Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg's arm thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife. The counterpane was of patchwork, full of odd little parti-colored squares and triangles; and this arm of his tattooed all over with an interminable Cretan labyrinth of a figure, no two parts of which were of one precise shade- owing I suppose to his keeping his arm at sea unmethodically in sun and shade, his shirt sleeves irregularly rolled up at various times- this same arm of his, I say, looked for all the world like a strip of that same patchwork quilt. Indeed, partly lying on it as the arm did when I first awoke, I could hardly tell it from the quilt, they so blended their hues together; and it was only by the sense of weight and pressure that I could tell that Queequeg was hugging me.
My sensations were strange. Let me try to explain them. When I was a child, I well remember a somewhat similar circumstance that befell me; whether it was a reality or a dream, I never could entirely settle. The circumstance was this. I had been cutting up some caper or other- I think it was trying to crawl up the chimney, as I had seen a little sweep do a few days previous; and my stepmother who, somehow or other, was all the time whipping me, or sending me to bed supperless,- my mother dragged me by the legs out of the chimney and packed me off to bed, though it was only two o'clock in the afternoon of the 21st June, the longest day in year in our hemisphere. I felt dreadfully. But there was no help for it, so up stairs I went to my little room in the third floor, undressed myself as slowly as possible so as to kill time, and with a bitter sigh got between the sheets.
I lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire hours must elapse before I could hope for a resurrection. Sixteen hours in bed! the small of my back ached to think of it. And it was so light too; the sun shining in at the window, and a great rattling of coaches in the streets, and the sound of gay voices all over the house. I felt worse and worse- at last I got up, dressed, and softly going down in my stockinged feet, sought out my stepmother, and suddenly threw myself at her feet, beseeching her as a particular favor to give me a good slippering for my misbehaviour: anything indeed but condemning me to lie abed such an unendurable length of time. But she was the best and most conscientious of stepmothers, and back I had to go to my room. For several hours I lay there broad awake, feeling a great deal worse than I have ever done since, even from the greatest subsequent misfortunes. At last I must have fallen into a troubled nightmare of a doze; and slowly waking from it- half steeped in dreams- I opened my eyes, and the before sunlit room was now wrapped in outer darkness. Instantly I felt a shock running through all my frame; nothing was to be seen, and nothing was to be heard; but a supernatural hand seemed placed in mine. My arm hung over the counterpane, and the nameless, unimaginable, silent form or phantom, to which the hand belonged, seemed closely seated by my bed-side. For what seemed ages piled on ages, I lay there, frozen with the most awful fears, not daring to drag away my hand; yet ever thinking that if I could but stir it one single inch, the horrid spell would be broken. I knew not how this consciousness at last glided away from me; but waking in the morning, I shudderingly remembered it all, and for days and weeks and months afterwards I lost myself in confounding attempts to explain the mystery. Nay, to this very hour, I often puzzle myself with it.
A dark, funny little passage about Ishmael being punished as a child for being disobedient. Ishmael remembers a ghostly encounter with a phantom arm in his dark bedroom. He wakes in the middle of the night and feels something sitting next to him, its arm and hand on his body. Even as an adult, Ishmael has no explanation for the experience, whether it was a dream or a ghost or a demon. He doesn't know.
I think that young people experience things more intensely sometimes than adults. It's part of the process of growing up, experiencing pains and sorrows and joys, learning how to deal with them. Perhaps Ishmael's ghostly encounter was his mind's way of coming to terms with his bad behavior that resulted in his confinement to bed on the longest day of the year. The phantom arm is some kind of manifestation of his guilt and anger. I don't know.
I found out this morning that one of my students from last semester took her life this past weekend. I remember the student distinctly. Funny and quiet, she didn't say a whole lot in class. She was an observer. About the beginning of November, she stopped attending. By that time, she'd submitted three papers, and I thought I had gotten to know her pretty well. I was surprised by her absences. She seemed, to me, conscientious and hard-working.
Of course, having taught college courses for a long time, I am fairly used to students simply disappearing from classes, never to be seen or heard from again. I have learned to chalk this behavior up to immaturity. I had sixty other students. Didn't have time to track down one student who was missing in action. I was busy and stressed.
If all the litany of excuses in the previous paragraph seem lame, they are. I know this. I have been kicking myself all day for not being a little more proactive. Not trying to reach out to this young woman to find out what was going on. I didn't, and I will probably be beating myself up about this fact for the rest of my life.
As I said, I think young people feel things a lot more intensely than mature adults. Maybe she experienced some kind of romantic heartbreak or the death of someone she loved. Maybe she suffered from some form of lifelong mental illness. She could have been overwhelmed by money worries. Or she could have experienced some kind of physical trauma. I will never know.
Tonight, however, I feel a dark arm around me, like the young Ishmael. It's an arm of regret and guilt. I did nothing to help a person who was in pain. I didn't recognize any of the signs of distress. Didn't even send a simple e-mail, asking how she was doing. I did nothing.
I will be saying a prayer for this young person and her family tonight. Somehow, that feels too little, too late.
Saint Marty missed the boat on this one, folks.
No comments:
Post a Comment