On Reading Moby Dick

So back in April, a friend mentioned that he had always wanted to read Moby Dick but never had. I happen to love the novel and suggested that we read it simultaneously and meet once a week or so to discuss it. Well, we are now on our third meeting and the first 375 pages, and once again I’m hooked right into Ishmael’s enthusiastic 

romanticism, Queequeg’s exotic heroics, Ahab’s monomaniacal revenge, and Moby Dick’s clandestine existence. 

“Call me Ishmael,” is the famous opening, yet notice that our narrator does not say that Ishmael is his name, only that he wishes to be called this (This reminds me of telling my kids to call me Dunbar!).

So if we looked up who this Ishmael character is, it turns out that he’s pretty interesting and important. It’s all really early Old Testament stuff and goes back to Ishmael’s father that old rascal known as Abraham. If you’re not familiar, Abraham is

important because he is the unifying early patriarch shared between Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Although Abraham is married to Sarah, Ishmael’s biological mother is Sarah’s servant Hagar. Thinking herself infertile, Sarah allows this union so Abraham can have a son. All this is well and good until Sarah actually does conceive and give birth to Isaac. So now the trouble starts and the three religions that trace their roots back to Abraham begin to go their separate ways. In Islamic tradition, Ishmael is the ancestor of the Arab people and Muhammad is his direct descendent which makes him a pretty important dude. 

Jews and Christians tend to reject Ishmael and instead side with Isaac and look at him as the true heir of Abraham. In fact some Jewish and Christian people believe Ishmael was actually pretty evil and wicked. The biggest difference between the Jews and Christians when it comes to Ishmael is that he is used in Christianity to demonstrate the rejection of the old ways and Isaac is seen as the beginning of the new tradition leading to Jesus.

I’m not writing a religious blog, but I tell this because I’m fascinated that Melville wants some guy who demands to be called Ishmael to tell this story. Ishmael, the narrator, is multicultural and a religious multi-theist. He’s this cool mixture of mainstream traditionalist and outsider rebel. And, like many who will come after him, he 

establishes that objective voice which can be in awe of the eccentric and foreign Queequeg, yet at home in the Christian whaling chapel. Although many aspects of Moby Dick are incredibly modern, this non-judgmental first-person narrator is there from the start to let today’s reader know that this book isn’t just some dusty classic with little relevance. 

When the whalers spot a whale, they break up into squads and go after it in small row boats. Standing at the front of the small boat is a harpooner. This is what Queequeg is. The harpooner hurls the harpoon at the whale. The tail end of the harpoon is tethered to a very long rope. The whale takes off when the harpoon hits it and the rope line quickly uncoils. If you’re sitting in the boat, you have to be very careful not to get tangled up in this rope. So with that, here is a great line by that guy who demands to be called Ishmael.

“But why say more? All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.” 

Redemption: Part IV (Last)

IV.
    Not really ever thinking I was even going to get into the house, you’ve probably guessed I didn’t really have any plan on how I was going to get out, but I really wasn’t thinking about it then, I guess I kind of thought getting out would be a lot easier than getting in, and anyway I was still weirded out by what I’d seen, and before I even got over that, Joyce came back to the bedroom and fell face down on the bed and started to cry, and I mean cry hard. Her body was kind of shaking under the robe, and I know she must have made quite a wet spot under her face. She stayed like that for a long time, I don’t know exactly how long, but it was a long time, and then I heard the front door, and then Frank came in the bedroom. Joyce sort of straightened herself out on the bed when he came in, but she never turned her face to him even though he was saying crap like how’s your headache, and asking if anyone called. Joyce didn’t answer, and I guess Frank was used to that because he just kept on talking about stupid stuff until he was undressed down to his boxers and tee shirt and climbed into the empty side of the bed. He

didn’t say anything like good night or I love you or any of that crap, he just flicked off the wall switch and lay with his back to hers and soon began a low grunting-like snore. 

I don’t know if you smoke, but if you do, you can imagine the nic’n that I was going through with all this crap I was watching, and even though I knew I was asking to get caught, I lit up. I tried to blow the smoke into some heavy coat that was hanging there beside me, and it did mostly keep the smell down, at least down enough not to wake up anybody. The nicotine helped me think and calmed me down a bit. I figured after another cigarette, I could most likely kind of tip-toe out of the house without waking them. I thought even if they did wake up, I could bolt out of there before they recognized me and they’d probably think they were being robbed or something. By the time the police would show up, I’d be fast asleep. I really think it would’ve worked but right before I was ready to spring into action, the phone rang. It was Janice calling Joyce and waking her up and causing a big stink about not knowing where I was and how my mother had twisted her knee or something while coming out of the bathroom and how Janice wasn’t able to help her off the floor. I knew Janice well enough to know that staying in that closet was the best option I had for the next few weeks when I heard all that mess, but then I heard Frank ask what was going on and tell Joyce to tell Janice that he’d be right over. Well, I guess by that time I was on my third cigarette, I mean with Mom’s knee, and Janice being all hopped up and all. I suppose my filtering system was starting to get overloaded because when Frank got up to get dressed, he asked Joyce who’d been smoking in the bedroom, and then he kind of like just went

off. He started calling her a whore and all that kind of crap and accusing her of messing around with some guy named Stan. Joyce just lay there at first, but when Frank demanded to know who the SOB was that had been smoking in the bedroom, Joyce sarcastically said that maybe it was my mother and started firing accusatory remarks about Frank’s extramarital affairs. By then it started to hit me that these two were playing games on a level that I never even considered existed. I mean Joyce seemed to know what Frank was doing with my mother, and Frank seemed to know what Joyce was doing with that guy. I don’t know how that kind of knowledge goes unspoken, I mean I can never keep stuff secret, but it seemed that they just turned a blind-eye to it and only brought it up in times like these. Anyway, I really was getting more than I bargained for. I mean this fight was the last thing I wanted to watch, especially when it progressed to hollering and name calling which it quickly did. Then Joyce threw an empty water glass at Frank. The glass broke against the wall, and Frank got really mad. His face got dark red and his hair stood straight up. I know I was stupid to do it, I mean it got me into all this deep shit I'm telling you about now, but right before I figured Frank was about to really hit Joyce, I opened the closet door and, like an idiot, stood there holding my cigarette.

Redemption: Part III

III.

When I heard the doorbell ring I figured I was finally going to see what I was so desperately curious to see. My only regret was that I couldn’t smoke in the closet. I mean I probably should have smoked one or two more before I went into action, but then again, there really wasn’t all that much time to think about those things. So besides really wanting a cigarette, and, to be truthful, not having any beer, I was pretty well set for what I guess you could call a peep show, although at the time, it really didn’t seem all that twisted, I mean when it was happening and all. Anyway it didn’t take long for the guy and Joyce to get into the bedroom, but it wasn’t anything like I thought it was going to be at all. First of all, I could see pretty good on account of I left the closet door cracked enough to look out, and they didn’t bother turning the lights out, but, for what was going on, they didn’t really need to be in the dark. I mean the guy was mostly mean. First he told Joyce to take her cloths off and to hurry up about it. Then he made her open his pants and kind of pushed her head into his crotch. I mean Joyce didn’t really fight or anything, but you could tell she wasn’t all animal about it like the girls in the porn films either. It was more like she just did it because she was supposed to. Then, after about five minutes of that, the guy, still mostly dressed, told her to get on the bed. He climbed on top of her, and she just sort of laid there with her head turned away from me while he finished. He didn’t make any noises, and she didn’t either. Afterwards, he stood up, buckled his pants, and said how he’d better get out before Frank came back. Joyce just sat up, grabbed what looked like Frank’s bathrobe and covered herself. When the guy was ready, she followed him out of the room. I really wanted a cigarette by then and if it wasn’t for Josh finding out, I think I would have lit up. I mean the whole thing was kind of gross by that time.

Redemption: Part II

II.
       I guess it was not their faults, but adults should know better. I mean it is embarrassing to walk in on your mother and your neighbor sitting right there making-out like junior-high kids or something. I mean a guy ought to be able to go downstairs for a beer and a smoke and not find his mother necking on the sofa. If I had had a job, that would have been a great story for the guys at work,

I remember thinking later. Of course I wouldn’t have told them how they didn’t even stop or anything. They just kind of quieted down till I went out on the porch to smoke. The only good thing I could think of from the walking in on them like that was that at least Mom was not hassling me about smoking on the porch without a robe. It was kind of cold out that night, and I actually did wish I had thought of grabbing my bathrobe before I came downstairs, but once I got out on the porch, I figured the best thing to do was brave the cold, smoke a bunch of cigarettes and nurse my beer. At least that way they’d have time to finish, and I wouldn’t have to walk back in on them. 

I guess if it hadn’t had been for being forced out there on the porch for so long, I never would have seen what I did, and I never would have ended up in that bedroom. I mean I really am serious about not being a pervert; I just kind of naturally fell into that mess.

From the porch, I could see Frank and Joyce’s front door, and that night I watched this big guy walk out of it. At first I thought he was a crook or something, but then I saw Joyce standing behind the storm door watching the guy walk down the driveway. I felt better for Joyce after that. If Frank was screwing around on her, at least she was dishing out some of his own medicine. It was that kind of thinking that got me starting to think about Joyce as more than Frank’s wife. I mean not obsessively or anything, but like that it would be cool to be with somebody with that kind of attitude and all. I started thinking that she probably liked to do kinky things and all that stuff that Janice hated. I don’t know why I started thinking like that all of the sudden, but I did. I guess once you realize somebody’s gutsy enough to sleep around, you naturally figure they must be pretty hot.

Don’t get me wrong, I never thought about actually going through with anything with

Joyce, I knew how stupid that would be. First of all Joyce is pretty hefty, and second, if Janice ever found out about it, I knew I’d be out on the street before I could zip my fly. I was lucky Janice let me stay as long as she did. Like I said, I hadn’t had a job in a long time and my mother was making-out with Frank in the TV room. If I were Janice, I probably would have kicked me out long before then, but she loved me. I don’t know why she loved me, but she did, and I wasn’t about to risk all that to have some affair with Joyce, but I figured there couldn’t be any harm in thinking about it every once in awhile. At least that’s what I thought at first, but then, when I knew Frank was with Mom, and it was late, I started spending more and more time on the porch smoking and watching Joyce’s boyfriend leave. I know it was kind of like a Peeping Tom or something, but I was on my own porch and she was on hers so I didn’t figure I was breaking any laws or anything. But after awhile I grew more curious, and I wanted to know more. The leaving was just a tease, and I had to find out what Joyce was doing over there. And yes, now I see where harmless fantasy gets a guy, but I guess it was all so gradually developing that I kind of lost touch. 

I mean you know how you sometimes hear about guys who do stupid stuff like flashing people or wearing their wife’s panties to work, or stuff like that. Well, don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending them, I mean they’re definitely sick in the head, but I’m just saying that before you just start calling them perverts you got to realize that they kind of built up to that level and that one little thing leads to a little bigger thing and so on until they really screw up, and when that’s happening to you, the building up stuff, you really don’t think that what you’re doing is all that weird until something happens like what happened to me, and then you realize how sick you look. 

Anyway, as you can probably guess, watching the guy leave was getting a little too stale, and one night when I knew the guy was there, I kind of snuck over and tried to look through the windows and see what I could see. Joyce had pulled all the important shades though, and I really couldn’t see anything but a few shadows here and there. I tried to look in the windows a few more times after that and each time I got a little bolder until I actually was one time standing on this milk crate and trying to see down through the little gaps between the casing and the curtain rods, but no matter what window I looked through or from what angle I positioned myself, I couldn’t see much of anything.

Well, as you are probably thinking, I guess I did get a bit obsessed by that point, but I figured I wasn’t hurting anyone. Anyway, I started to think of ways I could get in Joyce’s house. Don’t get me wrong, I had no intentions of screwing with Joyce or anything, but I guess I just needed to know, I can’t tell you why because I don’t know myself, so don’t go pulling that why crap in your head. I don’t know anyone who can tell you why he did something stupid, but that doesn’t stop most of us from doing it.

I pretty much knew from all my watching how long it took Joyce’s boyfriend to show up after Frank would come over to see Mom, so the timing part was easy, the rest was tricky, but the next time Frank walked in the house and I had

had enough beer to get the guts I needed, I went over and knocked on Joyce’s door. When she answered, as you might imagine, she looked a little surprised and a little hot, but I’m sure she only looked hot because I knew what was up, not because she really looked hot or anything but surprised. I asked her if I could talk to Josh. See, I knew Josh was gone since it was after eight and his girlfriend got off from the ice cream shop about then. So when Joyce told me he wasn’t there, I told her how I needed the key to the riding mower on account of I was cleaning up the garage and how Josh had it. She looked a bit weird about that, I guess because most people know what a lazy ass I am and she probably couldn’t believe I’d be cleaning the garage, but I guess she figured that Janice was making me do it or something like that and she left me standing on the porch and went to look for the key in Josh’s room. I didn’t like being on the porch that much, I mean the light was on and all Janice had to do was step out for a smoke and see me to blow the whole thing. Anyway, she didn’t, and Joyce came back looking a little urgent and asked couldn’t I get it some other time on account of her headache. I couldn’t help but wink at that story. I know I shouldn’t’ve, but I can’t help but wink when I know something that the other person knows and doesn’t want anyone else to know, I guess it’s like letting them in on it and all, but of course Joyce didn’t get my wink, or she just ignored it and kind of started to get a little agitated when I told her how I really wanted to get it done that night and all and could I just have a look around Josh’s room, that maybe since I knew what the key looked liked, I might be able to spot it. Probably because she got the sense that I wasn’t going to leave without the key, she huffed out a big breath and told me to hurry up because her head was killing her. 

Josh’s room was in the back of the house and beside it was the bathroom. I wasn’t sure what I’d do once I got in the house, I mean I didn’t even really think I’d get that far, but when I found myself alone in Josh’s room and heard the bathroom door shut, I just sort of knew what to do. I ran to the outside of the door and yelled in to Joyce how I’d found the key and how I’d just let myself out so as not to cause her anymore suffering. She mumbled something like fine, and, after being sure to open and shut the front door loudly, I slipped into the bedroom and climbed into the back of the closet. Looking back on all this now, the part that worries me is how easily I did all that. I mean if you try to picture yourself pulling something like this off, you’d probably figure you’d either whimp out or mess up somehow, but it is really easy and that’s what bothers me now, well that, and the fact that people think I’m a pervert, but as you can see, I really am mostly like any other normal guy.

Redemption: Part I

I.
   Although by the time you finish reading this story you might think otherwise, I am not a pervert. In fact, I don’t think I’ve even ever

actually met a pervert. I mean nobody I know has come out and said that they were, and I haven’t ever seen any evidence of perversity. And even if some people are perverts, if I don’t know about it, then I guess it’s not really perverted. You need two people to be a pervert––the pervert and the person who finds the pervert perverse. And maybe people have decided to label what I did as perverse, but I have never been a pervert. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.

I know how everybody’s sick of listening to excuses, but, like most of the people I know, I too have a screwed-up family. The funny thing is though that it didn’t get screwed-up until recently when my father got hooked on internet chat rooms. Ever since then it has been downhill for my mother, and when it’s downhill for my mother, it’s downhill for me. Anyway, awhile back my father actually organized and hosted a wine and cheese party for all his chat-room friends. He figured it would be nice to get everyone together and actually meet these people face-to-face. He planned for as many as sixty-seven people (the number who said they’d come), but when the day of the party arrived, only four sloven men showed up. One of them propositioned my mother and followed her around the kitchen insisting that he was a 

trained chef and wine taster. The other three drank merlot on the rocks out of plastic tumblers salvaged from a college football game. Then they sat around my father’s computer chatting with the people who hadn’t attended. The evening ended after the men, the chef included, traded pornographic website addresses. Needless to say, Mom left him the next morning. 

I’m not choosing sides here, so don’t go jumping to conclusions, but allowing yourself to get so hooked on chat rooms that it ruins a marriage of twenty-six years is pretty nuts in my book, and that is what my father did, but you might say my mother overreacted. I mean she could have forbade the party or kicked the chef in the nuts or busted up my father’s computer with a hammer, but instead she just left. Maybe she was looking for a way out anyway. So she’s probably responsible for the split too. It does take two people to do it, you know. Come to think of it, maybe they were both looking for a way out, but my story’s not really about my parents and their screwed-up ideas about relationships. I would not even be telling you about it, except that when Mom left Dad, she moved in with me and Janice, and, to tell you the truth, that’s what started this whole mess I’m about to tell you about. 

When I say moved in with me and Janice, I guess what I really mean is she moved in to Janice’s house, a place where I too lived, but where, and Janice will back this up, I fiscally contributed nothing, and where chores were an issue I tended to shy away from. But Janice got the house cheap when her grandmother died, and so I figured that she didn’t really do much toward actually buying the house either, and even though she was the one who worked, and it was her money that paid the bills, I still think she knew that I was good to have around, at least up until my mother moved in that is.

First off, our sex life was completely over once Mom moved in. It’s not like Janice and I were doing it every night before, but at least we could if we wanted to and then all of the sudden we couldn’t, and I guess that is part of this whole story too, because a guy can sort of get weird when you take away his potential. Girls seem to handle it better, but guys need to know there’s a possibility. Without that hope, we mostly dwell on the issue until we drive ourselves crazy. So at first I still tried to talk Janice into sex, but she said that it was creepy and that it made her feel like she was back in high school and that there was no way she was going to feel that way again. She is a home-owner for God’s sake was what else she said. And the couple of times I did talk her into it, I was all-of-the-sudden worried about noises so much that I really couldn’t get into anything at all.

It wasn’t just the lack of regular sex that got to me though, it was the lack of privacy in general. Not that Mom meant to get in the way or anything, but I just never felt right walking through the living room in my underwear like I did before she moved in. And you know how sometimes you wake up at four in the morning and you need to go so bad you think you’ll burst, well when that happened, and Mom was around, you can bet I made sure I was decent before I ran to the toilet, after all, Mom was too unpredictable for me to really feel confident that I wasn’t going to run into her.

So it was bathrobes and slippers and make the bed and clean the dinner plates right after dinner instead of waiting a few days until enough got dirty that you’d do a major washing

and get it all over with at once that all kind of added up to why I did what I did. Like I said though, Mom never said anything about being offended or anything, and I guess it was more me feeling self-conscious than anything she actually did. I mean she must have felt strange too, kind of like a weird sort of third wheel or something. I think maybe that was why she started hanging out with Frank.

I’ll be the first one to tell you that Mom certainly has a right to date. She is kind of separated, and I’m still not sure Dad even knows she’s left, but Frank, Frank’s got a family. Joyce and Janice even went to high school together, and their son Josh was mowing our lawn for ten bucks a cut. I told Janice that if this whole mess ended up by exploding in Mom’s face, we were going to lose the best lawn care bargain in town. Janice said that that might be a blessing in disguise, after all it would get me off my lazy butt and out there getting some exercise. I told her how you can’t get exercise riding the mower, but she said that I knew what she meant, and I guess I did.

About the only thing Mom ever nagged us about was how she thought me and Janice needed to lose weight, exercise more, and quit smoking, but she was on that kick way before she moved

in. Along with junk food and beer, Mom has always claimed to be allergic to cigarette smoke, which meant that everything from potato chips to oatmeal pies had to go and that Janice and I had to stand out on the porch to smoke at our own house. Smoking outside isn’t so bad, but you had to break out the robe and slippers and all that or Mom gave you a what for about how a person’s likely to catch malaria or some other awful disease if he isn’t properly covered, after all, it’s bad enough we smoke, she would remind us. 

Josh and Frank were never there at the same time. Frank mostly slid over in the evenings, and Josh certainly wasn’t going to be spending his evenings cutting grass. That Frank and Josh were on different schedules was really lucky for us because Mom would just let Frank in whenever he could sneak over without even worrying about Josh maybe being there. Joyce doesn’t work, so Frank was not free that often, but she did suffer from bad headaches (or so she said) which landed her in bed and gave Frank a chance to hang out with my mother.

I have never really been what you’d call friends with Frank, but we were always good neighbors as far as that stuff went. I would bum beer and junk, and he invited us to a few cook-outs over the years, although I suspect that that was more of Joyce’s doing than anything else. Yet, Frank seemed to think that our association was strong enough for me to keep my mouth shut about what was going on between Mom and him. I guess he knew I’d lose my lawn boy if I said anything, and he must have figure that that was a pretty good reason for me to keep my mouth shut. But Frank doesn’t know me that well. I wouldn’t have told even if it did mean I’d have to cut my own grass. What people do is their own business. I didn’t care if he wanted to get something going on the side. If he could get away with it, more power to him. To tell the truth, after Mom moved in, and Janice and I went stale, I had started thinking about some side action too, the only problem was that I never was very good at that sort of thing, the girl’d always either tell on me or make me feel like a low-down idiot when it came time to end things. I know you’re sitting there saying to yourself that if I know how I always get screwed when it comes to fooling around, why in the hell did I let myself get into that bedroom, but you got to remember that a guy can get under stress sometimes and that’ll make him do stuff that he mostly wouldn’t do otherwise. I mean you try living with your mother for a few weeks and see how you like it.

Immortality

"I intend to live forever, or die trying." -Groucho Marx. 

I do not want to die. I assume this is true for most of us. Sure the acutely depressed, perhaps spiritually enlightened and the ultra complacent might welcome death, but most of us want to live forever. In fact, most of the major religions of the world teach some form of immortality albeit mostly manifested through leaving the physical body and the tangible Earth. I, however, want to live in this form and in this place forever. In fact, most of the people I know desire this too. But if I succeed in living forever, I also want to maintain activity, intelligence and curiosity. Perhaps this could go unsaid, but if I lose all or portions of my ability to act, think, and investigate, then I am partially dead. So to be alive at 198 but bed-ridden, demented, and reliant on a machine for respiration, is not living forever; it is existing forever, and that I do not necessarily want to do. So I must amend my opening statement to I want to live forever with a high quality of life.

Ironically, almost every character in film and literature who is presented as immortal ends up pretty much detesting it. They tend to outlive everyone they know and love, they tend to be too experienced to connect with the new people

they meet, they tend to be bored and tired of the world, and they tend to indulge in excess in order to feel some sense of enthusiasm or thrill. In other words, our great creative minds, when focused on immortality, tell us that it ain’t so great. Yet I still want to live forever, and fortunately for me, the medical field is focused on satisfying my desire. Of course medical technology and advancement is still a long long way from assuring my immortality, but at least immortality does seem to be the goal of the field. 

So we mostly no longer look for an elixir of life in strange metallic compounds and exotic animal parts or search deep crevices and

ancient caves for a fountain of youth. Now, the medical field has become our best bet at achieving that ever elusive immortality. 

The dilemma occurs of course on several levels. On one level, if the medical field continues to prolong life with quality, lots of things get messed up. Our economy is based on the idea that retired people will not live too long, but

retired people are living a long time in their post-work world. Funding this is problematic, and if the trend continues, it would only make sense to push the retirement age to 70 or 75 or 80. But wait, I don’t want to work that long. I want to retire at 60 or around there and travel, relax, do those cool things I never had time to do when I was working. Retirement is not the only issue, population sustainability is another problem. I addressed this in my last blog, but in sum, if we do not die, the population issue is really problematic. And what about relationships? Will we see nine or twelve marriages over the course of a 200 year life. Will we play catch with our great-great-great grandfathers? Will we have real difficulty figuring out who our half siblings are?  So practically, even if the medical field could grant us immortality with quality of life, we should refuse it. I’m not sure I’m that altruistic, however.

Another ugly issue that must be addressed is the issue of natural order. Some call this playing God. Many contradictions exist here. On one hand, those hardcore religious people who spurn medical intervention of any kind are accepting the natural order of all living beings. If I am injured or become ill, I will either naturally recover, or I will die. The natural order of survival will regulate life and death. Our brains evolving into inquisitive rational states however also seems natural, and it is this natural state that has produced science that is helping us recover better and live longer. So do we embrace this as natural, or condemn it as unnatural. We seem to do both. We condemn cloning and stem cell stuff as too manipulative, but we praise surgeons who can transplant a vital organ and see nothing unnatural about living with someone else’s 

kidney. Nietzsche believed that technological advancement left unchecked would lead to our destruction. If we include life-lengthening intervention, it very well could. 

So here we go again. The hypocrisy exists through my strong desire to play god mixed with my rational understanding that playing god is not all that good for humanity and through my desire to live forever when I know that living forever would probably really suck.