October 7: "Ghosts," Repeat It, Neverending Story

Mary Oliver is haunted . . . 

Ghosts

by:  Mary Oliver

1.

Have you noticed?

2.

Where so many millions of powerful bawling beasts

lay down on the earth and died

it's hard to tell now

what's bone, and what merely

was once.

The golden eagle, for instance,

has a bit of heaviness in him;

moreover the huge barns

seem ready, sometimes, to ramble off

toward deeper grass.

3.

1805

near the Bitterroot Mountains:

a man named Lewis kneels down

on the prairie watching

a sparrow's nest cleverly concealed in the wild hyssop

and lined with buffalo hair.  The chicks,

not more than a day hatched, lean

quietly into the thick wool as if

content, after all,

to have left the perfect world and fallen,

helpless and blind

into the flowered fields and the perils

of this one.

4.

In the book of the earth it is written:

nothing can die.

In the book of the Sioux it is written:

they have gone away into the earth to hide.

Nothing will coax them out again

but the people dancing.

5.

Said the old-timers:

the tongue

is the sweetest meat.

Passengers shooting from train windows

could hardly miss, they were

that many.

Afterward the carcasses

stank unbelievably, and sang with flies, ribboned

with slopes of white fat,

black ropes of blood--hellhunks

in the prairie heat.

6.

Have you noticed? how the rain

falls soft as the fall

of moccasins.  Have you noticed?

how the immense circles still,

stubbornly, after a hundred years,

mark the grass where the rich droppings

from the roaring bulls

fell in the earth as the herd stood

day after day, moon after moon

in their tribal circle, outwaiting

the packs of yellow-eyed wolves that are also

have you noticed? gone now.

7.

Once only, and then in a dream,

I watched while, secretly

and with the tenderness of any caring woman,

a cow gave birth

to a red calf, tongued him dry and nursed him

in a warm corner

of the clear night

in the fragrant grass

in the wild domains

of the prairie spring, and I asked them,

in my dream I knelt down and asked them

to make room for me.

A wise person once said that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."  I think Mary Oliver had that piece of wisdom in mind when she wrote this poem, which is full of the bones of millions of powerful bawling beasts, singing with flies and ribboned with white fat and black ropes of blood.  Each line, each word is full of great hulking memories.

Every person who makes it to adulthood harbors memories that possess them at times.  Choices they made.  Loved ones they've lost.  Places rattling with the chains of the past.  We all accumulate ghosts as we march through our days.

Today, for me, the ghosts have been very, very near.  Temperatures have fallen nearly 50 degrees over the past three days, and I woke to bone-chilling winds.  There was sun and blue sky and iron clouds and bullets of rain and, just down the street, a rainbow arcing over the roofs and trees.

Basically, it was a typical October morning in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  

I did a poetry reading with several poet friends at my hometown library this afternoon.  My wife took our car to work, so I walked to the reading.  That is where ghosts started appearing.

You see, as a youngster, I used to spend hours and hours at this library, working my way through biographies of famous writers, reading e. e. cummings and Heart's Needle, and devouring all the mythology and paranormal and horror I could get my hands on.  I knew those bookshelves the way I knew which houses in my neighborhood gave out full-size candy bars on Halloween.

So each time I step foot inside that building, I bump into ghosts of myself and my literary friends.  Shades of Holden Caulfield and Santiago, Bigfoot and Martians.  My mother never questioned my reading selections, even when I returned home with William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist tucked under my arm.  I read anything and everything, frequently staying up all night to do so.

This evening, as I sit writing this post, I'm still surrounded by today's ghosts. living and dead, literary and real.  Ahab and Zaphod Beeblebrox.  Earlier incarnations of myself and parents and brothers and sisters.  They all swirl around me like tendrils of fog.

One of my favorite books as a kid was The Neverending Story by Michael Ende.  I found comfort in a narrative that had a life of its own, that continued even after you stopped reading.  Maybe that's what we all are--ghosts in a story that never reaches "The End" or "and they lived happily ever after."

Maybe Saint Marty is the ghost of that little boy, sitting on the living room couch with his stack of library books, waiting for the next chapter to unfold in his own neverending story.

March 23: Ten Times a Donkey, Mean Drunks, Pretty Darn Pleasant

Some days elapsed, and ice and icebergs all astern, the Pequod now went rolling through the bright Quito spring, which at sea, almost perpetually reigns on the threshold of the eternal August of the Tropic. The warmly cool, clear, ringing perfumed, overflowing, redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up- flaked up, with rose-water snow. The starred and stately nights seemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride, the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns! For sleeping man, 'twas hard to choose between such winsome days and such seducing nights. But all the witcheries of that unwaning weather did not merely lend new spells and potencies to the outward world. Inward they turned upon the soul, especially when the still mild hours of eve came on; then, memory shot her crystals as the clear ice most forms of noiseless twilights. And all these subtle agencies, more and more they wrought on Ahab's texture.

Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death. Among sea-commanders, the old greybeards will oftenest leave their berths to visit the night-cloaked deck. It was so with Ahab; only that now, of late, he seemed so much to live in the open air, that truly speaking, his visits were more to the cabin, than from the cabin to the planks. "It feels like going down into one's tomb,"- he would mutter to himself- "for an old captain like me to be descending this narrow scuttle, to go to my grave-dug berth."

So, almost every twenty-four hours, when the watches of the night were set, and the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band below; and when if a rope was to be hauled upon the forecastle, the sailors flung it not rudely down, as by day, but with some cautiousness dropt it to its place for fear of disturbing their slumbering shipmates; when this sort of steady quietude would begin to prevail, habitually, the silent steersman would watch the cabin-scuttle; and ere long the old man would emerge, gripping at the iron banister, to help his crippled way. Some considering touch of humanity was in him; for at times like these, he usually abstained from patrolling the quarter-deck; because to his wearied mates, seeking repose within six inches of his ivory heel, such would have been the reverberating crack and din of that bony step, that their dreams would have been on the crunching teeth of sharks. But once, the mood was on him too deep for common regardings; and as with heavy, lumber-like pace he was measuring the ship from taffrail to mainmast, Stubb, the old second mate, came up from below, with a certain unassured, deprecating humorousness, hinted that if Captain Ahab was pleased to walk the planks, then, no one could say nay; but there might be some way of muffling the noise; hinting something indistinctly and hesitatingly about a globe of tow, and the insertion into it, of the ivory heel. Ah! Stubb, thou didst not know Ahab then.

"Am I a cannon-ball, Stubb," said Ahab, "that thou wouldst wad me that fashion? But go thy ways; I had forgot. Below to thy nightly grave; where such as ye sleep between shrouds, to use ye to the filling one at last.- Down, dog, and kennel!"

Starting at the unforseen concluding exclamation of the so suddenly scornful old man, Stubb was speechless a moment; then said excitedly, "I am not used to be spoken to that way, sir; I do but less than half like it, sir."

"Avast!" gritted Ahab between his set teeth, and violently moving away, as if to avoid some passionate temptation.

"No, sir; not yet," said Stubb, emboldened, "I will not tamely be called a dog, sir."

"Then be called ten times a donkey, and a mule, and an ass, and begone, or I'll clear the world of thee!"

As he said this, Ahab advanced upon him with such overbearing terrors in his aspect, that Stubb involuntarily retreated.

"I was never served so before without giving a hard blow for it," muttered Stubb, as he found himself descending the cabin-scuttle. "It's very queer. Stop, Stubb; somehow, now, I don't well know whether to go back and strike him, or- what's that?- down here on my knees and pray for him? Yes, that was the thought coming up in me; but it would be the first time I ever did pray. It's queer; very queer; and he's queer too; aye, take him fore and aft, he's about the queerest old man Stubb ever sailed with. How he flashed at me!- his eyes like powder-pans! is he mad! Anyway there's something's on his mind, as sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks. He aint in his bed now, either, more than three hours out of the twenty-four; and he don't sleep then. Didn't that Dough-Boy, the steward, tell me that of a morning he always finds the old man's hammock clothes all rumpled and tumbled, and the sheets down at the foot, and the coverlid almost tied into knots, and the pillow a sort of frightful hot, as though a baked brick had been on it? A hot old man! I guess he's got what some folks ashore call a conscience; it's a kind of Tic-Dolly-row they say- worse nor a toothache. Well, well; I don't know what it is, but the Lord keep me from catching it. He's full of riddles; I wonder what he goes into the after hold for, every night, as Dough-Boy tells me he suspects; what's that for, I should like to know? Who's made appointments with him in the hold? Ain't that queer, now? But there's no telling, it's the old game- Here goes for a snooze. Damn me, it's worth a fellow's while to be born into the world, if only to fall right asleep. And now that I think of it, that's about the first thing babies do, and that's a sort of queer, too. Damn me, but all things are queer, come to think of 'em. But that's against my principles. Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth- So here goes again. But how's that? didn't he call me a dog? blazes! he called me ten times a donkey, and piled a lot of jackasses on top of that! He might as well have kicked me, and done with me. Maybe he did kick me, and I didn't observe it, I was so taken aback with his brow, somehow. It flashed like a bleached bone. What the devil's the matter with me? I don't stand right on my legs. Coming afoul of that old man has a sort of turned me wrong side out. By the Lord, I must have been dreaming, though- How? how? how?- but the only way's to stash it; so here goes to hammock again; and in the morning, I'll see how this plaguey juggling thinks over by daylight."

Another first--we finally hear Ahab's voice.  It's not a very pleasant encounter between Ahab and Stubb.  In fact, I would venture to say that Ahab is kind of an asshole.  Of course, he's not in his right mind.  Sleep-deprived.  Driven to the brink of madness in his desire to hunt down the whale that cost him his leg. 

When I read books, I sometimes play a little game.  I try to decide which character I wouldn't mind getting drunk with.  Holden Caulfield would be an obnoxious drunk.  Bob Cratchit, on the other hand, would know how to have a good time.  So would McMurphy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.  Billy Pilgrim from Slaughterhouse wouldn't be the life of the party.  Most of the characters from The Great Gatsby would be able to hold their liquor.  However, Ahab and Ebenezer Scrooge would be mean drunks. 

It has been a really long week.  Lots of drama with kids.  My daughter was taking tests, performing in concerts, and preparing for her trip to Florida.  When I got home from work this evening, she was stressing about the end of the marking period.  For about a half hour, she thought she was going to receive less than an "A" in one of her online classes.

I am happy to report that my daughter is on her way to the sunshine state, and she has retained her 4.0 GPA.  My wife and I did not receive any phone calls from the principal of my son's school this week, and, tomorrow, we head to Wisconsin to see a traveling production of Les Miserables in Appleton.  Nobody from my family is in the hospital or near death, and I am not on the brink of bankruptcy.

I think that my wife and I have earned a few drinks tonight.  I am not Ahab, although some of my students this semester would probably beg to differ.  Alcohol tends to amplify personality.  If you tend to be an asshole naturally, like Ahab, you will be a flaming asshole after a carafe or two of wine. 

I'm a fairly easy-going guy.  I enjoy good jokes, good food, and good friends.  So, when I drink, I tend to be pretty darn pleasant.  If you don't believe me, I invite you to drive to Jasper Ridge Brewery in Ishpeming tonight.  I will be the guy in the dining room, guzzling Tanqueray and tonics and eating cheese curds. 

If you are an Ahab, please stay below decks in your cabin. 

Saint Marty is thankful for Friday and alcohol and Victor Hugo.

February 24: Ahab, Mental Illness, Eloise Psychiatric Hospital

"Captain Peleg," said I, "I have a friend with me who wants to ship too- shall I bring him down to-morrow?"

"To be sure," said Peleg. "Fetch him along, and we'll look at him."

"What lay does he want?" groaned Bildad, glancing up from the Book in which he had again been burying himself.

"Oh! never thee mind about that, Bildad," said Peleg. "Has he ever whaled it any?" turning to me.

"Killed more whales than I can count, Captain Peleg."

"Well, bring him along then."

And, after signing the papers, off I went; nothing doubting but that I had done a good morning's work, and that the Pequod was the identical ship that Yojo had provided to carry Queequeg and me round the Cape.

But I had not proceeded far, when I began to bethink me that the Captain with whom I was to sail yet remained unseen by me; though, indeed, in many cases, a whale-ship will be completely fitted out, and receive all her crew on board, ere the captain makes himself visible by arriving to take command; for sometimes these voyages are so prolonged, and the shore intervals at home so exceedingly brief, that if the captain have family, or any absorbing concernment of that sort, he does not trouble himself much about his ship in port, but leaves her to the owners till all is ready for sea. However, it is always as well to have a look at him before irrevocably committing yourself into his hands. Turning back I accosted Captain Peleg, inquiring where Captain Ahab was to be found.

"And what dost thou want of Captain Ahab? It's all right enough; thou art shipped."

"Yes, but I should like to see him."

"But I don't think thou wilt be able to at present. I don't know exactly what's the matter with him; but he keeps close inside the house; a sort of sick, and yet he don't look so. In fact, he ain't sick; but no, he isn't well either. Any how, young man, he won't always see me, so I don't suppose he will thee. He's a queer man, Captain Ahab- so some think- but a good one. Oh, thou'lt like him well enough; no fear, no fear. He's a grand, ungodly, god-like man, Captain Ahab; doesn't speak much; but, when he does speak, then you may well listen. Mark ye, be forewarned; Ahab's above the common; Ahab's been in colleges, as well as 'mong the cannibals; been used to deeper wonders than the waves; fixed his fiery lance in mightier, stranger foes than whales. His lance! aye, the keenest and surest that out of all our isle! Oh! he ain't Captain Bildad; no, and he ain't Captain Peleg; he's Ahab, boy; and Ahab of old, thou knowest, was a crowned king!"

"And a very vile one. When that wicked king was slain, the dogs, did they not lick his blood?"

"Come hither to me- hither, hither," said Peleg, with a significance in his eye that almost startled me. "Look ye, lad; never say that on board the Pequod. Never say it anywhere. Captain Ahab did not name himself .'Twas a foolish, ignorant whim of his crazy, widowed mother, who died when he was only a twelvemonth old. And yet the old squaw Tistig, at Gayhead, said that the name would somehow prove prophetic. And, perhaps, other fools like her may tell thee the same. I wish to warn thee. It's a lie. I know Captain Ahab well; I've sailed with him as mate years ago; know what he is- a good man- not a pious, good man, like Bildad, but a swearing good man- something like me- only there's a good deal more of him. Aye, aye, I know that he was never very jolly; and I know that on the passage home he was a little out of his mind for a spell; but it was the sharp shooting pains in his bleeding stump that brought that about, as any one might see. I know, too, that ever since he lost his leg last voyage by that accursed whale, he's been a kind of moody- desperate moody, and savage sometimes; but that will all pass off. And once for all, let me tell thee and assure thee, young man, it's better to sail with a moody good captain than a laughing bad one. So good-bye to thee- and wrong not Captain Ahab, because he happens to have a wicked name. Besides, my boy, he has a wife- not three voyages wedded- a sweet, resigned girl. Think of that; by that sweet girl that old man had a child: hold ye then there can be any utter, hopeless harm in Ahab? No, no, my lad; stricken, blasted, if he be, Ahab has his humanities!"

As I walked away, I was full of thoughtfulness; what had been incidentally revealed to me of Captain Ahab, filled me with a certain wild vagueness of painfulness concerning him. And somehow, at the time, I felt a sympathy and a sorrow for him, but for I don't know what, unless it was the cruel loss of his leg. And yet I also felt a strange awe of him; but that sort of awe, which I cannot at all describe, was not exactly awe; I do not know what it was. But I felt it; and it did not disincline me towards him; though I felt impatience at what seemed like mystery in him, so imperfectly as he was known to me then. However, my thoughts were at length carried in other directions, so that for the present dark Ahab slipped my mind.

The first appearance of Captain Ahab.  It's a mysterious kind of introduction, more legend than reality.  Ahab remains offstage, sort of like Kong in the jungle on Skull Island.  A huge, dark presence.  Of course, we get a few details of his life.  He lost a leg to that "accursed whale" on his last voyage.  Has a young wife and child.  And he's been "desperate moody, and savage sometimes" since that encounter with the white monster.  Peleg even says that he was "a little out of his mind for a spell" on his return to port.  From Peleg's description, Ahab seems to be suffering from some kind of mental health issues.  Depression.  Obsession.  Mania.  Something.

I know that I wrote about the current gun and mental illness debate in my last blog post.  However, I find myself getting really angry when I hear the President of the United States using such words as "sicko" and "crazy" to describe a person who, obviously, has some serious mental illness going on.  In fact, mental illness has become equivalent to illegal immigration and terrorism in political circles right now.  Donald Trump is even calling for funding to create "mental asylums" to lock the mentally ill up.

The United States (and pretty much the rest of the world) has a pretty bad track record in its treatment of the mentally ill.  These "asylums" were simply prisons where those who suffer from any form of mental illness were placed in and forgotten.  There wasn't any kind of treatment going on.  There was abuse, neglect, and, eventually, a lot of deaths.  And this wasn't too long ago, either.  These institutions were still in operation in the 1970s and early 1980s.

And they weren't just for the mentally ill.  People who were different, who simply didn't "fit in" to societal norms, were locked up, as well.  I've taught a literature class that focuses on books dealing with mental illness.  One of the works I taught centered around a huge mental asylum that existed just outside of Detroit, Michigan.  It was called Eloise Psychiatric Hospital, and it operated from 1839 to 1982.  At its height of operation, it was a little city unto itself, housing 10,000 patients and 2,000 staff members.  It was a horrifying place of secret experiments and clandestine burials.  And it was still running when I was in high school.  When I mentioned it to my father, he clearly remembered the hospital and how huge of a facility it was.  People went in.  They didn't come out.

If that is Donald Trump's answer to gun violence and mental illness, I think Donald Trump needs to visit Eloise, hear about its history, visit the graves of people who died and were buried on the grounds.  Maybe he should be locked up there for a day or two.  Receive the same treatment that the patients/inmates received.  Then, maybe, he might understand what treatment for the mentally ill used to be.  Or maybe he won't.

People, mental illness didn't kill those 17 beautiful kids in Florida.  It was bullets.  It was a semiautomatic gun.  That's what needs to be locked up and/or done away with.  Don't buy into the Trump game of bait and switch.  Keep your eyes on the real problem.

Those who struggle mental illness deserve compassion, kindness, and the best treatment in the world.  We all struggle at times with sadness, depression, isolation, loneliness.  The solution to sadness, depression, isolation, and loneliness isn't the sadness, depression, isolation, and loneliness of mental asylum prisons, as proposed by the current leadership in Washington, D. C.

Saint Marty is tired of ignorant people who don't understand mental illness.

Unmarked graves at Eloise Psychiatric Hospital

February 19: Ahab, Obsession, Project

Now when I looked about the quarter-deck, for some one having authority, in order to propose myself as a candidate for the voyage, at first I saw nobody; but I could not well overlook a strange sort of tent, or rather wigwam, pitched a little behind the main-mast. It seemed only a temporary erection used in port. It was of a conical shape, some ten feet high; consisting of the long, huge slabs of limber black bone taken from the middle and highest part of the jaws of the right-whale. Planted with their broad ends on the deck, a circle of these slabs laced together, mutually sloped towards each other, and at the apex united in a tufted point, where the loose hairy fibres waved to and fro like the top-knot on some old Pottowottamie Sachem's head. A triangular opening faced towards the bows of the ship, so that the insider commanded a complete view forward.

And half concealed in this queer tenement, I at length found one who by his aspect seemed to have authority; and who, it being noon, and the ship's work suspended, was now enjoying respite from the burden of command. He was seated on an old-fashioned oaken chair, wriggling all over with curious carving; and the bottom of which was formed of a stout interlacing of the same elastic stuff of which the wigwam was constructed.

There was nothing so very particular, perhaps, about the appearance of the elderly man I saw; he was brown and brawny, like most old seamen, and heavily rolled up in blue pilot-cloth, cut in the Quaker style; only there was a fine and almost microscopic net-work of the minutest wrinkles interlacing round eyes, which must have arisen from his continual sailings in many hard gales, and always looking to windward;- for this causes the muscles about the eyes to become pursed together. Such eye-wrinkles are very effectual in a scowl.

"Is this the Captain of the Pequod?" said I, advancing to the door of the tent.

"Supposing it be the captain of the Pequod, what dost thou want of him?" he demanded.

"I was thinking of shipping."

"Thou wast, wast thou? I see thou art no Nantucketer- ever been in a stove boat?"

"No, Sir, I never have."

"Dost know nothing at all about whaling, I dare say- eh?

"Nothing, Sir; but I have no doubt I shall soon learn. I've been several voyages in the merchant service, and I think that-"

"Merchant service be damned. Talk not that lingo to me. Dost see that leg?- I'll take that leg away from thy stern, if ever thou talkest of the merchant service to me again. Marchant service indeed! I suppose now ye feel considerable proud of having served in those marchant ships. But flukes! man, what makes thee want to go a whaling, eh?- it looks a little suspicious, don't it, eh?- Hast not been a pirate, hast thou?- Didst not rob thy last Captain, didst thou?- Dost not think of murdering the officers when thou gettest to sea?"

I protested my innocence of these things. I saw that under the mask of these half humorous innuendoes, this old seaman, as an insulated Quakerish Nantucketer, was full of his insular prejudices, and rather distrustful of all aliens, unless they hailed from Cape Cod or the Vineyard.

"But what takes thee a-whaling? I want to know that before I think of shipping ye."

"Well, sir, I want to see what whaling is. I want to see the world."

"Want to see what whaling is, eh? Have ye clapped eye on Captain Ahab?"

"Who is Captain Ahab, sir?"

"Aye, aye, I thought so. Captain Ahab is the Captain of this ship."

"I am mistaken then. I thought I was speaking to the Captain himself."

"Thou art speaking to Captain Peleg- that's who ye are speaking to, young man. It belongs to me and Captain Bildad to see the Pequod fitted out for the voyage, and supplied with all her needs, including crew. We are part owners and agents. But as I was going to say, if thou wantest to know what whaling is, as thou tellest ye do, I can put ye in a way of finding it out before ye bind yourself to it, past backing out. Clap eye on Captain Ahab, young man, and thou wilt find that he has only one leg."

"What do you mean, sir? Was the other one lost by a whale?"

"Lost by a whale! Young man, come nearer to me: it was devoured, chewed up, crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped a boat!- ah, ah!"

I was a little alarmed by his energy, perhaps also a little touched at the hearty grief in his concluding exclamation, but said as calmly as I could, "What you say is no doubt true enough, sir; but how could I know there was any peculiar ferocity in that particular whale, though indeed I might have inferred as much from the simple fact of the accident."

"Look ye now, young man, thy lungs are a sort of soft, d'ye see; thou dost not talk shark a bit. Sure, ye've been to sea before now; sure of that?"

"Sir," said I, "I thought I told you that I had been four voyages in the merchant-"

"Hard down out of that! Mind what I said about the marchant service- don't aggravate me- I won't have it. But let us understand each other. I have given thee a hint about what whaling is! do ye yet feel inclined for it?"

"I do, sir."

Ishmael doesn't really know what he's doing.  He has never served on a whaling ship before.  Doesn't know if this old salt of a captain is trying to scare the sea out of him or simply testing his waters, to see if he has the makings of a whaler.  Of course, Ishmael sticks to his guns (harpoon?).  He's determined to see the world and hunt whales.  Of course, Ishmael hasn't met Ahab yet.  He has no idea what obsession can do to a man.

I am home again today, at least until early afternoon.  I will be teaching this evening.  Just finished up my lesson plans.  Each time I step foot in a classroom, I feel like a novice, even though I've been doing this gig for going on a quarter century.  I read and reread my lecture notes.  Make new notations.  Discover new insights.  I'm obsessed with trying to be the best instructor I can be.

I do this with most things in my life.  Music.  Poetry.  Art.  Parenting.  Husbanding.  Son-ing.  Sibling-ing.  Perhaps obsession isn't quite the right word here.  How about  I say that I aspire to do my best every day of my life, in everything I do?  I often fail miserably.  That's okay.  I learn from my failures, as well.

This past weekend, I did my best to honor my father's memory with the poem I wrote for his funeral.  With the music I chose, the readings, the chicken at the funeral lunch.  I don't know if I succeeded.  Friends told me that the poem was moving.  One person in the church said that they didn't want the service to end because it was so beautiful.  That comment made me think of books that I love--that I never want to reach the last page of.

It is Lent right now.  I have created a project for myself for these next 40-plus days.  It's something that I've been thinking about for a while.  And it's something my dad would have loved to see.  Of course, since my dad died a week ago, I really haven't had a chance to even think about this project.  Now, as I slide back into normal life (whatever that is), I need to get to work.

Starting a new project is sort of like Ishmael looking for a whaling ship to serve on.  It's exhilarating and panic-inducing at the same time.  However, I need to chase this whale for a while.  See where it leads me.  I may end up at the bottom of the ocean, or I may sail home with a really big, white prize.

Saint Marty is thankful this morning for obsessions and projects.

January 6: The Spouter Inn, Color of Snow, New Kind of Rabbit

With halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the sign of "The Crossed Harpoons"- but it looked too expensive and jolly there. Further on, from the bright red windows of the "Sword-Fish Inn," there came such fervent rays, that it seemed to have melted the packed snow and ice from before the house, for everywhere else the congealed frost lay ten inches thick in a hard, asphaltic pavement,- rather weary for me, when I struck my foot against the flinty projections, because from hard, remorseless service the soles of my boots were in a most miserable plight. Too expensive and jolly, again thought I, pausing one moment to watch the broad glare in the street, and hear the sounds of the tinkling glasses within. But go on, Ishmael, said I at last; don't you hear? get away from before the door; your patched boots are stopping the way. So on I went. I now by instinct followed the streets that took me waterward, for there, doubtless, were the cheapest, if not the cheeriest inns.

Such dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, on either hand, and here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a tomb. At this hour of the night, of the last day of the week, that quarter of the town proved all but deserted. But presently I came to a smoky light proceeding from a low, wide building, the door of which stood invitingly open. It had a careless look, as if it were meant for the uses of the public; so, entering, the first thing I did was to stumble over an ash-box in the porch. Ha! thought I, ha, as the flying particles almost choked me, are these ashes from that destroyed city, Gomorrah? But "The Crossed Harpoons," and the "The Sword-Fish?"- this, then must needs be the sign of "The Trap." However, I picked myself up and hearing a loud voice within, pushed on and opened a second, interior door.

It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet. A hundred black faces turned round in their rows to peer; and beyond, a black Angel of Doom was beating a book in a pulpit. It was a negro church; and the preacher's text was about the blackness of darkness, and the weeping and wailing and teeth-gnashing there. Ha, Ishmael, muttered I, backing out, Wretched entertainment at the sign of 'The Trap!'

Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the docks, and heard a forlorn creaking in the air; and looking up, saw a swinging sign over the door with a white painting upon it, faintly representing tall straight jet of misty spray, and these words underneath- "The Spouter Inn:- Peter Coffin."

Ishmael is on the search for an inn to lodge.  He's in a strange city.  Knows nobody.  He is walking by instinct, trying to find a place that seems in keeping with his situation.  His boots are worn.  He has little money.  Some of the establishments are too bright and crowded.  Others, too rundown and questionable.  Even The Trap, an African American church, fills Ishmael with a feeling of unwelcome.  And then he happens upon The Spouter Inn, run by Peter Coffin.  Whales and death in one little sign.  Like the Holy Family, Ishmael finally finds a place to stay, even if it isn't ideal or particularly amenable.

It's strange.  Ever since I started Moby-Dick six days ago, the language of my blog posts has changed.  I find myself using words like "amenable" and phrases like "in keeping with his situation."  It's as if Herman Melville's prose is seeping into mine.  That's okay, though.  I don't mind if Ishmael finds a room in my words.  I love the density of the phrases and sentences and paragraphs.

There's something very postmodern in Melville's tale, I think.  A kind of self-consciousness in Ishmael's words.  This becomes even more obvious later in the book, when Melville spends pages talking about the color white.  I'm not sure how the manuscript of Moby-Dick would fare in a graduate school fiction writing workshop, however, let alone with the contemporary publishing industry.  Melville may have had to self-publish it as an e-book.

Yet, Moby-Dick was published in 1851.  Not too much fanfare or acclaim.  Over time, it has grown in stature and importance in the American literature canon.  Dissertations are written about it.  Movies.  Television.  Even the film Jaws owes something to Melville, with the shark hunter, Quint, coming across as some modern-day Ahab on the trail of his great white shark.  It's amazing, really.

That's what happens with great works of art.  They sneak into culture in strange and non-obvious ways, just like Melville's writing style has sort of sneaked into my blog posts these last few days.  Maybe, at the end of this year, I will be writing long, digressive posts on the color of snow or the legs of snowflakes.  That's what writers do.  They steal the best things from writers they admire.  

I can say that my work has been greatly influenced by quite a few poets--Sharon Olds, Galway Kinnell, Billy Collins, Judith Minty, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman . . . I could go on for a long time.  I learn things from other writers.  Throw their tricks into my magic top hat, wave my magic wand, and, hopefully, pull out a new kind of rabbit.  One that is wholly mine.

I don't mind wandering around the dark streets with Ishmael.  Don't mind getting lost in Melville's maze of language.  There's something comforting in it, like being in a classroom with a teacher you love but not really understanding the lecture completely.  Listening to Albert Einstein speaking about time.  Stephen Hawking about black holes.  Barack Obama about civic responsibility.  Herman Melville about whaling.

Saint Marty is thankful today for great writing and great art.