September 3: Queequeg in His Coffin, Labor Day, School and Schedules

Upon searching, it was found that the casks last struck into the hold were perfectly sound, and that the leak must be further off. So, it being calm weather, they broke out deeper and deeper, disturbing the slumbers of the huge ground-tier butts; and from that black midnight sending those gigantic moles into the daylight above. So deep did they go; and so ancient, and corroded, and weedy the aspect of the lowermost puncheons, that you almost looked next for some mouldy corner-stone cask containing coins of Captain Noah, with copies of the posted placards, vainly warning the infatuated old world from the flood. Tierce after tierce, too, of water, and bread, and beef, and shooks of staves, and iron bundles of hoop, were hoisted out, till at last the piled decks were hard to get about; and the hollow hull echoed under foot, as if you were treading over empty catacombs, and reeled and rolled in the sea like an air-freighted demijohn. Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head. Well was it that the Typhoons did not visit them then.

Now, at this time it was that my poor pagan companion, and fast bosom-friend, Queequeg, was seized with a fever, which brought him nigh to his endless end.

Be it said, that in this vocation of whaling, sinecures are unknown; dignity and danger go hand in hand; till you get to be Captain, the higher you rise the harder you toil. So with poor Queequeg, who, as harpooneer, must not only face all the rage of the living whale, but- as we have elsewhere seen- mount his dead back in a rolling sea; and finally descend into the gloom of the hold, and bitterly sweating all day in that subterraneous confinement, resolutely manhandle the clumsiest casks and see to their stowage. To be short, among whalemen, the harpooneers are the holders, so called.

Poor Queequeg! when the ship was about half disembowelled, you should have stooped over the hatchway, and peered down upon him there; where, stripped to his woollen drawers, the tattooed savage was crawling about amid that dampness and slime, like a green spotted lizard at the bottom of a well. And a well, or an ice-house, it somehow proved to him, poor pagan; where, strange to say, for all the heat of his sweatings, he caught a terrible chill which lapsed into a fever; and at last, after some days' suffering, laid him in his hammock, close to the very sill of the door of death. How he wasted and wasted away in those few long-lingering days, till there seemed but little left of him but his frame and tattooing. But as all else in him thinned, and his cheek-bones grew sharper, his eyes, nevertheless, seemed growing fuller and fuller; they became of a strange softness of lustre; and mildly but deeply looked out at you there from his sickness, a wondrous testimony to that immortal health in him which could not die, or be weakened. And like circles on the water, which, as they grow fainter, expand; so his eyes seemed rounding and rounding, like the rings of Eternity. An awe that cannot be named would steal over you as you sat by the side of this waning savage, and saw as strange things in his face, as any beheld who were bystanders when Zoroaster died. For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books. And the drawing near of Death, which alike levels all, alike impresses all with a last revelation, which only an author from the dead could adequately tell. So that- let us say it again- no dying Chaldee or Greek had higher and holier thoughts than those, whose mysterious shades you saw creeping over the face of poor Queequeg, as he quietly lay in his swaying hammock, and the rolling sea seemed gently rocking him to his final rest, and the ocean's invisible flood-tide lifted him higher and higher towards his destined heaven.

Not a man of the crew but gave him up; and, as for Queequeg himself, what he thought of his case was forcibly shown by a curious favor he asked. He called one to him in the grey morning watch, when the day was just breaking, and taking his hand, said that while in Nantucket he had chanced to see certain little canoes of dark wood, like the rich war-wood of his native isle; and upon inquiry, he had learned that all whalemen who died in Nantucket, were laid in those dark canoes, and that the fancy of being so laid had much pleased him; for it was not unlike the custom of his own race, who, after embalming a dead warrior, stretched him out in his canoe, and so left him to be floated away to the starry archipelagoes; for not only do they believe that the stars are isles, but that far beyond all visible horizons, their own mild, uncontinented seas, interflow with the blue heavens; and so form the white breakers of the milky way. He added, that he shuddered at the thought of being buried in his hammock, according to the usual sea-custom, tossed like something vile to the death-devouring sharks. No: he desired a canoe like those of Nantucket, all the more congenial to him, being a whaleman, that like a whale-boat these coffin-canoes were without a keel; though that involved but uncertain steering, and much lee-way adown the dim ages.

Now, when this strange circumstance was made known aft, the carpenter was at once commanded to do Queequeg's bidding, whatever it might include. There was some heathenish, coffin-colored old lumber aboard, which, upon a long previous voyage, had been cut from the aboriginal groves of the Lackaday islands, and from these dark planks the coffin was recommended to be made. No sooner was the carpenter apprised of the order, than taking his rule, he forthwith with all the indifferent promptitude of his character, proceeded into the forecastle and took Queequeg's measure with great accuracy, regularly chalking Queequeg's person as he shifted the rule.

"Ah! poor fellow! he'll have to die now," ejaculated the Long Island sailor.

Going to his vice-bench, the carpenter for convenience sake and general reference, now transferringly measured on it the exact length the coffin was to be, and then made the transfer permanent by cutting two notches at its extremities. This done, he marshalled the planks and his tools, and to work.

When the last nail was driven, and the lid duly planed and fitted, he lightly shouldered the coffin and went forward with it, inquiring whether they were ready for it yet in that direction.

Overhearing the indignant but half-humorous cries with which the people on deck began to drive the coffin away, Queequeg, to every one's consternation, commanded that the thing should be instantly brought to him, nor was there any denying him; seeing that, of all mortals, some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor
fellows ought to be indulged.

Leaning over in his hammock, Queequeg long regarded the coffin with an attentive eye. He then called for his harpoon, had the wooden stock drawn from it, and then had the iron part placed in the coffin along with one of the paddles of his boat. All by his own request, also, biscuits were then ranged round the sides within; a flask of fresh water was placed at the head, and a small bag of woody earth scraped up in the hold at the foot; and a piece of sail-cloth being rolled up for a pillow, Queequeg now entreated to be lifted into his final bed, that he might make trial of its comforts, if any it had. He lay without moving a few minutes, then told one to go to his bed and bring out his little god, Yojo. Then crossing his arms on his breast with Yojo between, he called for the coffin lid (hatch he called it) to be placed over him. The head part turned over with a leather hinge, and there lay Queequeg in his coffin with little but his composed countenance in view. "Rarmai" (it will do; it is easy) he murmured at last, and signed to be replaced in his hammock.

But ere this was done, Pip, who had been slily hovering near by all the while, drew nigh to him where he lay, and with soft sobbings, took him by the hand; in the other, holding his tambourine.

"Poor rover! will ye never have done with all this weary roving? where go ye now? But if the current carry ye to those sweet Antilles where the beaches are only beat with water-lilies, will ye do one little errand for me? Seek out one Pip, who's now been missing long: I think he's in those far Antilles. If ye find him, then comfort him; for he must be very sad; for look! he's left his tambourine behind;- I found it. Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! Now, Queequeg, die; and I'll beat ye your dying march."

"I have heard," murmured Starbuck, gazing down the scuttle, "that in violent fevers, men, all ignorance, have talked in ancient tongues; and that when the mystery is probed, it turns out always that in their wholly forgotten childhood those ancient tongues had been really spoken in their hearing by some lofty scholars. So, to my fond faith, poor Pip, in this strange sweetness of his lunacy, brings heavenly vouchers of all our heavenly homes. Where learned he that, but there?- Hark! he speaks again; but more wildly now."

"Form two and two! Let's make a General of him! Ho, where's his harpoon? Lay it across here.- Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! huzza! Oh for a game cock now to sit upon his head and crow! Queequeg dies game!- mind ye that; Queequeg dies game!- take ye good heed of that; Queequeg dies game! I say; game, game, game! but base little Pip, he died a coward; died all a'shiver;- out upon Pip! Hark ye; if ye find Pip, tell all the Antilles he's a runaway; a coward, a coward, a coward! Tell them he jumped from a whale-boat! I'd never beat my tambourine over base Pip, and hail him General, if he were once more dying here. No, no! shame upon all cowards- shame upon them! Let'em go drown like Pip, that jumped from a whale-boat. Shame! shame!"

During all this, Queequeg lay with closed eyes, as if in a dream. Pip was led away, and the sick man was replaced in his hammock.

But now that he had apparently made every preparation for death; now that his coffin was proved a good fit, Queequeg suddenly rallied; soon there seemed no need of the carpenter's box; and thereupon, when some expressed their delighted surprise, he, in substance, said, that the cause of his sudden convalescence was this;- at a critical moment, he had just recalled a little duty ashore, which he was leaving undone; and therefore had changed his mind about dying: he could not die yet, he averred. They asked him, then, whether to live or die was a matter of his own sovereign will and pleasure. He answered, certainly. In a word, it was Queequeg's conceit, that if a man made up his mind to live, mere sickness could not kill him: nothing but a whale, or a gale, or some violent, ungovernable, unintelligent destroyer of that sort.

Now, there is this noteworthy difference between savage and civilized; that while a sick, civilized man may be six months convalescing, generally speaking, a sick savage is almost half-well again in a day. So, in good time my Queequeg gained strength; and at length after sitting on the windlass for a few indolent days (but eating with a vigorous appetite) he suddenly leaped to his feet, threw out his arms and legs, gave himself a good stretching, yawned a little bit, and then springing into the head of his hoisted boat, and poising a harpoon, pronounced himself fit for a fight.

With a wild whimsiness, he now used his coffin for a sea-chest; and emptying into it his canvas bag of clothes, set them in order there. Many spare hours he spent, in carving the lid with all manner of grotesque figures and drawings; and it seemed that hereby he was striving, in his rude way, to copy parts of the twisted tattooing on his body. And this tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last. And this thought it must have been which suggested to Ahab that wild exclamation of his, when one morning turning away from surveying poor Queequeg- "Oh, devilish tantalization of the gods!"

Queequeg gets sick, almost dies, has the ship's carpenter make his coffin, and then gets better.  That's the synopsis of this little chapter.  Of course, since this all happens in a novel, the fact that Queequeg is traveling with all of his belongings stowed in a coffin does not bode well.  Generally, to paraphrase the writer Anton Chekhov, if a gun is introduced into a story, by the end of that story, that gun must be fired.  Queequeg now has a coffin.  By the end of this whale tale, that coffin should be used.

It is Labor Day, and I have been busy all day.  Reading myths and grading quizzes and reviewing diagnostic essays.  Now, I'm writing a blog post.  Pretty soon, I'll be barbecuing hot dogs and brats and Italian sausage.  Then, dinner time.  The plan is to see a movie tonight--the sequel to Mamma Mia.  My daughter wants to see it, as do other members of my family.

Today is the last hurrah of summer.  Last time to not worry about school and schedules and homework.  Nothing I have done today has been particularly stressful.  Just time-consuming.  Earlier today, I had a raging headache.  Four Ibuprofen later, I was feeling human again.

Summer is not going out with a bang today.  It isn't going out with a whimper, either.  It's going out with grilled meat and watermelon.  I'm sort of feeling like Queequeg right now, rising from a long season of fallow.  My mind is still clouded.  My mood, dusky.  I've written a lot this summer.  Given a lot of poetry readings.  Traveled some.  Now, there are whales I have to chase and kill.  Harpoon in hand, I am prepared for the long slog to Thanksgiving break.

Saint Marty is thankful this evening for the calm before the storm.

September 2: Evening of Relaxation, Classic Saint Marty, "Old Boot in a Field"

I have been working and writing for most of this day.  No poems.  Just stuff that I needed to get done.  Blurbs that needed to be written.  E-mails that needed to be answered.  Nothing too exciting, but necessary.

I'm looking forward to an evening of relaxation.  Maybe a little reading.  Some writing, if my mind cooperates.  A movie with my wife.  Other than that, nothing that is going to raise my blood pressure in any way.

Last year, I was thinking a little about dreams and possibilities on Labor Day weekend . . .

September 2, 2017:  Private Parts, Mysterious and Unreachable, Possibilities

Werner Gluck, the young guard, was a Dresden boy.  He had never been in the slaughterhouse before, so he wasn't sure where the kitchen was.  He was tall and weak like Billy, might have been a younger brother of his.  They were, in fact, distant cousins, something they never found out.  Gluck was armed with an incredibly heavy musket, a single-shot museum piece with an octagonal barrel and a smooth bore.  He had fixed his bayonet.  It was like a long knitting needle.  It had no blood gutters.

Gluck led the way to a building that he though might contain the kitchen, and he opened the sliding door in its side.  There wasn't a kitchen in there, though.  There was a dressing room adjacent to a communal shower, and there was a lot of steam.  In the steam were about thirty teen-age girls with no clothes on.  They were German refugees from Breslau, which had been tremendously bombed.  They had just arrived in Dresden, too.  Dresden was jammed with refugees.

There those girls were with all their private parts bare, for anybody to see.  And there in the doorway were Gluck and Derby and Pilgrim--the childish soldier and the poor old high school teacher and the clown in his toga and silver shoes--staring.  The girls screamed.  They covered themselves with their hands and turned their backs and so on, and made themselves utterly beautiful.

Werner Gluck, who had never seen a naked woman before, closed the door.  Billy had never seen one, either.  It was nothing new to Derby.

I remember being that young and inexperienced, when girls and sex were mysterious and unreachable.  I remember the talk in high school gym locker rooms, all of its crudeness and longing, guys bragging about things they had never seen or done.  When I think about those four years, that's what I recall:  the longing of that time.

Me?  I felt that longing, but I wasn't that excited about being an adult.  I liked the freedom from grownup things, like jobs and taxes and college.  Yes, I had my share of teenage angst.  Worried about popularity and dating and grades and the future.  But, there was also a lot of hope about possibility.  The possibility of seeing that girl naked.  The possibility of becoming a famous writer or actor or scientist or singer.  The possibility of having sex.  When there's possibility, there's hope.

Of course, possibility doesn't disappear when you become an adult.  They just become a little less abundant.  When you get married and have children, you HAVE to do certain things.  You have to provide for your family in some way, and most people will do anything.  Shitty jobs.  Shitty wages.  Shitty benefits.  Responsibility limits your possibilities.

I would love to quit my jobs and spend the next year or two writing a book.  But I have a wife with bipolar.  I have a daughter and son in school, taking dance classes, expecting birthday presents and Christmas presents.  I can't just quit my jobs to pursue a dream.  That doesn't mean that my dream is dead.  It's modified.  I carve writing time out of my day.  In the morning.  In the evening.  In the middle of the night. 

That's my reality.

Saint Marty is thankful today for possibilities.

And a little piece of art and poetry for this rainy, Labor Day Sunday:

September 1: Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin, First Week of Teaching, Safety Net

According to usage they were pumping the ship next morning; and lo! no inconsiderable oil came up with the water; the casks below must have sprung a bad leak. Much concern was shown; and Starbuck went down into the cabin to report this unfavorable affair.*

*In Sperm-whalemen with any considerable quantity of oil on board, it is a regular semiweekly duty to conduct a hose into the hold, and drench the casks with sea-water; which afterwards, at varying intervals, is removed by the ship's pumps. Hereby the casks are sought to be kept damply tight; while by the changed character of the withdrawn water, the mariners readily detect any serious leakage in the precious cargo.

Now, from the South and West the Pequod was drawing nigh to Formosa and the Bashee Isles, between which lies one of the tropical outlets from the China waters into the Pacific. And so Starbuck found Ahab with a general chart of the oriental archipelagoes spread before him; and another separate one representing the long eastern coasts of the Japanese islands- Niphon, Matsmai, and Sikoke. With his snow-white new ivory leg braced against the screwed leg of his table, and with a long pruning-hook of a jack-knife in his hand, the wondrous old man, with his back to the gangway door, was wrinkling his brow, and tracing his old courses again.

"Who's there?" hearing the footstep at the door, but not turning round to it. "On deck! Begone!"

"Captain Ahab mistakes; it is I. The oil in the hold is leaking, sir. We must up Burtons and break out."

"Up Burtons and break out? Now that we are nearing Japan; heave-to here for a week to tinker a parcel of old hoops?"

"Either do that, sir, or waste in one day more oil than we may make good in a year. What we come twenty thousand miles to get is worth saving, sir."

"So it is, so it is; if we get it."

"I was speaking of the oil in the hold, sir."

"And I was not speaking or thinking of that at all. Begone! Let it leak! I'm all aleak myself. Aye! leaks in leaks! not only full of leaky casks, but those leaky casks are in a leaky ship; and that's a far worse plight than the Pequod's, man. Yet I don't stop to plug my leak; for who can find it in the deep-loaded hull; or how hope to plug it, even if found, in this life's howling ale? Starbuck! I'll not have the Burtons hoisted."

"What will the owners say, sir?"

"Let the owners stand on Nantucket beach and outyell the Typhoons. What cares Ahab? Owners, owners? Thou art always prating to me, Starbuck, about those miserly owners, as if the owners were my conscience. But look ye, the only real owner of anything is its commander; and hark ye, my conscience is in this ship's keel.- On deck!"

"Captain Ahab," said the reddening mate, moving further into the cabin, with a daring so strangely respectful and cautious that it almost seemed not only every way seeking to avoid the slightest outward manifestation of itself, but within also seemed more than half distrustful of itself; "A better man than I might well pass over in thee what he would quickly enough resent in a younger man; aye, and in a happier, Captain Ahab."

"Devils! Dost thou then so much as dare to critically think of me?- On deck!"

"Nay, sir, not yet; I do entreat. And I do dare, sir- to be forbearing! Shall we not understand each other better than hitherto, Captain Ahab?"

Ahab seized a loaded musket from the rack (forming part of most South-Sea-men's cabin furniture), and pointing it towards Starbuck, exclaimed: "There is one God that is Lord over the earth, and one Captain that is lord over the Pequod.- On deck!"

For an instant in the flashing eyes of the mate, and his fiery cheeks, you would have almost thought that he had really received the blaze of the levelled tube. But, mastering his emotion, he half calmly rose, and as he quitted the cabin, paused for an instant and said: "Thou hast outraged, not insulted me, sir; but for that I ask thee not to beware of Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab beware of Ahab; beware of thyself, old man."

"He waxes brave, but nevertheless obeys; most careful bravery that!" murmured Ahab, as Starbuck disappeared. "What's that he said- Ahab beware of Ahab- there's something there!" Then unconsciously using the musket for a staff, with an iron brow he paced to and fro in the little cabin; but presently the thick plaits of his forehead relaxed, and returning the gun to the rack, he went to the deck.

"Thou art but too good a fellow, Starbuck," he said lowly to the mate; then raising his voice to the crew: "Furl the t'gallant-sails, and close-reef the top-sails, fore and aft; back the main-yard; up Burtons, and break out in the main-hold."

It were perhaps vain to surmise exactly why it was, that as respecting Starbuck, Ahab thus acted. It may have been a flash of honesty in him; or mere prudential policy which, under the circumstance, imperiously forbade the slightest symptom of open disaffection, however transient, in the important chief officer of his ship. However it was, his orders were executed; and the Burtons were hoisted.

Starbuck stands up to Ahab, tries to make him see the unsoundness of his decisions.  He even goes so far as to warn Ahab to "beware of thyself, old man!"  And something in those words triggers Ahab's mind, makes him surface from the depths of his obsession for a little while.  He sees the light for a little while, anyway.  Does the right thing for a change.

Well, I have survived the first week of teaching.  Every other year, I think to myself, "Well, I fooled them again!"  I've been doing this gig for over twenty years, and I've never felt completely confident in my teaching abilities.  I think that's a good thing.  I've taken classes from so many professors who are so sure of themselves that they've turned into automatons--doing the same thing semester after semester, year after year.  One of my professors had lecture notes that--I kid you not--were yellowed pages.

I'm not saying that these professors were all Ahabs, but they certainly didn't veer too much from their plotted navigation.  They stayed pretty much below deck, expecting their class/crew to follow their orders without questions.  That means that generations of students were given the same instruction by the same teacher, sometimes for decades.  Usually, that teacher was tenured and simply sliding toward retirement.

Don't misinterpret this post.  I'm not arguing here for the end of the tenure-track system in education.  That is not my goal.  I think that tenure will survive.  Or it won't.  I will have nothing to do with this decision.  Of course, the trend in higher education is for less full-time professors and more adjunct and contingent faculty.  It's cheap labor for colleges and universities.  And higher education is big business, for better or worse.  The nobler aspirations of post-high school education have taken a back seat to money.

Of course, for me, my feelings of insecurity give rise to always attempting new things, new approaches in order to reach my students.  That is a bonus.  This semester beginning, however, my insecurities were fueled by my current state of mind--anxiety fanned by depression until it smokes and sparks.  I told my wife last night that this week, I'm functioning at about 60%, which is better than last week.

The one good thing about tenure is that is protects a professor at times like these, when health gets in the way of instruction.  A few semesters of bad evaluations won't lead to termination.  However, as a contingent professor, I have no such safety net.  A few semesters of terrible evaluations means no contract the next semester.  That's reality for me.

Thus, I put that little worry on top of all the other worries that are swimming in my head like a swarm of hungry sharks who sense blood in the water.  Employment.  Teaching.  High blood pressure.  Lymphoma of the brain.  Vertigo.  Mental illness.  Money problems.

Maybe I am Ahab, able to see the sun through the fog in my head for a few bright moments every once in a while.

Saint Marty has said it before:  he is so thankful for family and friends who remind him, daily, that he is loved and, for some reason, important in their lives.

September 1: Dean Young, "Dear Friend," Alone in a Dark Wood

Dear Friend

by:  Dean Young

What will be served for our reception

in the devastation? Finger food, of course

and white wine, something printed on the napkins.

We were not children together

but we are now. Every bird knows

only two notes constantly rearranged.

That’s called forever so we wear pajamas

to the practice funeral, buckeroos

to the end. We make paper hats

of headlines and float them away.

My home made of smoke,

tiny spider made of punctuation,

my favorite poem is cinder

scratched into a sidewalk.

My friend’s becoming the simplest man,

he sees a lesson in everything,

in missing his train,

in his son hollering from the first branch,

Dad, guess where I am.

I was with him for my first magpies,

governmental and acting like hell.

And the new nickel

with Washington hard to recognize.

We’d driven by a Rabbit flattened

by an upset truck, jars of Miracle Whip

broken over the toll road in heavy snow.

We watched an old lady

eat a hot dog in a bun

with a knife and fork.

A few emeralds winged off

a fruit leaf.

What happens when your head splits open

and the bird flies out, its two notes deranged?

You got better, I got better,

wildflowers rimmed the crater,

glitter glitter glitter.

We knew someone whose father died

then we knew ourselves.

Astronomer, gladiator,

thief, a tombstone salesman.

All our vacations went to the sea

that breathed two times a day

without a machine.

We got in trouble with a raft

doing what we promised not to.

Further out to be brought further back.

There’s my friend in his squashed hat

trying to determine if a dot

is a living thing and do no harm.

He’s having trouble remembering street names

but there’s still plenty of Thoreau.

All that a human is made of is gold,

very very little gold.

_______________________________

I've had a lot of support and kindness sent my way in the last couple weeks, and for that I am really grateful.

I'm still not out of the forest.  Dante wrote, "In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost."  I read that line for the first time so many years ago.  Never thought it would have so much meaning for me.  I was wrong.

The difference between Dante and Saint Marty is having friends in that dark wood.