April 25: The White Whale, Gossip, Golden Showers, Small Penis

I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone up with the rest; my oath had been welded with theirs; and stronger I shouted, and more did I hammer and clinch my oath, because of the dread in my soul. A wild, mystical, sympathetical feeling was in me; Ahab's quenchless feud seemed mine. With greedy ears I learned the history of that murderous monster against whom I and all the others had taken our oaths of violence and revenge.

For some time past, though at intervals only, the unaccompanied, secluded White Whale had haunted those uncivilized seas mostly frequented by the Sperm Whale fishermen. But not all of them knew of his existence; a few of them, comparatively, had knowingly seen him; while the number who as yet had actually and knowingly given battle to him, was small indeed. For, owing to the large number of whale-cruisers; the disorderly way they were sprinkled over the entire watery circumference, many of them adventurously pushing their quest along solitary latitudes, so as seldom or never for a whole twelvemonth or more on a stretch, to encounter a single news-telling sail of any sort; the inordinate length of each separate voyage; the irregularity of the times of sailing from home; all these, with other circumstances, direct and indirect, long obstructed the spread through the whole world-wide whaling-fleet of the special individualizing tidings concerning Moby Dick. It was hardly to be doubted, that several vessels reported to have encountered, at such or such a time, or on such or such a meridian, a Sperm Whale of uncommon magnitude and malignity, which whale, after doing great mischief to his assailants, has completely escaped them; to some minds it was not an unfair presumption, I say, that the whale in question must have been no other than Moby Dick. Yet as of late the Sperm Whale fishery had been marked by various and not unfrequent instances of great ferocity, cunning, and malice in the monster attacked; therefore it was, that those who by accident ignorantly gave battle to Moby Dick; such hunters, perhaps, for the most part, were content to ascribe the peculiar terror he bred, more, as it were, to the perils of the Sperm Whale fishery at large, than to the individual cause. In that way, mostly, the disastrous encounter between Ahab and the whale had hitherto been popularly regarded.

And as for those who, previously hearing of the White Whale, by chance caught sight of him; in the beginning of the thing they had every one of them, almost, as boldly and fearlessly lowered for him, as for any other whale of that species. But at length, such calamities did ensue in these assaults- not restricted to sprained wrists and ankles, broken limbs, or devouring amputations- but fatal to the last degree of fatality; those repeated disastrous repulses, all accumulating and piling their terrors upon Moby Dick; those things had gone far to shake the fortitude of many brave hunters, to whom the story of the White Whale had eventually come.

Ah, the power of rumors and tall tales.  An albino sperm whale can be transformed into a ferocious demon, chewing on the boats (and legs) of innocent sailors.  Ishmael falls under the spell of Ahab's epic yarn of revenge, as well.  I don't think I exaggerate if I refer to it as blood thirst.  It's primal.  Ancient.  It's the story of Cain and Abel.  Odysseus when he returns to Ithaca.  Jehovah when he drowns the world.

This post is not going to be about the evil of gossiping.  I'm just as bad as the next person when it comes to a juicy tall tale.  I don't buy The National Enquirer, but I have been know to pick it up and page through it at the checkout at Walmart.  Yes, my ape mind tells me, I DO need to know the secret sex dungeon kept at Buckingham Palace by Prince Charles.  And, OH YES!, I have to find out in which South American country Adolf Hitler lived in after he fled the bunker in Germany with Eva.

Rumor and gossip feed a certain aspect of the human psyche.  It's not a high level aspect.  No.  This aspect dwells in the lower reaches of the brain, along with addictions to porn or prescription pain medication.  Everyone knows these things are bad for a person.  Yet, it feels so GOOD to indulge these impulses.

I'm sure that I've started some unfounded gossip in my lifetime, intentionally and unintentionally.  I'm human.  For example, I'm not above using the story of Donald Trump and the peeing Russian prostitutes as evidence to impeach him.  I have not seen photographic or video evidence of this encounter.  I have no real proof that it actually happened.  Yet, it gives me undue pleasure to initiate a Trump supporter into the details of the narrative.

I don't think spreading this gossip makes me a horrible person.  Certainly, it makes me catty.  Maybe it diminishes my credibility.  However, right around the end of the 2016 Presidential Election, there were rumors about Hillary Clinton running a sex slave trade of young children.  That gossip prompted a man to bring an assault rifle into a Washington pizzeria and start shooting.  Nobody was hurt, thank God.

The rumors I prefer (like Mr. Trump's golden shower fetish) have never driven anybody to commit a violent felony.  Not yet, at least.  I certainly don't spread rumors with malicious intent.  It's more for entertainment . . . at another person's expense.

Okay, I guess I'm not helping my case here.  I think I better cut my losses with this post and end it before I start talking about Donald Trump's small penis or penchant for underage girls.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for self restraint (of which he obviously has very little).

March 28: Father Tom, God's Love Number Thirty-Nine, Elizabeth Bishop, "The Moose," New Cartoon

When he met with Father Tom in a French restaurant up on Fifty-third Street, they greeted each other, embracing, the priest amused by Ives' white hair as Ives was by his own--it seemed like yesterday when Father Tom would hurry into the studios at the Art Students League, his collar stuck away in a drawer while, his face burning red, he would sketch beautiful young women.  That he'd stayed in the order so long had amazed Ives, considering how he seemed to like women, but for the most part the priest had lived the "hard life" in Rome, and his letters over the years had been filled with more good news than bad and the names of many interesting and holy places.  About once a year, usually around Christmas, he came back to the States to visit with his family in the northeast Bronx, and he and Ives would get together and get drunk and talk about the existence of God and the Bible and death and the soul to their hearts' contentment.

Father Tom is one of Ives' oldest friends.  While they only see each other once a year, they are a part of each other's lives.  Ives tells Father Tom about his struggle with forgiveness, his marriage difficulties.  Father Tom talks to Ives about healing and friendship.  It's a relationship that endures, despite distance and time apart.

This morning, I spoke to one of my best friends on the phone.  We haven't connected in months.  In fact, I think the last time I heard from him was last May, just after my brother died.  My friend is a pastor in downstate Michigan.  He used to be a pastor in the U. P., and, over seven years, we developed the kind of friendship that Ives and Father Tom have.  Even though we hadn't spoken to each other in almost a year, I felt comfortable, happy, speaking with him today.

We discussed our families, our jobs (he's moving to a different church in July), and our mutual acquaintances.  I won't say I caught him up on the gossip, because that's not a Christian thing to do.  But, I did share some stories of a sensitive nature without credible corroboration.  (Read into that state what you want.)  I'm going to call him again tonight, when I get home from church.

That's God's love number thirty-nine:  a best friend who loves gossip and poetry and God.

I was going to end Elizabeth Bishop week with her most famous poem, "The Fish."  But then I remembered another poem of hers that I love.  It's a long, gorgeous meditation on life and nature.  It could almost be a U. P. poem.

Saint Marty has to work on his Easter poem now.

The Moose

by:  Elizabeth Bishop

From narrow provinces
of fish and bread and tea,
home of the long tides
where the bay leaves the sea
twice a day and takes
the herrings long rides,

where if the river
enters or retreats 
in a wall of brown foam
depends on if it meets
the bay coming in,
the bay not at home;

where, silted red,
sometimes the sun sets
facing a red sea,
and others, veins the flats’
lavender, rich mud
in burning rivulets;

on red, gravelly roads,
down rows of sugar maples,
past clapboard farmhouses
and neat, clapboard churches,
bleached, ridged as clamshells,
past twin silver birches,

through late afternoon
a bus journeys west,
the windshield flashing pink,
pink glancing off of metal,
brushing the dented flank
of blue, beat-up enamel;

down hollows, up rises,
and waits, patient, while
a lone traveller gives
kisses and embraces
to seven relatives
and a collie supervises.

Goodbye to the elms,
to the farm, to the dog.
The bus starts.  The light
grows richer; the fog,
shifting, salty, thin,
comes closing in.

Its cold, round crystals
form and slide and settle
in the white hens’ feathers,
in gray glazed cabbages,
on the cabbage roses
and lupins like apostles;

the sweet peas cling
to their wet white string
on the whitewashed fences;
bumblebees creep
inside the foxgloves,
and evening commences.

One stop at Bass River.
Then the Economies 
Lower, Middle, Upper;
Five Islands, Five Houses,
where a woman shakes a tablecloth
out after supper.

A pale flickering.  Gone.
The Tantramar marshes 
and the smell of salt hay.
An iron bridge trembles 
and a loose plank rattles
but doesn’t give way.

On the left, a red light
swims through the dark:
a ship’s port lantern.
Two rubber boots show,
illuminated, solemn.
A dog gives one bark.

A woman climbs in 
with two market bags,
brisk, freckled, elderly.
“A grand night.  Yes, sir,
all the way to Boston.”
She regards us amicably.

Moonlight as we enter 
the New Brunswick woods,
hairy, scratchy, splintery;
moonlight and mist
caught in them like lamb’s wool
on bushes in a pasture.

The passengers lie back.
Snores.  Some long sighs.
A dreamy divagation
begins in the night,
a gentle, auditory,
slow hallucination. . . .

In the creakings and noises,
an old conversation
--not concerning us,
but recognizable, somewhere,
back in the bus:
Grandparents’ voices

uninterruptedly
talking, in Eternity:
names being mentioned,
things cleared up finally;
what he said, what she said,
who got pensioned;

deaths, deaths and sicknesses;
the year he remarried;
the year (something) happened.
She died in childbirth.
That was the son lost
when the schooner foundered.

He took to drink. Yes.
She went to the bad.
When Amos began to pray
even in the store and
finally the family had
to put him away.

“Yes . . .” that peculiar
affirmative.  “Yes . . .”
A sharp, indrawn breath,
half groan, half acceptance,
that means “Life’s like that.
We know it (also death).”

Talking the way they talked 
in the old featherbed,
peacefully, on and on,
dim lamplight in the hall,
down in the kitchen, the dog
tucked in her shawl.

Now, it’s all right now
even to fall asleep
just as on all those nights.
--Suddenly the bus driver
stops with a jolt,
turns off his lights.

A moose has come out of 
the impenetrable wood
and stands there, looms, rather,
in the middle of the road.
It approaches; it sniffs at
the bus’s hot hood.

Towering, antlerless,
high as a church,
homely as a house
(or, safe as houses).
A man’s voice assures us
“Perfectly harmless. . . .”

Some of the passengers
exclaim in whispers,
childishly, softly,
“Sure are big creatures.”
“It’s awful plain.”
“Look! It’s a she!”

Taking her time,
she looks the bus over,
grand, otherworldly.
Why, why do we feel
(we all feel) this sweet
sensation of joy?

“Curious creatures,"
says our quiet driver,
rolling his r‘s.
“Look at that, would you.”
Then he shifts gears.
For a moment longer,

by craning backward,
the moose can be seen
on the moonlit macadam;
then there’s a dim
smell of moose, an acrid
smell of gasoline.

Confessions of Saint Marty