March 4: Days of Preparation, Oscar Night, Rotel Dip

A day or two passed, and there was great activity aboard the Pequod. Not only were the old sails being mended, but new sails were coming on board, and bolts of canvas, and coils of rigging; in short, everything betokened that the ship's preparations were hurrying to a close. Captain Peleg seldom or never went ashore, but sat in his wigwam keeping a sharp look-out upon the hands: Bildad did all the purchasing and providing at the stores; and the men employed in the hold and on the rigging were working till long after night-fall.

On the day following Queequeg's signing the articles, word was given at all the inns where the ship's company were stopping, that their chests must be on board before night, for there was no telling how soon the vessel might be sailing. So Queequeg and I got down our traps, resolving, however, to sleep ashore till the last. But it seems they always give very long notice in these cases, and the ship did not sail for several days. But no wonder; there was a good deal to be done, and there is no telling how many things to be thought of, before the Pequod was fully equipped.

Every one knows what a multitude of things- beds, sauce-pans, knives and forks, shovels and tongs, napkins, nut-crackers, and what not, are indispensable to the business of housekeeping. Just so with whaling, which necessitates a three-years' housekeeping upon the wide ocean, far from all grocers, costermongers, doctors, bakers, and bankers. And though this also holds true of merchant vessels, yet not by any means to the same extent as with whalemen. For besides the great length of the whaling voyage, the numerous articles peculiar to the prosecution of the fishery, and the impossibility of replacing them at the remote harbors usually frequented, it must be remembered, that of all ships, whaling vessels are the most exposed to accidents of all kinds, and especially to the destruction and loss of the very things upon which the success of the voyage most depends. Hence, the spare boats, spare spars, and spare lines and harpoons, and spare everythings, almost, but a spare Captain and duplicate ship.

At the period of our arrival at the Island, the heaviest storage of the Pequod had been almost completed; comprising her beef, bread, water, fuel, and iron hoops and staves. But, as before hinted, for some time there was a continual fetching and carrying on board of divers odds and ends of things, both large and small.

Chief among those who did this fetching and carrying was Captain Bildad's sister, a lean old lady of a most determined and indefatigable spirit, but withal very kindhearted, who seemed resolved that, if she could help it, nothing should be found wanting in the Pequod, after once fairly getting to sea. At one time she would come on board with a jar of pickles for the steward's pantry; another time with a bunch of quills for the chief mate's desk, where he kept his log; a third time with a roll of flannel for the small of some one's rheumatic back. Never did any woman better deserve her name, which was Charity- Aunt Charity, as everybody called her. And like a sister of charity did this charitable Aunt Charity bustle about hither and thither, ready to turn her hand and heart to anything that promised to yield safety, comfort, and consolation to all on board a ship in which her beloved brother Bildad was concerned, and in which she herself owned a score or two of well-saved dollars.

But it was startling to see this excellent hearted Quakeress coming on board, as she did the last day, with a long oil-ladle in one hand, and still longer whaling lance in the other. Nor was Bildad himself nor Captain Peleg at all backward. As for Bildad, he carried about with him a long list of the articles needed, and at every fresh arrival, down went his mark opposite that article upon the paper. Every once in a while Peleg came hobbling out of his whalebone den, roaring at the men down the hatchways, roaring up to the riggers at the mast-head, and then concluded by roaring back into his wigwam.

During these days of preparation, Queequeg and I often visited the craft, and as often I asked about Captain Ahab, and how he was, and when he was going to come on board his ship. To these questions they would answer, that he was getting better and better, and was expected aboard every day; meantime, the two captains, Peleg and Bildad, could attend to everything necessary to fit the vessel for the voyage. If I had been downright honest with myself, I would have seen very plainly in my heart that I did but half fancy being committed this way to so long a voyage, without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be absolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea. But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said nothing, and tried to think nothing.

At last it was given out that some time next day the ship would certainly sail. So next morning, Queequeg and I took a very early start.

Ahab still has not made an appearance, twenty chapters into the novel.  In fact, we are still on land.  The Pequod is being outfitted for the three-year voyage.  New sails.  Writing quills.  Pickles.  It takes a long time to stock up.  Days and days.  In the mean time, Ishmael and Queequeg wait to lay eyes on their future captain, and Ishmael is battling serious doubts and suspicions about the whole affair.

Welcome to one of my favorite days of the year:  Oscar day.  That's right.  Since I was a kid, I haven't missed a single Oscar broadcast.  That's over forty years of "And the Oscar goes to . . ."  I've seen Faye Dunaway try to give the Best Picture Oscar to the wrong movie.  Sally Field gush, "You really like me!"  Jack Palance do one-armed pushups.  Jane Fonda collect her father's Oscar for On Golden Pond.  I've seen it all, from about 1976, when John Williams won for Jaws, which I wasn't allowed to see until it was rereleased in the 1980s.

So, like Bildad and Peleg getting the Pequod ready, I am currently preparing for tonight's show.  On Thursday, I made up the ballots for my family to fill out.  I've done my research, have my choices.  My wife is currently shopping at Walmart for some snacks.  When I'm done typing this post, I will fill out my ballot.  As I write these words, I'm watching some pre-Oscar broadcasts.  It's like the Super Bowl pregame for all of us movie nerds.

I'm pretty much ready now.  Funny thing is that I sort turn into Ahab when it comes to watching the Oscars.  I yell at people who talk to loud.  Tell people to sit down, shut up.  I like the political speeches.  The stupid production numbers.  All the tiny categories, where the winners stand on the stage and realize that they will never have a better moment in their lives.  Ever.  (It would be like me winning some special Nobel Prize in Literature for blogging.  To paraphrase Jack Nicholson in one of his Oscar-winning performances, "This is as good as it gets.")

I am going to say nothing deep and meaningful this afternoon, because today is all about shallowness and bubblegum.  I've been dealing enough with serious shit these last few weeks.  I'm ready for a little lightness.  And some Rotel dip.  Definitely Rotel dip.

So, Saint Marty is thankful today for the Oscars and The Shape of Water and Rotel dip.  Did Saint Marty mention he likes Rotel dip?

March 3: Ragged Elijah, Searching for Meaning, Maybe Poetic

"Shipmates, have ye shipped in that ship?"

Queequeg and I had just left the Pequod, and were sauntering from the water, for the moment each occupied with his own thoughts, when the above words were put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before us, levelled his massive forefinger at the vessel in question. He was but shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and patched trowsers; a rag of a black handkerchief investing his neck. A confluent smallpox had in all directions flowed over his face, and left it like the complicated ribbed bed of a torrent, when the rushing waters have been dried up.

"Have ye shipped in her?" he repeated.

"You mean the ship Pequod, I suppose," said I, trying to gain a little more time for an uninterrupted look at him.

"Aye, the Pequod- that ship there," he said, drawing back his whole arm and then rapidly shoving it straight out from him-, with the fixed bayonet of his pointed finger darted full at the object.

"Yes," said I, "we have just signed the articles."

"Anything down there about your souls?"

"About what?"

"Oh, perhaps you hav'n't got any," he said quickly. "No matter though, I know many chaps that hav'n't got any,- good luck to 'em; and they are all the better off for it. A soul's a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon."

"What are you jabbering about, shipmate?" said I.

"He's got enough, though, to make up for all deficiencies of that sort in other chaps," abruptly said the stranger, placing a nervous emphasis upon the word he.

"Queequeg," said I, "let's go; this fellow has broken loose from somewhere; he's talking about something and somebody we don't know."

"Stop!" cried the stranger. "Ye said true- ye hav'n't seen Old Thunder yet, have ye?"

"Who's Old Thunder?" said I, again riveted with the insane earnestness of his manner.

"Captain Ahab."

"What! the captain of our ship, the Pequod?"

"Aye, among some of us old sailor chaps, he goes by that name. Ye hav'n't seen him yet, have ye?"

"No, we hav'n't. He's sick they say, but is getting better, and will be all right again before long."

"All right again before long!" laughed the stranger, with a solemnly derisive sort of laugh. "Look ye; when Captain Ahab is all right, then this left arm of mine will be all right; not before."

"What do you know about him?"

"What did they tell you about him? Say that!"

"They didn't tell much of anything about him; only I've heard that he's a good whale-hunter, and a good captain to his crew."

"That's true, that's true- yes, both true enough. But you must jump when he gives an order. Step and growl; growl and go- that's the word with Captain Ahab. But nothing about that thing that happened to him off Cape Horn, long ago, when he lay like dead for three days and nights; nothing about that deadly skrimmage with the Spaniard afore the altar in Santa?- heard nothing about that, eh? Nothing about the silver calabash he spat into? And nothing about his losing his leg last voyage, according to the prophecy. Didn't ye hear a word about them matters and something more, eh? No, I don't think ye did; how could ye? Who knows it? Not all Nantucket, I guess. But hows'ever, mayhap, ye've heard tell about the leg, and how he lost it; aye, ye have heard of that, I dare say. Oh, yes, that every one knows a'most- I mean they know he's only one leg; and that a parmacetti took the other off."

"My friend," said I, "what all this gibberish of yours is about, I don't know, and I don't much care; for it seems to me that you must be a little damaged in the head. But if you are speaking of Captain Ahab, of that ship there, the Pequod, then let me tell you, that I know all about the loss of his leg."

"All about it, eh- sure you do? all?

"Pretty sure."

With finger pointed and eye levelled at the Pequod, the beggar-like stranger stood a moment, as if in a troubled reverie; then starting a little, turned and said:- "Ye've shipped, have ye? Names down on the papers? Well, well, what's signed, is signed; and what's to be, will be; and then again, perhaps it won't be, after all. Any how, it's all fixed and arranged already; and some sailors or other must go with him, I suppose; as well these as any other men, God pity 'em! Morning to ye, shipmates, morning; the ineffable heavens bless ye; I'm sorry I stopped ye."

"Look here, friend," said I, "if you have anything important to tell us, out with it; but if you are only trying to bamboozle us, you are mistaken in your game; that's all I have to say."

"And it's said very well, and I like to hear a chap talk up that way; you are just the man for him- the likes of ye. Morning to ye, shipmates, morning! Oh! when ye get there, tell 'em I've concluded not to make one of 'em."

"Ah, my dear fellow, you can't fool us that way- you can't fool us. It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him."

"Morning to ye, shipmates, morning."

"Morning it is," said I. "Come along, Queequeg, let's leave this crazy man. But stop, tell me your name, will you?"

"Elijah."

Elijah! thought I, and we walked away, both commenting, after each other's fashion, upon this ragged old sailor; and agreed that he was nothing but a humbug, trying to be a bugbear. But we had not gone perhaps above a hundred yards, when chancing to turn a corner, and looking back as I did so, who should be seen but Elijah following us, though at a distance. Somehow, the sight of him struck me so, that I said nothing to Queequeg of his being behind, but passed on with my comrade, anxious to see whether the stranger would turn the same corner that we did. He did; and then it seemed to me that he was dogging us, but with what intent I could not for the life of me imagine. This circumstance, coupled with his ambiguous, half-hinting, half-revealing, shrouded sort of talk, now begat in me all kinds of vague wonderments and half-apprehensions, and all connected with the Pequod; and Captain Ahab; and the leg he had lost; and the Cape Horn fit; and the silver calabash; and what Captain Peleg had said of him, when I left the ship the day previous; and the prediction of the squaw Tistig; and the voyage we had bound ourselves to sail; and a hundred other shadowy things.

I was resolved to satisfy myself whether this ragged Elijah was really dogging us or not, and with that intent crossed the way with Queequeg, and on that side of it retraced our steps. But Elijah passed on, without seeming to notice us. This relieved me; and once more, and finally as it seemed to me, I pronounced him in my heart, a humbug.

It is a strange morning.  Usually, I spend the a.m. of Saturday at McDonald's with my wife, son, and sister.  However, today, because of my other sister's hospitalization, I find myself pretty much by myself with my son.  He is on his laptop.  I am on mine.  Think of us as Ishmael and Queequeg walking through the streets of Nantucket together, having just signed on to the Pequod.

Ishmael's encounter with ragged Elijah takes on more weight, once you get further into the novel.  In the Bible, Elijah was a prophet who lived during the bloody reign of King Ahab in Israel.  The Biblical Elijah performed miracles, raised the dead, and foretold the future.  His name is invoked in various Jewish celebrations, including Passover.

I'm not sure if Ishmael is aware of all of this.  However, his conversation with ragged Elijah is certainly discomfiting.  Enough to make Ishmael more than a little paranoid.  Eventually, Ishmael pronounces Elijah to be a "humbug," but the encounter is enough to cast a cloud over the day.  Like me, Ishmael is having a strange morning.

After I'm done blogging, I plan on taking my kids to the hospital to see their aunt.  It won't be a long visit.  My sister is still pretty weak and tired.  She didn't even speak to me last night when I saw her.  She just nodded at a couple questions and closed her eyes.  I let her rest.  As I stood next to her bed, I said a little prayer.

The last few years have been a little tough on my family.  It started with the death of my brother in 2014.  He was a terrible diabetic who had a stroke a few years before he passed.  Then my sister, Sally, came down with lymphoma of the brain the following year.  She died at the end of the summer in 2015.  Of course, last month, my father died.  He was 90 years old, so this wasn't really a shock.  He lived a good, long life.  Now, my sister, Rose, is in the hospital.  She's going to get better, is already getting better.

If I were a superstitious person, I would be like ragged Elijah right now, wandering through my life, muttering about curses or omens.  Maybe dressing in dark clothes, wagging my finger in people's faces, predicting the End Times.  Some of my siblings seem to blame God for everything that's happened.  Like we're living under some family curse.  They don't go to church anymore, except for funerals or weddings.  Maybe at Christmas, too.

I can't live like that.  I'm not a prophet or character in Moby-Dick.  I'm a husband, father, son, and sibling who writes poetry.  While I try to make sense of senseless circumstances, I've learned not to expect everything that happens to me to have meaning.  That's a human instinct--to see life as the plot of a grand novel, where every detail is a piece in the puzzle of the narrative.  No, I will leave meaning to the Divine Power of the universe.

Today, I will visit my sister.  This afternoon, I will go to church, say some more prayers for her and my family.  Tonight, I may sit down and try to write a new poem (that's the closest I come to searching for the cosmic answers of life).  In the middle of all that, I'm hoping for some pizza.

Nothing prophetic in all of that.  Maybe poetic.

Saint Marty is thankful today for sunshine and his son, sitting next to him at McDonald's.  Hallelujah.

March 3: My Mother, Philip Levine, "Soloing"

I drove my mother home from the hospital last night after she visited my sister.  My mother has memory issues.  Just before we left, she kept saying, "I have to change into my nightgown."  And I kept answering, "It's too early for that, Mom.  Too early."

She seems a little lost right now.  My sister, Rose, is her constant daily companion.  Rose makes her breakfast and lunch.  Sometimes dinner.  In the afternoon, they play Casino together, although I don't think either of them really remembers all the rules of the game.  In the last couple weeks, they sometimes talked about my father.

I don't know what to do for my mother to make all this change tolerable.  Rose will probably be home in a few days.  That will help.  However, my mother has outlived most of her friends.  Now, she's outlived two of her children.  Her life is becoming a series of subtractions. 

Saint Marty has a poem for his mother today.  It's about soloing through life's losses.

Soloing

by:  Philip Levine

My mother tells me she dreamed
of John Coltrane, a young Trane
playing his music with such joy
and contained energy and rage
she could not hold back her tears.
And sitting awake now, her hands
crossed in her lap, the tears start
in her blind eyes.  The TV set
behind her is gray, expressionless.
It is late, the neighbors quiet,
even the city--Los Angeles--quiet.
I have driven for hours down 99,
over the Grapevine into heaven
to be here.  I place my hand
on her shoulder, and she smiles.
What a world, a mother and son
finding solace in California
just where we were told it would
be, among the palm trees and all-
night super markets pushing orange
back-lighted oranges at 2 A.M.
"He was alone," she says, and does
not say, just as I am, "soloing."
What a world, a great man half
her age comes to my mother
in sleep to give her the gift
of song, which--shaking the tears
away--she passes on to me, for now
I can hear the music of the world
in the silence of that world:
soloing.  What a world--when I
arrived the great bowl of mountains
was hidden in a cloud of exhaust,
the sea spread out like a carpet
of oil, the roses I had brought
from Fresno browned on the seat
beside me, and I could have
turned back and lost the music.

March 2: Pagan Ways, Rose, Defying Expectations

Meanwhile Captain Bildad sat earnestly and steadfastly eyeing Queequeg, and at last rising solemnly and fumbling in the huge pockets of his broadskirted drab coat took out a bundle of tracts, and selecting one entitled "The Latter Day Coming; or No Time to Lose," placed it in Queequeg's hands, and then grasping them and the book with both his, looked earnestly into his eyes, and said, "Son of darkness, I must do my duty by thee; I am part owner of this ship, and feel concerned for the souls of all its crew; if thou still clingest to thy Pagan ways, which I sadly fear, I beseech thee, remain not for aye a Belial bondsman. Spurn the idol Bell, and the hideous dragon; turn from the wrath to come; mind thine eye, I say; oh! goodness gracious! steer clear of the fiery pit!"

Something of the salt sea yet lingered in old Bildad's language, heterogeneously mixed with Scriptural and domestic phrases.

"Avast there, avast there, Bildad, avast now spoiling our harpooneer," Peleg. "Pious harpooneers never make good voyagers- it takes the shark out of 'em; no harpooneer is worth a straw who aint pretty sharkish. There was young Nat Swaine, once the bravest boat-header out of all Nantucket and the Vineyard; he joined the meeting, and never came to good. He got so frightened about his plaguy soul, that he shrinked and sheered away from whales, for fear of after-claps, in case he got stove and went to Davy Jones."

"Peleg! Peleg!" said Bildad, lifting his eyes and hands, "thou thyself, as I myself, hast seen many a perilous time; thou knowest, Peleg, what it is to have the fear of death; how, then, can'st thou prate in this ungodly guise. Thou beliest thine own heart, Peleg. Tell me, when this same Pequod here had her three masts overboard in that typhoon on Japan, that same voyage when thou went mate with Captain Ahab, did'st thou not think of Death and the Judgment then?"

"Hear him, hear him now," cried Peleg, marching across the cabin, and thrusting his hands far down into his pockets,- "hear him, all of ye. Think of that! When every moment we thought the ship would sink! Death and the Judgment then? What? With all three masts making such an everlasting thundering against the side; and every sea breaking over us, fore and aft. Think of Death and the Judgment then? No! no time to think about death then. Life was what Captain Ahab and I was thinking of; and how to save all hands how to rig jury-masts how to get into the nearest port; that was what I was thinking of."

Bildad said no more, but buttoning up his coat, stalked on deck, where we followed him. There he stood, very quietly overlooking some sailmakers who were mending a top-sail in the waist. Now and then he stooped to pick up a patch, or save an end of tarred twine, which otherwise might have been wasted.

Bildad does not give up on trying to save Queequeg's pagan soul.  Of course, Queequeg has no intention of abandoning his god for Bildad's.  Queequeg knows his worth, and Ishmael and Peleg accept him for everything that he is:  cannibal, pagan, tattooed, harpooner.  In fact, Peleg fears that converting Queequeg to Christianity may ruin him.  As Peleg says, "Pious harpooneers never make good voyagers--it takes the shark out of 'em."

As many of you may be aware, my sister, Rose, was taken by ambulance to the hospital yesterday morning.  She was diagnosed with double pneumonia and a severe asthma attack.  Her oxygen saturation levels were down in the low fifties.  When she got to the ER, they assessed her situation.  Within a few hours, she was sedated and on a ventilator in the ICU.

Now, for those of you who don't know Rose, let me tell you that she has a lot of shark in her, like Queequeg.  That is to say, she's pretty salty.  Rose is the second youngest in my family.  I am the baby, even though she frequently tries to steal that title from me.  Rose has Down Syndrome.  She was born in a time when doctors told parents who had Down Syndrome babies basically to institutionalize and forget about them.  That was the advice my mom and dad received.

Of course, my parents were pretty stubborn people.  They brought Rose home and loved her no differently than they loved any of their children.  My mother fought for Rose her whole life.  Fought to get her into school.  Fought teachers who underestimated her abilities.  Fought school board members who told her, "We have to take care of our kids before we take care of yours."

Rose  was more popular than I was in school.  Got invited to sporting events.  Had the entire football team as her bodyguards.  She graduated from high school two years after me.  Basically, she defied all expectations.  Think of her as Qeequeg with his harpoon.

Yesterday, in her hospital room, she looked tiny to me.  Shrunken.  Her face was pasty, and her chest moved rhythmically with the ventilator.  She was alive, and, yet, as I stood by her bed, I had this vision of her not being there.  Letting go.  Drifting away from the very sick shell of her body.  It was pretty sobering.  The doctors said she would have to be intubated for a couple of days.

Again, Rose is defying expectations.  They took her off the ventilator this morning.  She woke up, terrified and confused.  Yet, she was breathing on her own.  For a while, her doctors thought she was suffering from sepsis, as well.  The blood tests came back negative.  This afternoon, when I visited her, she was tired and disoriented.  I spoke to her,  She opened her eyes, looked at me.  I said, "It's okay, Rose.  I know you're tired.  You can sleep."  She nodded and closed her eyes.  She never said a word.

Rose is going to be alright, I think.  Tomorrow, she's going to be moved out of ICU if she continues to improve.  She still has plenty of shark left in her.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for the health of his sister.