June 2: A Living Opal, Books that Defy, Writing Process

"No need, gentlemen; one moment, and I proceed.- Now, gentlemen, so suddenly perceiving the snowy whale within fifty yards of the ship- forgetful of the compact among the crew- in the excitement of the moment, the Teneriffe man had instinctively and involuntarily lifted his voice for the monster, though for some little time past it had been plainly beheld from the three sullen mast-heads. All was now a phrensy. 'The White Whale- the White Whale!' was the cry from captain, mates, and harpooneers, who, undeterred by fearful rumours, were all anxious to capture so famous and precious a fish; while the dogged crew eyed askance, and with curses, the appalling beauty of the vast milky mass, that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun, shifted and glistened like a living opal in the blue morning sea. Gentlemen, a strange fatality pervades the whole career of these events, as if verily mapped out before the world itself was charted. The mutineer was the bowsman of the mate, and when fast to a fish, it was his duty to sit next him, while Radney stood up with his lance in the prow, and haul in or slacken the line, at the word of command. Moreover, when the four boats were lowered, the mate's got the start; and none howled more fiercely with delight than did Steelkilt, as he strained at his oar. After a stiff pull, their harpooneer got fast, and, spear in hand, Radney sprang to the bow. He was always a furious man, it seems, in a boat. And now his bandaged cry was, to beach him on the whale's topmost back. Nothing loath, his bowsman hauled him up and up, through a blinding foam that blent two whitenesses together; till of a sudden the boat struck as against a sunken ledge, and keeling over, spilled out the standing mate. That instant, as he fell on the whale's slippery back, the boat righted, and was dashed aside by the swell, while Radney was tossed over into the sea, on the other flank of the whale. He struck out through the spray, and, for an instant, was dimly seen through that veil, wildly seeking to remove himself from the eye of Moby Dick. But the whale rushed round in a sudden maelstrom; seized the swimmer between his jaws; and rearing high up with him, plunged headlong again, and went down.

"Meantime, at the first tap of the boat's bottom, the Lakeman had slackened the line, so as to drop astern from the whirlpool; calmly looking on, lie thought his own thoughts. But a sudden, terrific, downward jerking of the boat, quickly brought his knife to the line. He cut it; and the whale was free. But, at some distance, Moby Dick rose again, with some tatters of Radney's red woolen shirt, caught in the teeth that had destroyed him. All four boats gave chase again; but the whale eluded them, and finally wholly disappeared.

"In good time, the Town-Ho reached her port- a savage, solitary place- where no civilized creature resided. There, headed by the Lakeman, all but five or six of the foremastmen deliberately deserted among the palms; eventually, as it turned out, seizing a large double war-canoe of the savages, and setting sail for some other harbor.

"The ship's company being reduced to but a handful, the captain called upon the Islanders to assist him in the laborious business of heaving down the ship to stop the leak. But to such unresting vigilance over their dangerous allies was this small band of whites necessitated, both by night and by day, and so extreme was the hard work they underwent, that upon the vessel being ready again for sea, they were in such a weakened condition that the captain durst not put off with them in so heavy a vessel. After taking counsel with his officers, he anchored the ship as far off shore as possible; loaded and ran out his two cannon from the bows; stacked his muskets on the poop; and warning the Islanders not to approach the ship at their peril, took one man with him, and setting the sail of his best whale-boat, steered straight before the wind for Tahiti, five hundred miles distant, to procure a reinforcement to his crew.

"On the fourth day of the sail, a large canoe was descried, which seemed to have touched at a low isle of corals. He steered away from it; but the savage craft bore down on him; and soon the voice of Steelkilt hailed him to heave to, or he would run him under water. The captain presented a pistol. 

With one foot on each prow of the yoked war-canoes, the Lakeman laughed him to scorn; assuring him that if the pistol so much as clicked in the lock, he would bury him in bubbles and foam.

"'What do you want of me?' cried the captain.

"'Where are you bound? and for what are you bound?' demanded Steelkilt; 'no lies.'

"'I am bound to Tahiti for more men.'

"'Very good. Let me board you a moment- I come in peace.' With that he leaped from the canoe, swam to the boat; and climbing the gunwale, stood face to face with the captain.

"'Cross your arms, sir; throw back your head. Now, repeat after me. As soon as Steelkilt leaves me, I swear to beach this boat on yonder island, and remain there six days. If I do not, may lightning strike me!'

"'A pretty scholar,' laughed the Lakeman. 'Adios, Senor!' and leaping into the sea, he swam back to his comrades.

"Watching the boat till it was fairly beached, and drawn up to the roots of the cocoa-nut trees, Steelkilt made sail again, and in due time arrived at Tahiti, his own place of destination. There, luck befriended him; two ships were about to sail for France, and were providentially in want of precisely that number of men which the sailor headed. They embarked, and so for ever got the start of their former captain, had he been at all minded to work them legal retribution.

"Some ten days after the French ships sailed, the whale-boat arrived, and the captain was forced to enlist some of the more civilized Tahitians, who had been somewhat used to the sea. Chartering a small native schooner, he returned with them to his vessel; and finding all right there, again resumed his cruisings.

"Where Steelkilt now is, gentlemen, none know; but upon the island of Nantucket, the widow of Radney still turns to the sea which refuses to give up its dead; still in dreams sees the awful white whale that destroyed him.

"'Are you through?' said Don Sebastian, quietly.

"'I am, Don.'

"'Then I entreat you, tell me if to the best of your own convictions, this your story is in substance really true? It is so passing wonderful! Did you get it from an unquestionable source? Bear with me if I seem to press.'

"'Also bear with all of us, sir sailor; for we all join in Don Sebastian's suit,' cried the company, with exceeding interest.

"'Is there a copy of the Holy Evangelists in the Golden Inn, gentlemen?'

"'Nay,' said Don Sebastian; 'but I know a worthy priest near by, who will quickly procure one for me. I go for it; but are you well advised? this may grow too serious.'

"'Will you be so good as to bring the priest also, Don?'

"'Though there are no Auto-da-Fe's in Lima now,' said one of the company to another; 'I fear our sailor friend runs risks of the archiepiscopacy. Let us withdraw more out of the moonlight. I see no need of this.'

"'Excuse me for running after you, Don Sebastian; but may I also beg that you will be particular in procuring the largest sized Evangelists you can.'

'This is the priest, he brings you the Evangelists,' said Don Sebastian, gravely, returning with a tall and solemn figure.

"'Let me remove my hat. Now, venerable priest, further into the light, and hold the Holy Book before me that I may touch it.

"'So help me Heaven, and on my honor the story I have told ye, gentlemen, is in substance and its great items, true. I know it to be true; it happened on this ball; I trod the ship; I knew the crew; I have seen and talked with Steelkilt since the death of Radney.'"

It's the ending of Ishmael's story.  Most people live somewhat happily ever after, except for Radney.  Moby Dick takes care of him.  When you reach this point in the novel, I think Melville wants you to wonder whether Ishmael is telling a veiled version of his own story.  Perhaps, Steelkilt is Starbuck.  Maybe Radney is Ahab or another of the mates on the ship.  Notice how Ishamel phrases his vow:  ". . . the story I have to ye, gentlemen, is in substance and its great items, true. . . "  In essence, Ishmael is vowing that the story itself is true.  Names may have been changed to protect the innocent.  And guilty.

This long chapter is interesting to me because it falls smack dab in the middle of the book.  It holds all kinds of bad omens about the fate of the Pequod and its occupants.  Of course, Moby Dick has yet to appear in the flesh in the book.  The White Whale is still a phantom being chased by Ahab.  Melville is really good at building the suspense in the novel.  When Moby Dick finally appears, he's going to be a cross between a god and a demon.  A glowing Godzilla, if you will.

As I've said before, I find myself both loving and hating this book.  There are beautiful, lyrical passages that take my breath away.  And then there are pages and pages that drive me to complete and total distraction.  I can't concentrate on them.  They are tedious and slow.  They remind me that Moby-Dick is, by no means, a traditional novel in any sense of the word.

I appreciate books that defy labels and categorization.  That push the boundaries.  Some of my favorite works are mixtures of lyric poetry and narrative and theology and magical realism.  Books like The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac and Preparing the Ghost and Mr. Ives' Christmas.  Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.  These are books that I return to over and over for inspiration when I get stuck in my own writing.

Let me tell you a little about my writing process.  When I sit down to start writing every day, I spend some time reading a writer or book that I admire.  Usually, that book/writer holds something that resonates with whatever I'm working on--essay or poem or short story.  Whatever.  I gravitate to the prose or images or tone.  It launches me into my own work.  Gets my head in the right place.

Once I have read for a little while, the tumblers in my head fall into place, and I can begin writing.  It might still be a struggle to put the words down on the page, but I know what I'm aiming for.  In a lot of ways, it's like chasing a white whale.  I find it hard to describe.  However, I know it's out there, under the waves, waiting to surface.  Some days, I see its spout momentarily and nothing else.  Other days, a fluke or back.  And then, on good days, I jump on its back and go for a long ride.

I know that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it's the best that I can do.  Writing is a mysterious thing to me.  It's like prayer in a way.  Sending words out into the ether, hoping they coalesce into something true and meaningful.  I always feel a little closer to God after a session of writing.  My whole body and mind hums for a while.  I hold on to times like that.  They drive me back to my pen and journal over and over.

Saint Marty is thankful today for great writing and writers.

December 31: Trumpets of Praise, Peace in the Middle East, Acceptance and Love

What book should I use next year on the blog?  Take the poll:

Book Poll

Emerson saw it.  "I dreamed that I floated at will in the great Ether, and I saw this world floating also not far off, but diminished to the size of an apple.  Then an angel took it in his hand and brought it to me and said, 'This must thou eat.'  And I ate the world."  All of it.  All of it intricate, specked, gnawed, fringed, and free.  Israel's priests offered the wave breast and the heave shoulder together, freely, in full knowledge, for thanksgiving.  They waved, they heaved, and neither gesture was whole without the other, and both meant a wide-eyed and knee-eyed thanks.  Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, said the bell.  A sixteenth-century alchemist wrote of the philosopher's stone:  "One finds it in the open country, in the village and in the town.  It is in everything which God created.  Maids throw it on the street.  Children play with it."  The giant water bug ate the world.  And like Billy Bray I go my way, and my left foot says "Glory," and my right foot says "Amen":  in and out of Shadow Creek, upstream and down, exultant, in a daze, dancing, to the twin silver trumpets of praise.

I thought it was fitting to end the year of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek with its final paragraph, which is a beautiful call to praise and thanksgiving, to embracing all of the world's great, intricate, messy blessings.  And it's a fitting paragraph for New Year's Eve, when we all, hopefully, can offer up prayers of praise and thanksgiving for the closing year.

I will be ringing in 2017 as I do every year, with my family--eating pizza, playing board games, arguing, kibitzing, loving, and then eating some more.  Since January 1st falls on a Sunday this year, I will also be playing the organ for Mass this evening.  Another opportunity for praise and thanksgiving.

Tomorrow morning will dawn, cold and white.  Newness in the midst of oldness.  Of course, I hope for great things in the coming year.  Health and happiness.  Peace in the Middle East.  Impeachment of Donald Trump.  You know, the things that all good people hope for.  Sure, I want to lose weight.  Exercise more.  Publish more.  Be named the next Poet Laureate of the U. P.  All that would be good, as well.

But, above all, I think the prayer I will send up at the stroke of midnight this evening is for acceptance and love, which I think has been in short supply in the world--and especially in the United States--in 2016.

So, may all your lives be filled with unconditional love--Jew or Muslim or Christian or atheist or refugee or Democrat or Republican or gay or straight.  Peace and amen.

Please vote for Saint Marty (Martin Achatz):

Vote for next Poet Laureate of the U. P.

September 19: Something Different, Feeling Creative, "Poem After Annie Dillard"

I'm going to do something a little different tonight, because I'm feeling slightly creative.  This afternoon, I finished a draft of a poem on which I've been working for several weeks.  I think it's good, but I can't be sure just yet.  Got to give it a couple of days.

However, I am still feeling a little creative, so I decided to write a quick poem of the chapter titles of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.  I thumbed through my copy of the book this evening, and, unlike other times, no particular passage stuck in my head.  But I kept coming back to the headings of each chapter.  They use sometimes beautiful, sometimes strange terms.  I thought to myself, here's a poem just waiting to be written.

So, please keep in mind that this is a first and last draft.  It is for amusement, not serious contemplation.  A poetic exercise.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.

Poem After Annie Dillard

by:  Saint Marty

Heaven and Earth in jest look down and up
at us, seeing only the pitiful winter skins
of polar bears, black as the fixed universe
where everything revolves around this planet,
untying the knot of cornel bark, jettisoning
the present into the grasshoppers of spring.
Intricacy is nothing more than a flood of silt,
the fecundity left behind by tsunamis, where
landscape shifts, moves its ass like some teenage
boy stalking a neighbor girl, his nightwatch
from his bedroom window rewarded
with the horns of the altar, bright northing
glimpses of her neck, shoulders, the waters
of separation that map the blades of her back. 

January 1: Annie Dillard, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek," Partly Cloudies, Edged in Gold

Today is one of those excellent January partly cloudies in which light chooses an unexpected part of the landscape to trick out in gilt, and then shadow sweeps it away.  You know you're alive.  You take huge steps, trying to feel the planet's roundness arc between your feet.  Kazantzakis says that when he was young he had a canary and a globe.  When he freed the canary, it would perch on the globe and sing.  All his life, wandering the earth, he felt as though he had a canary on top of his mind, singing.

Welcome to Tinker Creek.  This year's book will be Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.  It's a book that I read on my honeymoon in Hawaii, on the plane, in hotel rooms, on a beach overlooking a coral cove.  It was a time of hopes and expectations.  The whole world open and fresh, like a fresh-cut lawn or the Pacific Ocean.

I chose Pilgrim because it's a book full of beauty and light.  All kinds of light.  Like the January partly cloudy Dillard describes above.  And I want a year of beauty and light.  There has been too much darkness in my life in the last couple of years.  As I sit here, typing this post, I'm looking out a window.  The sun is setting on the first day of 2016.  The branches of the trees are edged in gold.  That's the kind of year I'm hoping for.  A year edged in gold.

Now, I know it's a fool's dream to hope for an entire year of blessings and goodness.  Life has a way of circumventing those kinds of ambitions.  I will experience hardship in the next 365 days.  Sadness and worry.  The world is a broken place, and brokenness has a way of asserting itself.  But so does light.  Light seeps in through the cracks of a dark room.  Around the window shades.  Under closed doors.  Where there is darkness, there is also light.

So, I am going to be a pilgrim at Tinker Creek, along with Annie Dillard.  You can join us.  The writing is stunning, seeped with spirituality and poetry.  I guarantee you will be inspired.  Taken by surprise.  The world is full of strange creations, things that make you believe in everyday miracles.

As this day draws to a close, I am . . . content.  I guess that's the best word I can come up with.  I'm satisfied.  This evening, I will go home, spend the night reading and watching my daughter and her friend pretend they're just friends.  I could clean my bathroom and straighten up my living room.  But I'm tired.  I want a night of rest.  Of nothing.

Saint Marty just wants to listen to the canary on the top of his head.  It's singing, "This little light of mine..."

Thoughts on New Year's Resolutions

 

December 28: McCarthy or Walker or Dillard, Winter Storm, "Ives" Dip, Off the Top of My Head

So, I am kicking around a few ideas for the book for next year.  I have done A Christmas Carol and Catcher in the Rye and Charlotte's Web and Mr. Ives' Christmas.  I have three possibilities in mind for 2016: 

• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

I am leaning toward the Annie Dillard.  It's a book I've loved for years, and it's a little lighter than the first two choices.  But I'm going to leave it up to you, my disciples.  Send me your vote in a comment.  On December 31, I will tally the results and announce the winner on January 1st.

There is a winter storm bearing down on the Upper Peninsula tonight.  By tomorrow morning, my house will be buried under ten inches of new, wet, heavy snow.  I will be rising at 4 a.m. to clear my driveway.  I am not looking forward to it.  I'm guessing it's going to take a couple of hours, and then I have go to work.

Tonight is the last Ives Dip Monday, and my question is simple:

Will we get a lot of snow tonight?

And the final answer this year from Ives is:

He said that with great self-assurance, a tone of wisdom, and with certainty, as if, Ives would later think, he had already known.

Self-assurance and wisdom and certainty.  There is going to be a lot of snow tomorrow morning.  Son of a bitch.

Saint Marty was hoping for a quiet end of the year.

Off the Top of My Head