*I remember the first albatross I ever saw. It was during a prolonged gale, in waters hard upon the Antarctic seas. From my forenoon watch below, I ascended to the overclouded deck; and there, dashed upon the main hatches, I saw a regal, feathery thing of unspotted whiteness, and with a hooked, Roman bill sublime. At intervals, it arched forth its vast archangel wings, as if to embrace some holy ark. Wondrous flutterings and throbbings shook it. Though bodily unharmed, it uttered cries, as some king's ghost in supernatural distress. Through its inexpressible, strange eyes, methought I peeped to secrets which took hold of God. As Abraham before the angels, I bowed myself; the white thing was so white, its wings so wide, and in those for ever exiled waters, I had lost the miserable warping memories of traditions and of towns. Long I gazed at that prodigy of plumage. I cannot tell, can only hint, the things that darted through me then. But at last I awoke; and turning, asked a sailor what bird was this. A goney, he replied. Goney! never had heard that name before; is it conceivable that this glorious thing is utterly unknown to men ashore! never! But some time after, I learned that goney was some seaman's name for albatross. So that by no possibility could Coleridge's wild Rhyme have had aught to do with those mystical impressions which were mine, when I saw that bird upon our deck. For neither had I then read the Rhyme, nor knew the bird to be an albatross. Yet, in saying this, I do but indirectly burnish a little brighter the noble merit of the poem and the poet.
I assert, then, that in the wondrous bodily whiteness of the bird chiefly lurks the secret of the spell; a truth the more evinced in this, that by a solecism of terms there are birds called grey albatrosses; and these I have frequently seen, but never with such emotions as when I beheld the Antarctic fowl.
But how had the mystic thing been caught? Whisper it not, and I will tell; with a treacherous hook and line, as the fowl floated on the sea. At last the Captain made a postman of it; tying a lettered, leathern tally round its neck, with the ship's time and place; and then letting it escape. But I doubt not, that leathern tally, meant for man, was taken off in Heaven, when the white fowl flew to join the wing-folding, the invoking, and adoring cherubim!
Most famous in our Western annals and Indian traditions is that of the White Steed of the Prairies; a magnificent milk-white charger, large-eyed, small-headed, bluff-chested, and with the dignity of a thousand monarchs in his lofty, overscorning carriage. He was the elected Xerxes of vast herds of wild horses, whose pastures in those days were only fenced by the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies. At their flaming head he westward trooped it like that chosen star which every evening leads on the hosts of light. The flashing cascade of his mane, the curving comet of his tail, invested him with housings more resplendent than gold and silver-beaters could have furnished him. A most imperial and archangelical apparition of that unfallen, western world, which to the eyes of the old trappers and hunters revived the glories of those primeval times when Adam walked majestic as a god, bluff-browed and fearless as this mighty steed. Whether marching amid his aides and marshals in the van of countless cohorts that endlessly streamed it over the plains, like an Ohio; or whether with his circumambient subjects browsing all around at the horizon, the White Steed gallopingly reviewed them with warm nostrils reddening through his cool milkiness; in whatever aspect he presented himself, always to the bravest Indians he was the object of trembling reverence and awe. Nor can it be questioned from what stands on legendary record of this noble horse, that it was his spiritual whiteness chiefly, which so clothed him with divineness; and that this divineness had that in it which, though commanding worship, at the same time enforced a certain nameless terror.
But there are other instances where this whiteness loses all that accessory and strange glory which invests it in the White Steed and Albatross.
So Ishmael/Melville brings up Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and his albatross. Of course, most people are somewhat familiar with the idea of having an albatross tied around your neck. It refers to something you just can't get rid of. Something that seemingly brings you bad luck, weighs on you like an anchor. Something you can't escape. The Ancient Mariner kills an albatross on a sea voyage and brings all sorts of misfortune on the ship and crew. As part of his punishment, the mariner must carry the dead albatross around his neck as it slowly decays and disintegrates while, one-by-one, the rest of the ship's passengers and crew succumb to the curse of the albatross. Eventually, the Ancient Mariner returns to his homeland, but he's doomed to wander the Earth, telling his cautionary rime to any and all who cross his path.
That's a pretty simplistic synopsis of a fairly complex poem. However, it hits the highlights. Melville here is concerned with the albatross--a bird of snowy feather and angelic wing. Being a sailor, Ishmael, in a chapter devoted to the color white, cannot escape Coleridge's bird. It was a poem that was certainly well-known by many seagoing men. And the albatross was seen as both a good and bad omen, much like the color white is both positive and negative. The bird was believed to carry the souls of dead sailors. Seeing one flying while on a sea voyage was a portent that the ship was protected by some ghost mariner. On the flip side, the albatross could be on a mission to collect another dead sailor's spirit. Guardian angel or Angel of Death. Take your pick.
I'm the kind of person who never sees anything as wholly good or wholly bad. I've been cursed with the need to examine every situation from as many angles as possible. I'm not good at snap decisions. I'm better at slow contemplation. If you ask me to do something--play the pipe organ for a wedding or teach poetry to a fifth-grade class--I will probably provide an answer that goes something like this: "That sounds really wonderful. Let me check my schedule and get back to you." That allows me at least a day to weigh the pluses and minuses, ups and downs, lights and darks.
If I'm coming across as somewhat neurotic, that would be an accurate assessment of my character. I think this particular defect comes from my father. He had an annoying habit of approaching me and asking questions like, "Say, what are you doing five months from now on a Saturday?" He would never come right out and say why he was asking the question.
Before I learned better, I would usually answer, "I don't know. Probably nothing."
Then he'd come back with, "Oh, good. We're going to be digging a new outhouse at deer camp, and you can help us."
After being burned like this many times, I developed this noncommittal response to him, "I'll have to check my calendar." That usually bought me enough time to avoid placing a rotting albatross around my neck.
So, yes, I am painfully neurotic about making immediate commitments. I need time to adjust my brain and life to anything--dinner at a restaurant, an oil change for my car, teaching a class in mythology, scheduling a medical procedure. I have to live with the idea for a while, see how it fits. It's like buying new running shoes. If they don't hurt my ankles or cause blisters after a day or so, then I'll keep the shoes.
At the moment, I'm trying to coordinate a cemetery commitment service for my father this weekend. I've been subjected to a flurry of dates and suggestions since early afternoon. Now, it seems we will be doing it this Saturday at around 11 a.m. Of course, I have to rearrange my mind a little for this. Prepare myself. Go for a run with it to see if it hurts my feet..
Saint Marty is thankful tonight for calendars and good shoes.
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