February 7: Pile of Dirty Clothes, Super Bowl Sunday, Amanda Gorman

Merton gets blind drunk . . . 

With the money I had kept in my pocket we went into the other places we would have done well to keep out of, and saw all of the carnival, and then went into Bradford where, drinking beer in a bar, we began to feel better and started to assuage our wounds by telling a lot of fancy lies to some girls we met in the bar—they were maids who worked at the t.b. sanatorium at Rocky Crest, on the mountain about a mile and a half from the cottage. 

I remember that as the evening went on, there was a fairly large mixed audience of strangers gathered around the table where we were holding forth about the amusement ring which we managed and controlled. It was called the Panama-American Entertainment corporation, and was so magnificent that it made the present carnival in Bradford look like a sideshow. However, the effect was somewhat spoiled when a couple of Bradford strong men came up with no signs of interest in our story, and said:

 “If we see you guys around here again with those beards we are going to knock your heads off” 

So Rice stood up and said: “Yeah? Do you want to fight?” 

Everybody went out into the alley, and there was a great deal of talk back and forth, but no fight, which was a good thing. They were quite capable of making us eat those beards. 

We eventually found our way home but Rice did not dare try to drive the car into the garage for fear he would miss the door. He stopped short in the driveway and we opened the doors of the car and rolled out and lay on the grass, looking blindly up into the stars while the earth rolled and pitched beneath us like a foundering ship. The last thing I remember about that night was that Rice and I eventually got up and walked into the house, and found Lax sitting in one of the chairs in the living room, talking aloud, and uttering a lot of careful and well-thought-out statements directed to a pile of dirty clothes, bundled up and ready for the laundry, which somebody had left in another armchair on the other side of the room. 

There's nothing very deep in this passage from The Seven Storey Mountain.  It can be summed up pretty easily:  Thomas Merton and his friends lose most of their money gambling, get stinking drunk, drive home, and pass out.  If you throw football into the mix, you'd have a perfect description of today in the United States.

It's Super Bowl Sunday.  The teams playing--the Tampa Bay Buccaneers versus the Kansas City Racially Insensitive Mascots.  I just checked Google to see who won.  It appears the Buccaneers defeated the Racially Insensitive Mascots pretty soundly.  I don't know if that was a surprise or not.  What was a surprise to me:  Amanda Gorman reading a Super Bowl poem.

It appears that Gorman is the It Girl at the moment.  Presidential Inauguration.  Interviewed by Michelle Obama for Time Magazine.  Now, the preshow for the Super Bowl.  I don't think poetry has ever been in the spotlight in my country this much.  First, American poet Louise Gluck wins the Nobel Prize in Literature last October, and now Amanda Gorman dominates two of the biggest events that will happen this year.  

As a poet, this makes me quite happy.  Obviously.  That teenagers and 20-somethings have a young, African American poet as a role model.  And, at one of the largest sporting events in the world, poetry takes the same stage as the Weeknd, and gets better reviews.  If you're feeling a little cold, that's because hell is freezing over.

I didn't watch the Super Bowl tonight.  Don't really care about football.  Instead, I led a poetry workshop.  Spent a couple of hours writing with two talented poets.  It was a pretty good ending to a cold weekend.  (Or should that be Weeknd?)  If I could make my living just doing workshops and poetry readings, that would be a dream.  

From a pretty good source, I found out that Amanda Gorman is now pulling down $50,000 for a virtual appearance.  If you want Amanda to actually walk across your stage, the price tag goes up to $100,000.  Now, I am not saying that she doesn't deserve to be paid well for what she does.  I believe all artists are underpaid and underappreciated.

I've called myself a poet for the majority of my adult life.  I'm happy if I'm given a free poster and a plate of brownies for doing a reading.  The kind of money Gorman is making is unfathomable to me.  If I were her, I'd do about ten or 12 readings in January and February, and then I'd take the rest of the year off.  Maybe go to Disney World.  Or buy a condo there.

So, now I have a new goal:  reading a poem at the Super Bowl.  I think that should be worth at least a free dinner at Red Lobster.  Or a box of Oatmeal Cream Pies.

Saint Marty gives thanks for poetic miracles.

 

February 5: The Game is Open, Carnival Barkers, Free Will

 Merton takes a gamble . . . 

A carnival came to Bradford. To us that meant a couple of Ferris wheels and a bingo game and the “Whip” and a man wearing a white uniform and a crash helmet being fired out of a cannon into a net. We got into the car and started out along the Rock City road, through the dark woods alive with the drumming of the oil-pumps. 

It was a big carnival. It seemed to fill the bottom of a narrow valley, one of the zig-zag valleys in which Bradford is hidden, and the place blazed with lights. The stacks of the oil refinery stood up, beyond the lights, like the guardians of hell. We walked into the white glare and the noise of crazy electric music and the thick sweet smell of candy. 

“Hey, fellows, come over this way if you please.” 

We turned our beards shyly towards the man in shirt sleeves, hatted with a felt hat, leaning out of his booth. We could see the colored board, the numbers. We approached. He began to explain to us that, out of the kindness of his big foolish heart, he was conducting this game of chance which was so easy and simple that it really amounted to a kind of public charity, a means for endowing intelligent and honest young men like ourselves with a handsome patrimony. 

We listened to his explanation. It was not one of those games where you won a box of popcorn, that was evident. In fact, although it started at a quarter, the ante doubled at every throw: of course, so did the prize, and the prize was in dollars. 

“All you have to do is roll the little ball into these holes and...” 

And he explained just what holes you had to roll the little ball into. Each time you had to get a new and different combination of numbers. 

“You put down a quarter,” said our benefactor, “and you are about to win two dollars and fifty cents. If you should happen to miss it the first time, it will be all the better for you, because for fifty cents you’ll win five dollars —for one dollar you’ll take ten—for two you’ll take twenty.” 

We put down our quarters, and rolled the little balls into the wrong holes. 

“Good for you,” said the man, “now you stand a chance of winning twice as much.” And we all put down fifty cents. 

“Fine, keep it up, you’re getting ready to win more and more each time— you can’t miss, it’s in-ev-i-table!” 

He pocketed a dollar bill from each of us. 

“That’s the way, men, that’s the way,” he exclaimed, as we all rolled the little ball into the wrong holes again. 

I paused and asked him to go over the rules of the game a second time. He did, and I listened closely. It was as I thought. I hadn’t the vaguest idea what he was talking about. You had to get certain combinations of numbers, and for my own part I was completely unable to figure out what the combinations were. He simply told us what to shoot for, and then rapidly added up all the numbers and announced: 

“You just missed it. Try again, you’re so close you can’t fail.” And the combination changed again. 

In about two and a half minutes he had taken all our money except for a dollar which I was earnestly saving for the rest of the carnival and for beer. How, he asked us, could we have the heart to quit now? Here we were right on the point of cleaning up, getting back all our losses, and winning a sum that made us dizzy: three hundred and fifty dollars. 

“Men,” he said, “you can’t quit now, you’re just throwing away your money if you quit. It doesn’t make sense, does it? You didn’t come all the way out here just to throw away your dough? Use your heads, boys. Can’t you see you’ve got to win?” 

Rice got that big grin on his face that meant “Let’s get out of here.” 

“We haven’t any more money,” someone said. 

“Have you any traveler’s checks?” the philanthropist inquired. 

“No.” 

But I never saw anyone so absorbed and solemn as Lax was, at that moment, in his black beard, with his head bowed over all those incomprehensible numbers. So he looked at me and I looked at him, and the man said: 

“If you want to run home and get a little more money, I’ll hold the game open for you—how’s that?”

 We said: “Hold the game open, we’ll be back.” 

We got into the car and drove, in the most intense silence, fifteen miles or whatever the distance was to the cottage, and fifteen miles back, with thirty-five dollars and all the rest of the money we had: but the thirty-five alone were for the game. 

When the benefactor of the poor saw the three of us come through that gate again, he really looked surprised and a little scared. The expressions on our faces must have been rather frightening, and perhaps he imagined that we had gone home not only to get our money but our guns. 

We walked up to the booth. 

“You held this game open for us, huh?” 

“Yes, indeed, men, the game is open.” 

“Explain it over again.” 

He explained it over again. He told us what we had to get to win—it seemed impossible to miss. We put the money down on the counter and Lax rolled the little ball—into the wrong holes. 

“Is that all, boys?” said the prince of charity. 

“That’s all.” We turned on our heels and went away. 

Merton the gullible.  He and his friends fall victim to two things:  a grifter and their own prides.  I've been to many of those carnival midways--as most people have--where people bark at you from inside their booths, trying, by hook or by crook, to get you to stop and lay down some cash.  And the results are pretty much what Merton describes here:  you shell twenty dollars for a sickly goldfish in a plastic bag of water.  Or you walk away empty-handed.

When I was younger, I allowed myself to get lured in by these barkers.  Walking along with my girlfriend, a man chewing a cigar shouting at me, "Hey, lover boy, want to win something for that pretty girl of yours?"  Trying to rush my children past the booths, a tattooed woman calling out, "Hey, kids, don't you want to take home a unicorn as big as you?"  The messages are always different, tailored to the situation and carnival goers.  But it's all about temptation--the game runners size you up for your weaknesses and then go to work.

As a kid, going to Catholic catechism, I would hear the story of Christ being tempted by the devil in the desert after 40 days of fasting.  I always pictured the devil as a carnival barker, offering Jesus the biggest stuffed animal on the sandy midway.  Of course, Jesus doesn't surrender to this conman.  Because . . . well, He's God.  Christ recognizes that the game is rigged.  There is literally no human way to win.

Every day is like that for humans.  We  make choices, from the time we climb out of bed in the morning to the time we crawl back in at night.  The carnival barkers are all there, vying for our attentions.  We make good choices (an apple and oatmeal for breakfast) and bad choices (a bottle of watermelon wine and Little Caesar's pizza for dinner).  It's all about free will.

I'm not a big fan of free will a lot of the time.  Because many of the people who I love make terrible choices, every day, all day.  It's so easy, as Merton learns in the passage above, to get suckered by the lights and smells and excitements of the carnival games.  In the end, however, most of us leave the fairgrounds broke and broken.

Yet, free will is what makes life interesting, I suppose.  The world would be pretty boring if everyone ate the same things, dressed the same way, read the same books, listened to the same music, liked the same movies.  Without free will, I wouldn't be a poet.  Because the world doesn't put a high value on poetry, unless you happen to be Amanda Gorman or Joy Harjo.  Instead, I'd be an accountant or doctor or plumber.  Something utilitarian.  

So, free will is a double-edged sword.  It allows abusers to be abusers.  Saints to be saints.  Trump supporters to be Trump supporters.  Poets to be poets.  You have to take the good with the not-so-good.  I'm not saying that poetry is the equivalent of losing all your money at a carnival ring toss game.  What I'm saying is that free will leaves room for poetry, but it also for porn addiction.

I chose to ask my wife to marry me.  She chose to marry me.  We chose to have children.  I chose to be a poet and contingent university professor.  I chose to have three glasses of Bailey's Irish Cream mixed with eggnog tonight.  And to watch The Man Who Invented Christmas because Christopher Plummer died today.

Like I said, every day is about possibilities, with very few opportunities for do-overs.  I'm lucky because I wouldn't change a whole lot about my life.  I would still marry my wife, despite all of the struggles we've faced because of mental illness and addiction.  I would still be a father, regardless of the fact that my son seems headed for a repeat of seventh grade.  And I would still be a poet, though it will never buy groceries or pay the water bill.  All of these choices were winning hands for me.

Saint Marty knows when to hold 'em, and knows when to fold 'em. 

February 4: A Life of Perfection, White Male Privilege, Penance

 Merton explains the two-column approach to sin . . .

In such an event, you get, not contemplation, but a kind of intellectual and esthetic gluttony—a high and refined and even virtuous form of selfishness. And when it leads to no movement of the will towards God, no efficacious love of Him, it is sterile and dead, this meditation, and could even accidentally become, under certain circumstances, a kind of a sin—at least an imperfection. 

Experience has taught me one big moral principle, which is this: it is totally impractical to plan your actions on the basis of a vast two-columned list of possibilities, with mortal sins on one side and things that are “not a mortal sin” on the other—the one to be avoided, the other to be accepted without discussion. 

Yet this hopelessly misleading division of possibilities is what serves large numbers of Catholics as a whole moral theology. It is not so bad when they are so busy working for a living that the range of possibilities is more or less cut down and determined: but Heaven help them when they go on their vacation, or when Saturday night comes around. It is one reason for the number of drunken Irishmen in the world on Saturday nights for, as we know—and it is quite true—incomplete drunkenness is per se a venial sin. Therefore apply the two-column principle. You run your finger down the column of mortal sins per se. Going to a movie in which a man and woman maul each other at close range for hundreds of feet of film is not a mortal sin per se. Neither is incomplete drunkenness, nor gambling and so on. Therefore all these belong to the order of pursuits which are not illicit. Therefore they are licit. Therefore if anyone says, no matter with what qualifications, that you ought not to do these things—he is a heretic. If people are not careful, they get themselves into the position of arguing that it is virtuous to go to the movies, to gamble, to get half-drunk ... 

I know what I am talking about, because that was the way I was still trying to live in those days. Do you want to see the two-column principle in operation? Here is an example of a lot of things which were not mortal sins in themselves. What they were per accidens I am afraid to say: I leave them up to the mercy of God; but they were done by one whom He was calling to a life of perfection, a life dedicated to the joy of serving and loving Him alone . . . 

Of course, Merton is going to go on to list and explain sins that he's committed.  Not necessarily mortal sins.  More like, sins that won't get you kicked out of the heavenly clubhouse.  Only mildly chastised.  For those of my disciples who aren't Catholic, let me give you a quick lesson in this two-columned approach to sin.  First, there are venial sins.  These are sins that are less serious and won't put your mortal soul in danger of eternal damnation.  In this category would be things like gossiping or gluttony or lustful thoughts or reading Nicholas Sparks books.  All bad, but easily and quickly forgivable.  Then there are mortal sins, which buy you a one-way ticket to the hot place.  Included in this column are things like adultery or murder or voting for Donald Trump.  Mortal sins are not unforgivable.  No sin is unforgivable.  It's just that, if a person knowingly commits a mortal sin, that person needs to repent (in the case of Catholics, go to Confession) in order to save him/herself from sharing a dorm room with Satan.

So, people can pick sins from the venial garden, but should stick away from the poison ivy of the mortal garden.  And that's what Merton does.  He won't stray so far from God that he'll put himself in the queue for hellfire, but he's not about to give up drinking or telling dirty jokes or having indiscriminate sex.  Basically, he's cherry picking how he's going to break the rules.

We've all done this as teenagers.  Seen how far we can push out parents before they take away the keys to the car, lock the front door, or kick us out into the cold.  That's part of growing up, and, I suppose, it's a part of growing up as a follower of God.  How much can we get away with before God won't let us borrow the car anymore?

Tonight, I led my monthly poetry workshop.  It was for Black History Month, and I chose prompts based on poems by some of the best African American poets of the 20th and 21st centuries.  Langston Hughes.  Rita Dove.  Gwendolyn Brooks.  Claudia Rankine.  Robert Hayden.  Yusef Komunyakaa.  Natasha Trethewey.  And it was sort of a revelation.  

As a white male, I am privileged.  I am fully aware of that.  I don't have to worry about getting pulled over by the police because I'm driving through the wrong neighborhood with the wrong skin pigment.  Or my kids being seen as intellectually inferior in school or "dangerous" as they walk down the street.  I will never be discriminated against in the workplace because of my race, and nobody will ever think that I should have natural rhythm because I'm descended from slaves.  

I've taken my privileged status for granted most of my life.  Accepted it without thought.  Benefitted from it in ways that I'm probably not even aware of.  I like to think that I'm an enlightened person now, but it's easy for a white male to say that he's racially enlightened.  It doesn't cost me anything.  I don't have to give up my job or accept a salary reduction.  It doesn't affect my kids.  I can use my enlightenment to look down on people--label them as racist and dismiss them.  Go to bed at night and sleep with a clear conscience because I celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day instead of Presidents' Day.  And I think that Presidents' Day should be replaced by Indigenous Peoples' Day.  

See?  I'm a good person.  I'm on the right side.  I'm moved when I hear the song "We Shall Overcome."  Get outraged when another African American becomes the victim of police violence.  Try to include diverse points of view in the classes I teach at the university.  Lead poetry workshops for Black History Month in which I read aloud these words from Claudia Rankine:  

When you arrive in your driveway and turn off the car, you remain behind the wheel another ten minutes. You fear the night is being locked in and coded on a cellular level and want time to function as a power wash. Sitting there staring at the closed garage door you are reminded that a friend once told you there exists the medical term—John Henryism—for people exposed to stresses stemming from racism. They achieve themselves to death trying to dodge the buildup of erasure. Sherman James, the researcher who came up with the term, claimed the physiological costs were high. You hope by sitting in silence you are bucking the trend.

My whole life is the product of a society that was created on the backs of slaves.  If that isn't a mortal sin, I don't know what is.  The question then is this:  what should my penance be?

I don't know the answer to that question.  Certainly, this blog post is a step in the right direction.  The workshop I led tonight was, too.  It's about speaking truth, even when it is uncomfortable.  Because I have been comfortable all my life.  

This isn't a sin that can be forgiven by saying three Our Fathers.  It's not that simple.  The last four years in the United States have proven that.  Penance is work.  Hard work.  Requiring a change of mind and heart and deed.  Until everyone starts doing this penance, there are going to be a lot more George Floyds and Trayvon Martins.

So, Bless Saint Marty, Father, for he has sinned.  It has been an entire lifetime since his last confession . . . 

February 2: Drink Beer, Four Years Ago, Last Poet Laureate Thoughts

 Merton gets metaphysical, without getting physical . . . 

We could have made even more of it than we did. I think we all had a sort of a feeling that we could be hermits up on that hill: but the trouble was that none of us really knew how and I, who was in a way the most articulate, as well as the least sensible, whenever it came to matters of conduct and decisions concerning good and evil, still had the strongest urges to go down into the valleys and see what was on at the movies, or play the slot machines, or drink beer. 

The best we could do about expressing our obscure desire of living lives that were separate and in some sense dedicated was to allow our beards to grow, which they did more or less slowly. Lax ended up with the best. It was black and solemn. Rice’s was rather ragged, but it looked fine when he grinned, because he had big teeth and slanting eyes like an Eskimo. I myself entertained the secret belief that I looked like Shakespeare. I was still wearing the thing when I went to New York, later, and I took it to the World’s Fair. I was standing thus bearded in a side-show that had something to do with Africa, and a young man who was not an explorer, but wore a white explorer’s outfit, took me to be indeed an explorer because of the beard. Or at least he plied me with some knowing questions about central Africa. I think we were both trading on our knowledge of that wonderful movie, Dark Rapture. 

The cottage would have made a good hermitage, and I now wish we had more exploited its possibilities. Lax was the only one who had the sense to get up, sometimes, very early in the morning, about sunrise. For my own part I usually slept until about eight, then fried a couple of eggs and swallowed a bowl of cornflakes and started at once to write. The closest I got to using the solitude for meditation was when I spent a few afternoons under a little peach tree in the high grass of what might have been a lawn, and read, at last, St. Augustine’s Confessions and parts of St. Thomas’s Summa. 

I had accepted Lax’s principle about sanctity being possible to those who willed it, and filed it away in my head with all my other principles—and still I did nothing about using it. What was this curse that was on me, that I could not translate belief into action, and my knowledge of God into a concrete campaign for possessing Him, Whom I knew to be the only true good? No, I was content to speculate and argue: and I think the reason is that my knowledge was too much a mere matter of natural and intellectual consideration. After all, Aristotle placed the highest natural felicity in the knowledge of God which was accessible to him, a pagan: and I think he was probably right. The heights that can be reached by metaphysical speculation introduce a man into a realm of pure and subtle pleasure that offers the most nearly permanent delights you can find in the natural order. When you go one step higher, and base your speculations on premises that are revealed, the pleasure gets deeper and more perfect still. Yet even though the subject matter may be the mysteries of the Christian faith, the manner of contemplating them, speculative and impersonal, may still not transcend the natural plane, at least as far as practical consequences go. 

Merton knows how to attain sanctity.  His friend, Lax, gave him that knowledge.  All he has to do is desire sanctity.  Really want it, deep down in his soul.  Then, he needs to act on that desire.  It's sort of like having a pair of warm socks in your drawer.  If you don't put those socks on your feet and walk around in them, they are simply the idea of warmth.  Not warmth itself.

I didn't want these first days of February to sneak by without a few words.  I'm tired.  Really tired.  I spent most of today in my library office, planning events and concerts, reading the poetry of Natasha Trethewey.  Nothing I did today will feed hungry people or provide shelter for the homeless.  Yet, I do believe that art is important.  Can change the world.  If it is put into action.

Around four years ago, I was named Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula.  Two years ago, I was chosen to serve a second term.  It has been one of the greatest joys of my life.  I have met some wonderful people.  Gained some amazing friends.  Enjoyed some wonderful artistic opportunities.  

I've taught classes to kindergartners, middle schoolers, high school seniors.  Led nature-writing workshops and organized poetry readings.  I've raised a thousands dollars for homeless shelters and food pantries.  Became a regular performer on a radio variety show.  All because of poetry.  

I would even venture to say that the reason I have my new programming position at the library is because of poetry.  Being a part of a thriving artistic community has made a huge difference in my life.  It has sustained me.

These last four years have not been without challenges.  In fact, I would say that I have faced some of the most difficult times of my life these last four years, as well.  I've lost my sister and father.  Had close family members battling addiction and mental illness.  Faced some really impossible financial issues due to addiction and mental illness.

Through it all, however, I have been blessed, as well.  People have blinded me with goodness and generosity.  I don't think I've deserved all this grace.  In fact, I know that I haven't deserved it.  But you don't earn grace.  Grace is something that just appears in your life without warning, filling you with gratitude and relief.

Tonight is my last night as Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula.  Tomorrow morning, I'm scheduled to go into a TV studio, talk about my work as Poet Laureate, and then learn who will succeed me in the position.  Some wonderful people are in the running this selection cycle.  Any one of them will make wonderful laureates.

I find myself reflecting right now.  Thinking of all the things I could have done better as Poet Laureate.  Should have done better.  Causes I should have championed.  Issues I should have addressed.  Work I should have done.  I was given a rare opportunity as a poet to make a difference in the world.  I tried not to squander that opportunity.  If I succeeded, it was because of the people who answered the phone when I called for help.  If I failed, it was because I ignored that same phone when God called me.

It has been my privilege to be Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula these last four years.  I take responsibility for the mistakes I've made.  And I give thanks for the good I've been able to accomplish with the help of all of my beautiful poet friends.  Know this:  the universe is a better place because of you.

Saint Marty loves you all.