christmas decorations in another area of the surgery center.  I have to finalize some surgical schedules.  I have to send some charts over to the hospital.  I have to clean the business office.  It's going to be a rough couple of hours.

Then, I have to go grocery shopping for the week, and I have to get supplies for our annual New Year's Eve party.  I have given up cleaning the house this weekend.  I just don't have the energy or time for it.  I will also be stopping by the AT&T store to talk to someone about my iPad.  I can't really figure out how to do a few things.  Plus, I want to discuss getting 3G with it.  I'm not quite sure what that means, but it will allow me to use the Internet at home.

By the way, I finally have an entry in my 500th Post Name My iPad Contest.  My friend Keith has suggested "George" for very obvious reasons if you've read my December posts.  I kinda like it.  If you have other ideas, you still have a few days to get them to me.

Saint Marty needs to get his holy ass in gear now.