spirit shanty

BEING A STATELY DELINEATION OF ONE MAN'S ABSORPTION INTO THAT BOOK ENTITLED "MOBY-DICK; OR, THE WHALE."

I read it and I am haunted by the shadows of heroes and villains that fall endlessly across history, that stretch infinitely into the human psyche and onwards.  And should humanity ever attain the stars, then so too will we carry these shadows with us into the vast unlimited depths of that second black sea!

I'm not done the book, not by a long shot, but its harpooneer's hook is in me with a vengeance, and the call of the icy waves is strong.  On the drive to work, I find myself scanning the horizon for the telltale spout of the Leviathan; I battle the elements alongside my fellows in our daily scrimmage to make our livelihoods; above all, I listen sharp for the impending thump of the old devil's ivory leg against the plank, the sooner to set myself to business or, better yet, to make myself as scarce as the great white whale which represents his sole object!

But I'm no Ishmael, no; our similarly sanguine stance on the whole of human nature and equivalence of human experience aside, he throws himself against the rocks of life in flight from a pressure I've never known.  He seeks his dissolution with the single-minded furor of one utterly disgusted with a world he claims to enjoy.  On the contrary, I merely await my dissolution with fond patience, looking forward to the chance to lay down my burdens, but not seeking to hasten it in any way.  I have never Gone to Sea.

No, there are other characters with whom I share a resonance much stronger:

[Starbuck,] a staid, steadfast man, whose life for the most part was a telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter of words.  Yet, for all his hardy sobriety and fortitude, there were certain qualities in him which at times affected, and in some cases seemed well nigh to overbalance all the rest.  Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline him to superstition; but to that sort of superstition, which in some organizations seems rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than from ignorance.  Outward portents and inward presentiments were his.  And if at times these things bent the welded iron of his soul, much more did his far-away domestic memories of his young Cape wife and child, tend to bend him still more from the original ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those latent influences which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush of dare-devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery.  "I will have no man in my boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale."  By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.

I have never been much fond of Starbucks, but I think it may be time to make an exception.   There is some value in fear, as pure fearlessness is a fool's indicator; but in too much fear, there is nothing but failure and loss.  For what can you have to lose?  Your comfortable life, your self-respect, your easygoing contentment with the design of the world -- these are all things you have constructed for yourself, things that do not exist, things that can cease to exist through a moment's twist of hard-hearted fate.  Be unlike the busy ant, who sets himself to work only to have his efforts crushed by the indifferent boot of destiny!  Instead, make yourself like that idle grasshopper, who flies easily from one calamity to the other.  And if he should starve for lack of industry, well, the ant wasn't going to live forever.  Someday, we will all starve of something or other; let it not be a lack of nourishment for your soul that does you in.  Go out and contrive to make something of yourself, even if it be nothing more than an end.  Look that Whale in the eye!