May 22: Tennis or Croquet, Sick Kids, Ebola Hospital Ward

They were adored by the Germans, who thought they were exactly what Englishmen ought to be.  They made war look stylish and reasonable, and fun.  So the Germans let them have four sheds, though one shed would have held them all.  And, in exchange for coffee or chocolate or tobacco, the Germans gave them paint and lumber and nails and cloth for fixing things up.

The Englishmen had known for twelve hours that American guests were on their way.  They had never had guests before, and they went to work like darling elves, sweeping, mopping, cooking, baking--making mattresses of straw and burlap bags, setting tables, putting party favors at each place.  

Now they were singing their welcome to their guests in the winter night.  Their clothes were aromatic with the feast they had been preparing.  They were dressed half for battle, half for tennis or croquet.  They were so elated by their own hospitality, and by all the goodies waiting inside, that they did not take a good look at their guests while they sang.  And they imagined that they were singing to fellow officers fresh from the fray.

They wrestled the Americans toward the shed door affectionately, filling the night with manly blather and brotherly rodomontades.  They called them "Yank," told them, "Good show," promised them that "Jerry was on the run," and so on.

Billy Pilgrim wondered simply who Jerry was.

The Englishmen are throwing a welcome party for the newly arrived Americans.  They've cooked, cleaned, and freshened up.  They're singing and clapping, treating them like long-lost comrades.  And the Germans love it all.  Their British prisoners are acting exactly the way they imagined British prisoners should act.

Today, I have been trying to act exactly the way that a father should act when he has two sick kids.  My son threw up all day yesterday.  This morning, at about 12:30 a.m., I heard my daughter getting up-close-and-personal with a bucket.  She threw up all night long.  I emptied the bucket all night long.  Then, I got up and went to work at 4:45 a.m.

My son is back to his normal self, pestering me for time on my laptop to play Minecraft.  My daughter has finally stopped vomiting.  I just made her a bowl of chicken noodle soup a little while ago.  I have not heard the soup making a return visit yet.  I think my household may be on the other side of this mountain now.  Thank God.

My daughter is pasty white.  Her bedroom smells like an Ebola hospital ward.  My son just took a bath, washed off the residue of the last 24 hours.  I'm sure my daughter will hop in the shower tonight, once she has regained a little of her strength.

The Englishmen can make a party in a prisoner of war camp.  There was no party in my house yesterday.  Now, I am simply hoping not to contract this particular plague of chunk blowing.

Saint Marty is thankful for good health this evening.

May 21: Empty Eggshell, Classic Saint Marty, "Waiting for Donald Hall"

I am an empty eggshell right now.  I've been working all day on computer stuff.  I'm tired of staring at my laptop, planning out my students' academic lives for the next six weeks.  Tonight, I see a good book and maybe a drink or two in my future.

My son has been throwing up for most of the day, although he's regaining some of his normal piss and vinegar, as my brother in Grand Rapids would say.  My son's still looking pale, but he's eaten some ice cream and kept it down.  He's already talking about not going to school tomorrow. 

I am ready to be done.  Really ready.  I am going to get my son in bed, and then I'm going to either pass out or disappear into Ann Patchett's Commonwealth.

And now for a flashback.  Seven years ago, I was thinking about winning the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Some things never change . . .

May 24, 2010:  Saint Simeon Stylites the Younger

A few days ago, I found out that I've been chosen Employee of the Month for the health care system I work for. (Yes, I teach college, as well. Need to pay the bills, people.) This is the same award my coworker and friend won back in February or March. You may remember my jealous rant about the subject some weeks ago. This award came as a complete surprise. Usually, if someone from a department wins Employee of the Month, the rest of the employees are pretty much screwed for a few years. So I wasn't expecting even a nomination until the year 2013.

Winning this award puts me in a bit of a quandary. As most of my readers know, I spend a good deal of my time in this blog complaining about the fact that some idiot has received some kind of award or blessing that he or she does not deserve. Now, I am that undeserving idiot. It sort of takes all of the wind out of my writing sails. How can I be sarcastic and cutting about myself?

Despite the fact that I have a blog and write many witty postings about being unrecognized and unappreciated, I generally feel uncomfortable when people start complimenting me. I prefer to make people laugh. When I start receiving praise, it's my nature to deflect or joke about it. I truly don't go out of my way to draw attention to myself. I like being the funny one, not the one that's held up as an example of excellence. Generally, if you're put on a pedestal, someone's sneaking up behind you to knock you off of it. (Take it from someone who usually does the knocking.)

Saint Simeon Stylites the Younger knows a few things about pedestals. A disciple of a monk named John, Simeon, from the age of five onward, lived a good portion of his life on platforms mounted on top of columns. He did this to avoid distractions in his life of prayer and devotion. (I'm not sure what he did about certain bodily functions, but I can imagine he spent a lot of time yelling "Incoming!" or "Look out below!") When he turned 20, he moved to the mountains, put up another column and platform, climbed to the top of it, and spent the last 45 years of his life on top of that perch.

Nobody ever knocked Simeon off his pedestal. He sat up there, praying, meditating, celebrating mass (the bishop scaled the column to ordain him), eating, sleeping, defecating, urinating, and receiving pilgrims. I sort of picture him as Mel Brooks' 1000-year-old man, dispensing one-liners with a Yiddish accent.

Anyhow, I would prefer to be Mel Brooks than Simeon. Being on a pedestal is too precarious. One false move and you could find yourself at the bottom of the column in a big old pile of saintly shit.

But, since I'm up here for the moment, I might as well make the most of it. Therefore, I've decided to write my acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature. I know Employee of the Month isn't quite in the same league, but I believe in planning ahead, killing two birds with one stone. So, imagine, if you will, a lavish hall, long tables set with royal china and crystal. The Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy announces my name. I stand up, check to make sure my fly is zipped, and then make my way to the podium amid a fanfare of trumpets. (Honest to God, that's how they do it every year, more or less.)

Then I speak:

NOTE: I have included two versions of my speech. The first is humorous; the second, more serious. If you prefer a chuckle, read Version 1. If you want something a little more somber, read Version 2.

VERSION 1:

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Ever since I won Employee of the Month several years ago at my place of work, I've dreamed of winning this prize. Every writer secretly does. We might say we write for truth or art or grace or understanding. But really, it's all about moments like this, when you stand before the world and are acknowledged as the very best, all your peers looking up to you with blood in their eyes, an envy so intense it causes constipation in a generation of writers. That is when you know you have reached the pinnacle, as I have. I am, at this moment, Saint Simeon on his mountain perch, evacuating myself on the less-talented masses below.

I want to thank the members of the Swedish Academy for finally coming to their senses, recognizing a talent that is unparalleled, a talent Biblical in power and truth. I am humbled by the company I am now a part of: Hemingway, Faulkner, Heaney, Shaw, Lessing, Yeats, and all of those foreigners whose names I can't pronounce. I know, in years to come, younger writers will compare their works to mine and realize how much they fall short. That is as it should be.

The world applauds the wisdom of your decision that culminates in this great hall tonight. I applaud your good taste. Thank you.

VERSION 2:

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I have had much grace in my life. I have been graced by a beautiful wife. I have been graced by beautiful children. I have been graced by family and friends who have supported me, carried me through difficult times, danced with me in joyful times. And I have been graced with a love of words, of language, of the transformative and healing power of poetry.

The Catholic saint Simeon Stylites the Younger spent almost 60 years of his life sitting on top of a platform balanced on a column. He put himself in this dizzying position to eliminate worldly distractions, to bring himself closer to creation and the Creator. I find myself balanced on a similar pinnacle tonight, gazing down from this prestigious vantage into the faces of people I cherish and admire.

I am humbled by the company you have placed me in, and I am humbled by the faith you have placed in my palms. I will eventually come down from this height, either gracefully or violently, but I will be sustained, lifted up by this faith.

Thank you to the members of the Swedish Academy. Toni Morrison, upon receiving this award, asked everyone present "to share what is for me a moment of grace." Like Simeon, I feel as though I have been lifted up to touch the face of the eternal. Thank you.




And a poem from Saint Marty, just for fun.

Waiting for Donald Hall

by:  Martin Achatz

Is like looking out the kitchen window

     at fists of clouds,

Wondering when those fingers

     will relax,

When bullets of water will spill

     from that palm

Of sky, sail down to black soil

     in the pumpkin patch

Where two leaves have sprouted,

     green as swamp, with promise

Of orange in their tender

     stems, a wide orange,

Full of mulch and hay, vines

     of frost on morning panes,

Candle grin of jack-o-lantern

     on All Hallow's Eve,

When souls wander all night

     in search of an open gate.

He appears in the doorway, hunched

     over his walker, shuffles

To his chair, sits, lifts his beadle

     eyes to the gathered crowd,

Clears his throat, ushers words

     to his tongue, and makes a sound

Like driftwood in Lake Superior surf.

May 20: Two Tons of Marmalade, Breathless Moment, Kurt Vonnegut

These lusty, ruddy vocalists were among the first English-speaking prisoners to be taken in the Second World War.  Now they were singing to nearly the last.  They had not seen a woman or a child for four years or more.  They hadn't seen any birds, either.  Not even sparrows would come into the camp.

The Englishmen were officers.  Each of them had attempted to escape from another prison at least once.  Now they were here, dead-center in a sea of dying Russians.

They could tunnel all they pleased.  They would inevitably surface within a rectangle of barbed wire, would find themselves greeted listlessly by dying Russians who spoke no English, who had no food or useful information or escape plans of their own.  They could scheme all they pleased to hide aboard a vehicle or steal one, but no vehicle ever came into their compound.  They could feign illness, if they liked, but that wouldn't earn them a trip anywhere, either.  The only hospital in the camp was a six-bed affair in the British compound itself.

The Englishmen were clean and enthusiastic and decent and strong.  They sang boomingly well.  They had been singing together every night for years. 

The Englishmen had also been lifting weights and chinning themselves for years.  Their bellies were like washboards.  The muscles of their calves and upper arms were like cannonballs.  They were all masters of checkers and chess and bridge and cribbage and dominoes and anagrams and charades and Ping-Pong and billiards, as well.

They were among the wealthiest people in Europe, in terms of food.  A clerical error early in the war, when food was still getting through to prisoners, had caused the Red Cross to ship them five hundred parcels every month instead of fifty.  The Englishmen had hoarded these so cunningly that now, as the war was ending, they had three tons of sugar, one ton of coffee, eleven hundred pounds of chocolate, seven hundred pounds of tobacco, seventeen hundred pounds of tea, two tons of flour, one ton of canned beef, twelve hundred pounds of canned butter, sixteen hundred pounds of canned cheese, eight hundred pounds of powdered milk, and two tons of orange marmalade.

They kept all this in a room without windows.  They had ratproofed it by lining it with flattened tin cans.

Okay, I know that is a really long passage.  Usually, Vonnegut's sections are fairly short.  Like little prose poems or flash fictions, strung together for cumulative effect.  This particular one, however, is very prosy, although it has the building momentum of a poem, especially when it comes to the unbelievable list of food hoarded by the Englishmen.  It goes on and on, becoming more and more incredible, right up to the two tons of marmalade at the end.

I love great writing, and Vonnegut is a great writer.  Each time I type a section from Slaughterhouse, I wonder how it came into being.  Vonnegut once wrote, "Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages."  That was one of his eight basic rules for creative writing.  Of course, at the end of his list, he said Flannery O'Connor broke every one of his rules.  So it goes.

When I go to readings of any kind--poetry, fiction, non-fiction--I always wait for one moment to occur.  It's a breathless moment, where the author reads something that just knocks the wind right out of me.  I can always tell when it's happening.  The audience becomes as still as a group of cloistered monks.  Everybody sort of leans forward in their seats, as if their lives depend on the next word spoken.  And then, when it's over, there's a sort-of gasp or intake of oxygen from every person in the room.  It's like Houdini has just appeared mid-stage in a flash of light.

That's great writing.  I heard Kurt Vonnegut read once.  The whole reading was a breathless moment, because we all knew we were in the presence of a god.  And Vonnegut sort of sucked up all of the air in the room.  It was amazing.  (In a side note, Maya Angelou did the same thing when I saw her read.)

I am planning to go to a poetry reading tonight.  Several poets who are releasing books together.  It's at the top of a beautiful hotel, with a view of Lake Superior.  I am hoping to be breathless for most of the evening.

Saint Marty is thankful today for great writers.

May 20: Poet Marty, Shel Silverstein, "Skin Stealer"

Believe it or not, I think of myself as a introvert.  Social situations, especially around groups or strangers, are difficult for me.  Don't get me wrong.  I don't feel the urge to flee when confronted with the necessity of small talk.  I don't have that kind of social anxiety.  It just sometimes takes a great deal of effort for me to be friendly.

When I give a reading, it's almost like I have to zip myself into the skin of a different person.  Let's call him Poet Marty.  Poet Marty is funny and articulate and personable.  He's the life of the party.  And when it's all over, I go home, hang Poet Marty in the closet, and don't talk a lot for the rest of the night.

And then there's Saint Marty, who's sort of like a blogging version of Poet Marty.

Skin Stealer

by:  Shel Silverstein

This evening I unzipped my skin
And carefully unscrewed my head,
Exactly as I always do
When I prepare myself for bed.
And while I slept a coo-coo came
As naked as could be
And put on the skin
And screwed on the head
That once belonged to me.
Now wearing my feet
He runs through the street
In a most disgraceful way.
Doin' things and sayin' things
I'd never do or say,
Ticklin' the children
And kickin' the men
And Dancin' the ladies away.
So if he makes your bright eyes cry
Or makes your poor head spin,
That scoundrel you see
Is not really me
He's the coo-coo
Who's wearing my skin.