January 17: Sober Cannibal, First Day Teaching, Facing Fears

"Landlord, for God's sake, Peter Coffin!" shouted I. "Landlord! Watch! Coffin! Angels! save me!"

"Speak-e! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e!" again growled the cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scattered the hot tobacco ashes about me till I thought my linen would get on fire. But thank heaven, at that moment the landlord came into the room light in hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him.

"Don't be afraid now," said he, grinning again, "Queequeg here wouldn't harm a hair of your head."

"Stop your grinning," shouted I, "and why didn't you tell me that that infernal harpooneer was a cannibal?"

"I thought ye know'd it;- didn't I tell ye, he was a peddlin' heads around town?- but turn flukes again and go to sleep. Queequeg, look here- you sabbee me, I sabbee- you this man sleepe you- you sabbee?"

"Me sabbee plenty"- grunted Queequeg, puffing away at his pipe and sitting up in bed.

"You gettee in," he added, motioning to me with his tomahawk, and throwing the clothes to one side. 

He really did this in not only a civil but a really kind and charitable way. I stood looking at him a moment. For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal. What's all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself- the man's a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

"Landlord," said I, "tell him to stash his tomahawk there, or pipe, or whatever you call it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and I will turn in with him. But I don't fancy having a man smoking in bed with me. It's dangerous. Besides, I ain't insured."

This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and again politely motioned me to get into bed- rolling over to one side as much as to say- I won't touch a leg of ye.

"Good night, landlord," said I, "you may go."

I turned in, and never slept better in my life.

I love Ishmael's comment in this passage:  "Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian."  Of course, there is still a hint of racism involved.  Ishmael assumes, because of Queequeg's appearance (skin coloring and tattoos), that he is a cannibal.  Yet, Melville does something that's pretty remarkable then.  He compares a sober cannibal to a drunken Christian.  The cannibal wins this character contest.

Of course, there's also a lot of comedy in this little passage that ends chapter three of Moby-Dick.  But the comedy is at Ishmael's expense.  Queequeg is not the fool here.  Ishmael--with his prejudices and fears--comes out looking like the village idiot, and he quickly realizes his error in judgement.

Just finished teaching my first class of the semester--Introduction to Film.  It's one of my favorite courses.  Of course, we did all of the normal things--syllabus and introductions and such.  I always think of the first day as a sort of blind date.  The students don't know if they're going to like me, and I don't know what kind of student hand I've been dealt, either.  So, it's all about first impressions.  Sort of like Ishmael and Queequeg.

I think things went alright tonight.  We ended up watching Charlie Chaplin's City Lights for the last 40 minutes.  It's a great film to break the ice.  A little silly.  A little serious.  Slapstick and melodramatic.  By the end of class, the students were laughing and relaxed.  I count that as a success.  I think I came across as half-cannibal, half-drunken Christian.

Now, I have a couple hours to relax in my office until my daughter is done at her dance studio.  Time to decompress, think about the coming days.

A lot of my life is like Ishmael's first encounter with Queequeg.  I'm thrown into situations that give me stress and anxiety (like teaching a roomful of 35 jaded undergraduates), and I usually end up really enjoying myself.  It's a matter of not letting fear rule my choices.

If I had played it safe my whole life, I would be a plumber right now, spending my days cabling sewers and fixing leaky faucets.  There's nothing wrong with the plumbing profession.  It's hard, honest labor.  However, since my father and brothers and sister were all master plumbers, I wouldn't have been taking any chances if I had chosen the same line of work.  (I'd also be a lot more financially stable.)

Instead, I'm sitting in an office in the English Department of a university, having just finished talking about Charlie Chaplin with a bunch of young people barely older than my daughter.  I'm a poet.  This past December, I added radio performer to my list of credits.  My life has pretty much been about stepping out on ledges, looking down, and then leaping.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for his fears and where they have led him.

January 17: Fearless People, E. Ethelbert Miller, "Malcolm X, February 1965"

I admire fearless people.

When I say "fearless," I don't mean people who have no fears.  Everybody has fears.  Jesus Christ, in the Garden of Gethsemane, had doubts and fears.  Yet, He put those feelings into God's hands.  That's what fearless people do.  They walk through their fears, trust in their higher power.

To be without fear is stupid.  To let fear rule your life is equally stupid.  I think that fearless people embrace their fears and turn them into something else.  Stepping stones, maybe.  Gates to pass through.  Roads to walk down.

Today's poem is about a fearless man.  Malcolm X.  In the poem, Malcolm contemplates all the hatred and cruelty he's experienced in his life.  Yet, he doesn't let himself be defined by those things.  Instead, he turns to love, even though he knows death is out in the dark street, gun in hand, waiting for him.

Saint Marty tries to be fearless.  Not sure he actually achieves it, though.

Malcolm X, February 1965

by:  E. Ethelbert Miller

i will die this month. how

i do not know. still there

is much work to be done. i

am afraid not for myself but

for betty and the girls. some

nights i stay awake looking

out the window, a gun in my

hand. i know how cruel people

can be. i have known hatred and

blindness. there are brothers

waiting to do me harm. i will

die for them. i will love them

as only i can. may allah be my

witness.

January 16: Queequeg, Immigrants, Old Story

Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out of the window, but it was the second floor back. I am no coward, but what to make of this headpeddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension. Ignorance is the parent of fear, and being completely nonplussed and confounded about the stranger, I confess I was now as much afraid of him as if it was the devil himself who had thus broken into my room at the dead of night. In fact, I was so afraid of him that I was not game enough just then to address him, and demand a satisfactory answer concerning what seemed inexplicable in him.

Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last showed his chest and arms. As I live, these covered parts of him were checkered with the same squares as his face, his back, too, was all over the same dark squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years' War, and just escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt. Still more, his very legs were marked, as a parcel of dark green frogs were running up the trunks of young palms. It was now quite plain that he must be some abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whaleman in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian country. I quaked to think of it. A peddler of heads too- perhaps the heads of his own brothers. He might take a fancy to mine- heavens! look at that tomahawk!

But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about something that completely fascinated my attention, and convinced me that he must indeed be a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall, or dreadnaught, which he had previously hung on a chair, he fumbled in the pockets, and produced at length a curious little deformed image with a hunch on its back, and exactly the color of a three days' old Congo baby. Remembering the embalmed head, at first I almost thought that this black manikin was a real baby preserved some similar manner. But seeing that it was not at all limber, and that it glistened a good deal like polished ebony, I concluded that it must be nothing but a wooden idol, which indeed it proved to be. For now the savage goes up to the empty fire-place, and removing the papered fire-board, sets up this little hunch-backed image, like a tenpin, between the andirons. The chimney jambs and all the bricks inside were very sooty, so that I thought this fire-place made a very appropriate little shrine or chapel for his Congo idol.

I now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hidden image, feeling but ill at ease meantime- to see what was next to follow. First he takes about a double handful of shavings out of his grego pocket, and places them carefully before the idol; then laying a bit of ship biscuit on top and applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled the shavings into a sacrificial blaze. Presently, after many hasty snatches into the fire, and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers (whereby he seemed to be scorching them badly), he at last succeeded in drawing out the biscuit; then blowing off the heat and ashes a little, he made a polite offer of it to the little negro. But the little devil did not seem to fancy such dry sort of fare at all; he never moved his lips. All these strange antics were accompanied by still stranger guttural noises from the devotee, who seemed to be praying in a sing-song or else singing some pagan psalmody or other, during which his face twitched about in the most unnatural manner. At last extinguishing the fire, he took the idol up very unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his grego pocket as carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead woodcock.

All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and seeing him now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business operations, and jumping into bed with me, I thought it was high time, now or never, before the light was put out, to break the spell in which I had so long been bound.
But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say, was a fatal one. Taking up his tomahawk from the table, he examined the head of it for an instant, and then holding it to the light, with his mouth at the handle, he puffed out great clouds of tobacco smoke. The next moment the light was extinguished, and this wild cannibal, tomahawk between his teeth, sprang into bed with me. I sang out, I could not help it now; and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment he began feeling me.

Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away from him against the wall, and then conjured him, whoever or whatever he might be, to keep quiet, and let me get up and light the lamp again. But his guttural responses satisfied me at once that he but ill comprehended my meaning.

"Who-e debel you?"- he at last said- "you no speak-e, dam-me, I kill-e." And so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in the dark.

Ishmael succumbs to his ignorance.  He has no idea what to make of the strange harpooneer, who is tattooed from head-to-foot and certainly not a Christian.  Ishmael's reaction is very human.  Queequeg--as we will soon learn is the harpooneer's name--fills him with fear.  Certainly, there are all kinds of stereotypes floating around in Ishmael's head.  Queequeg is a "savage."  A cannibal or headhunter.  Less than human.

This evening, I read a column in my local newspaper.  (Yes, an actual newspaper, words on newsprint and delivered to the front door.)  The column, by Mark Shields, basically talked about the fact that every citizen of the United States (excluding those of Native American heritage) is descended from immigrants.  Shields goes on to say, "We Americans, all of us, are indeed either immigrants or the sons and daughters of immigrants, a truth that we can never forget--even if the man who sits in the Oval Office today has never learned it."

Yes, we all come from Queequegs.  Even Donald Trump.  At one time or another, our ancestors were probably feared and hated.  Maybe people even wanted to build a wall to keep us out.  Put us on boats to ship us back from whence we came.  We entered the United States under quotas.  Perhaps we sneaked across some border.  Stowed away on ocean liners.  We lied in order to gain entry.  We changed our names.

Donald Trump's mother immigrated to the United States from Scotland.  She was an illegal immigrant.  Donald Trump's father grew up in a house where German was the main language spoken.  Had her son been President when she was a girl, Mrs. Trump would probably have been deported.  Had his son been President when he was a young man, Trump's father, in the wake of World War II, would have been accused of being a Nazi spy and terrorist.  He would have been detained and jailed.

My point is simple:  what's going on in the United States right now is nothing new.  Each wave of immigrants faced bigotry, hatred, and suspicion.  Donald Trump is just capitalizing on old fears and prejudices.  He wants to send all of the Queequegs home because they are rapists and drug dealers and terrorists. It's an old story.

The problem is that we haven't learned any lessons from this old story.  It just keeps repeating.  Over and over and over.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for all immigrants, past and present, who've made the United States what it is today. 

January 16: Storytelling, Haki R. Madhubuti, "Rwanda: Where Tears Have No Power"

It is a dark night, and I am pretty weary.  When I got home this afternoon, I spent an hour-and-a-half shoveling.  By the time I was done, it was almost dark. 

Because I am so tired, I'm having some difficulty stringing together my thoughts into something coherent.  The poem I have chosen for today is an interesting hybrid of free verse and prose poem.  It's about race and violence and genocide and refugees.  In short, it's perfect for tonight in Trump America. 

It makes me think about how important it is to tell our stories, no matter how ugly or brutal they may be. Stories are a way to instruct and warn and heal.  And listening is an act of revolution.

Saint Marty is always ready to listen.

Rwanda:  Where Tears Have No Power

by:  Haki R. Madhubuti

Who has the moral high ground?

Fifteen blocks from the whitehouse

on small corners in northwest, d.c.

boys disguised as me rip each other’s hearts out

with weapons made in china. they fight for territory.

across the planet in a land where civilization was born

the boys of d.c. know nothing about their distant relatives

in Rwanda. they have never heard of the hutu or tutsi people.

their eyes draw blanks at the mention of kigali, byumba

or butare. all they know are the streets of d.c., and do not

cry at funerals anymore. numbers and frequency have a way

of making murder commonplace and not news

unless it spreads outside of our house, block, territory.

modern massacres are intraethnic. bosnia, sri lanka, burundi,

nagorno-karabakh, iraq, laos, angola, liberia, and rwanda are

small foreign names on a map made in europe. when bodies

by the tens of thousands float down a river turning the water

the color of blood, as a quarter of a million people flee barefoot

into tanzania and zaire, somehow we notice. we do not smile,

we have no more tears. we hold our thoughts. In deeply

muted silence looking south and thinking that today

nelson mandela seems much larger

than he is.