May 30, 2025: "The Moment the Two Worlds Meet," Vacations, "Honeymoon at Seashell City"

I took today off work, and then I pretty much worked all day long--on poems and cover letters and resumés and church music.  My life rarely is without tasks that need to be completed, for the library or university or churches or home.  

I also spent a lot of time thinking about my kids--my daughter who's 24 and heading off to med school in a couple months, and my son who's 16 and will be a senior next school year.  It seems like yesterday they were just tadpoles swimming in my wife's belly.

Sharon Olds reflects on the birth of a child . . . 

The Moment the Two Worlds Meet

by: Sharon Olds

That's the moment I always think of--when the
slick, whole body comes out of me,
when they pull it out, not pull it but steady it
as it pushes forth, not catch it but keep their
hands under it as it pulses out,
they are the first to touch it,
and it shines, it glistens with the thick liquid on it.
That's the moment, while it's sliding, the limbs
compressed close to the body, the arms
bent like a crab's cloud-muscle legs, the
thighs packed plums in heavy syrup, the
legs folded like the wings of a chicken--
that is the center of life, that moment when the
juiced, bluish sphere of the baby is
sliding between the two worlds,
wet, like sex, it is sex,
it is my life opening back and back
as you'd strip the reed from the bud, not strip it but
watch it thrust so it peels itself and the
flower is there, severely folded, and
then it begins to open and dry
but by then the moment is over,
they wipe off the grease and wrap the child in a blanket and
hand it to you entirely in this world.

Sharon Olds pretty much captures the experience of childbirth for women in this poem.  For nine months, the fetus swims in its own little liquid world of heartbeat.  Then the woman's body opens, and a new body appears, becomes a part of this world we all know.  That previous world of ocean and warmth and music becomes ancestral.

It always feels to me like I'm shuttling back and forth between different worlds.  Library world to university world to poetry world to church world to blog world.  I've juggled this whole solar system of worlds most of my life.  Occasionally (not often in the last couple years), I'm able to take a break, visit an uncharted world to just relax and forget about life on my other planets.

I haven't taken a true traveling vacation for quite a while.  No lounging on the beaches of Cancun.  No climbing the Swiss Alps.  No tours of the Louvre.  Instead, when I take time off, I stay home with my dog, sleep a lot, write a lot, read a lot, and binge TV a lot.  

It is the cusp of full summer now.  As I said, my daughter is moving away in a little over a month, and, in a week or so, my son will finish up his junior year of high school.  My worlds are going to shift and expand again.  I'll probably be on the road a lot more in the coming years.  I have no idea what birthdays and holidays are going to be like.  To paraphrase the book of Exodus, I will be a stranger in a strange world again.

Saint Marty wrote a poem about vacations for tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Write two ten-line pomes about two places you've visited--one that you loved and one you disliked or didn't like as well.  Now, intersperse the lines of the place-you-loved poem with the lines of the place-you-didn't-like-so-much poem until you have one twenty-line poem.

Honeymoon at Seashell City

by: Martin Achatz

we stand at the edge of that igneous

moonscape in the dark, watch

a man-eating clam under glass, mouth

propped open, a mousetrap waiting for

the lava roar off the cliff into the Pacific,

a sound like the beginning of the world

a curious toddler to wander by,

boxes of dried starfish, polished conchs

in our ears, so loud I have to press

my lips to my wife's ear for her

displayed like produce in a grocery store,

tomato snail shells, sea cucumbers

to hear my words even though I really

have nothing to say about Hadean

carved wooden gull glued onto a piece

of driftwood bleached almost white

oceans under her body's volcanic pull and

my hunger for the magma of her skin

by waves and sun and time while

the Beach Boys croon about Kokomo and surf

June 25: A Monster, Smaug, Xenophobia

Either this world, my mother, is a monster., or I myself am a freak.

It's a simple statement that Dillard makes.  She has been meditating on death and evolution.  The world is full of examples of animals, insects, plants, and fish that spawn and devour, live and kill.  Our Monster Mother is ruthless in her ability to care for her children.  The strong overcome.  The weak perish and are devoured.  Dillard sees some cruelty in this process.  But cruelty is a human invention.

Survival is a difficult thing.  I think most people will agree with me on this.  In the United States (as in the rest of the world), a privileged few do not have to worry about clothing and shelter and food and warmth on a daily basis.  They see something they like or want, and they acquire it.  For the rest of us, it is not that simple.  If we need a new car, we don't fix a hole in the ceiling.  If we need to pay the water bill, we push off buying groceries for a few days.  Vacations are things you save up for (sometimes for years).  That's the way it is.

I'm not complaining.  These are simple facts.  My two Constant Readers will agree with me.  However, the fact that so few people control the majority of the wealth and resources of this world is sort of an abomination.  Picture Donald Trump sitting on a pile of gold in the bowels of a mountain, like Smaug, protecting it from all us hobbits and dwarfs.

Nothing will change this situation, despite Bernie Sanders' call for political revolution in the United States.  The issue for the upcoming presidential in the United States is whether we want to put Smaug in charge of the whole country.  The recent Brexit vote in the United Kingdom does not bode well for us in U. S.  It seems that xenophobia and exclusion are the current political flavor of the day.

I would like to think that the world will not have to endure a President Smaug.  However, we in the Shire know that the dragon is stirring in the heart of Lonely Mountain.

Saint Marty may have to get on a boat to Rivendell (or at least Disney World)  come the November election.

This is really funny if you know The Lord of the Rings

August 10: Saint Lawrence

I'm baaaaa-aaaaack!

Sorry about my prolonged absence from the blog.  For my two or three loyal readers, I will try to make it up to you by writing a couple posts this week.  However, I was on vacation for the last week or so.  No where near a computer, keyboard, monitor, i-Pad, whatever.  Basically, all I've been doing is reading; playing with my almost-two-year-old son and almost-tween daughter; spending some much-needed quality time with my wife; and soaking up the final hot days of summer before the long slide into autumn.

So I have a few points of business to take care of.  First, my friend from Georgia had an operation and is recuperating, so I want anyone who reads this to send healing thoughts and prayers her way.  Second, my pastor friend and his wife had a baby last Friday night, so I want to send a shout-out to the little Twilight girl (that's an inside joke--sorry, I try not to be cryptic and cutesie in my posts, but I'm just coming off a ten-day break; my inner sarcastic child has not woken up yet).

I didn't do anything spiritually fulfilling during my time off.  I didn't build a school in the Ozarks.  I didn't volunteer in a soup kitchen in inner-city Detroit.  I didn't work for Habitat for Humanity (you don't want to see me with power tools, believe me!).  The closest thing I did  for charity was purchase The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner.  For those of you who don't know, for each copy of the book that is sold, one dollar is donated to the American Red Cross.  So, I killed two birds with one stone.  I got a birthday present for a friend and assuaged my Christian guilt a little bit.  Not much.  A little.

I'm not sure I've ever read about a saint taking a vacation.  But it's gotta get tiring being holy 24-7.  I know I couldn't handle it.  I'm way too self-absorbed, to quote a good friend.  Lawrence, the saint for today, is the patron of the poor and of cooks.  The reason he's the patron of the poor:  when he was ordered to turn over the "treasures of the Church" to the Roman government, Lawrence gathered over a thousand beggars, street people, and destitute children.  All the gold and silver the Roman Prefect was seeking had been sold as alms for the assembled crowd.  The reason Lawrence is the patron of cooks:  the Prefect had him roasted over a fire pit for his defiance of Rome.  Lawrence is reputed to have told his torturers, "This side's done, turn me over and have a bite."  On a side note, he's also the patron saint of comedians.

I don't think Lawrence took any paid time off.  If he had, I'm sure he would have skipped the barbecue.  I also don't think he and I were cut from the same cloth, although I appreciate his sense of humor.  I could see his death as part of a Monty Python skit, with John Cleese as the saint-kabob.  Like Lawrence, most of the holy people I've read about seem to think having time away from work has to involve fasting 40 days in the desert.

Me, I opt for a trip to a water park, a bag of Cheetos, and a trashy novel.