Ishmael

Melville's Ishmael is one of my top three favorite literary characters. (The other two, by the way, are Hemingway's Jake Barnes from The Sun Also Rises and Milton's Satan from Paradise Lost.) There's something about Ishmael that sits right with me, and I've never really been sure what it is. From the first time I read this book in college, I was in love with it. I remember sitting in an Honors British Romantics seminar at UNC and listening to this girl in there complaining about Moby-Dick and how she had to force herself to read 50 pages a day--that was her plan for getting through it. I was a new English major then and not confident enough to call her on it, but I marvelled at how someone else who was obviously smart couldn't appreciate it. I have come to learn, however, that this unnamed undergrad is in the literary majority. For shame.

I was hooked on this book by the first chapter. Sure, everyone knows the "Call me Ishmael" opening, but what else? Do you know why Ishmael set foot on that doomed ship, the Pequod? It was because Ishmael, like so many of us, could no longer stand society as it existed on shore. He saw himself in a rut, and knew that the vast expanse of the sea could help him. And who among us cannot be helped by vast expanses? Have you ever felt sad or depressed and stared at a clear starry sky, only to feel better afterward? I love this explanation: "Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses. and bringing up the read of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship." I love the simplicity of that last statement. For all the grandiosness of Moby-Dick, for all of Ishmael's cetological diversions and exaggerated nineteenth-century language, there are a trove of simply-worded statements that blow me away. This is one.

It's much more difficult to explain why I love this book, or even why I love Ishmael, than I thought it would be. I find myself not wanting to type things because there seems too much. Why talk about one thing when I could talk about another? Should I talk about Ishmael and Queequeg, which deserves to be spoken of. But to do that, do I need to tell you about the history of tattooing in the South Pacific and the fear white sailors had of being tattooed? But Dan, you say, I thought tattoos were part and parcel of sailors. And you'd be right, but not at first. The first generations of sailors who went to the South Pacific were terrified they would be tattooed against their will and so marked, literally and metaphorically, when they returned to "civilization." But as Ishmael says about Queequeg when trying to psyche himself up for sharing a bed with him, "A man can be honest in any sort of skin." Add to this the fact that Ishmael eventually tattoos onto his right arm the dimensions of a Sperm Whale skeleton. What does that say about Ishmael, about whales, and about tattoos? Read chapter 2 and chapter 102, and you tell me.

So this is what I'll end with. When talking to a few other people about Moby-Dick, all of them professors, and I say something about Ishmael telling this story back on shore, they all say, "that's assuming he does get back to shore." This angers me. These people are referring to the end of the novel, which I won't ruin for you (though you probably know pretty much what happens), but suffice it to say that Ishmael doesn't say "and I returned to New England." But he talks all throughout the novel about other whaling voyages he goes on, and he does plainly say that his voyage on the Pequod, while not his first time as a sailor, was his first time as a whaler. So then, obviously, Ishmael sets out against the sperm whale even after his encounter with Moby-Dick. What does that say about him? Does his drive to go whaling (he doesn't have to ship out on whaleships) echo Ahab's monomaniacal quest? Is Ishmael more successful than Ahab because he lives to tell his story? Why do whales have this pull?

I'll leave this question for my discussion of Ahab. If you can read along, I'm going to be talking about Ahab mainly from chapter 36, "The Quarter-Deck." Until, smooth sailing to all.

Moby Dick

So I realized that the last thing I've put up here was me saying that I was about to start re-reading Moby-Dick, and I got to thinking that I would really be dropping the ball if I didn't talk about it at all. I mean, it's my favorite book, perhaps the greatest thing written in the English language, and most people are scared of it. When you ask someone about Moby-Dick, they usually roll their eyes or come back with some comment about how long it is, or they complain about the chapter where Ishmael classifies whales. But these people miss the point, and it's sad.

I said in a comment the other day that the best way to approach reading Moby-Dick is to read it like you would read the Bible. The Bible is not a beach read. That doesn't mean it's a bad read. There are long sections of the Bible that are boring. That doesn't make IT boring. If you read the Bible, really read it, there are parts that can change your life. Moby-Dick is the same way.

There is a lot I could pull from to explain that last nearly blasphemous remark, but I'm not going to do that. What I want to do is, over the course of a few posts, try to convince you to read Moby-Dick if you've never read it before, or read it again if you had the cursory college reading experience.

I'll try to keep them short and to the point, and I'm not going to throw in a bunch of theory or analysis. I just want to point out certian things that I love about this wonderfully demanding book. But I won't start tonight: I'll save the first discussion for next time. I'll start with the beginning--the first chapter, and Ishmael.

POE

So I've got a draft of the Poe chapter. It's not a great one, but it's done. We're getting there. One more chapter to go.

Now I get to re-read Moby Dick. I love that book. This is the fun part.

Why I Might Never Finish My Dissertation

To begin, I'm going to finish my dissertation. I'm like 75% finished now. I'm one chapter away from having a complete draft (minus the conclusion, but that won't be written until all the other chapters are edited). I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it doesn't look like a train.

So here's the thing. I'm having a hard time dealing with this flurry of activity followed by a crash. The problem is that if I can't finish the chapter in a flurry, then I'm in trouble. That's what's happening now with this Poe chapter. I've got a full 25 pages, which I got pretty much all last week, but I'm not finished with the chapter yet. I haven't even really talked about The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym at all (and I guess that sentence only makes sense if you've both read Pym and know the gist of what I'm doing). But the way the chapter has shaped up so far, I think I need to reorganize almost everything I've written so far in order to best incorporate Pym into the discussion because it's such a problematic text. I can't really talk about Pym straight through because so much of it doesn't really deal with the coast. But there's definitely material there for me, so I have to really craft how I present it.

Anyway, today I was in my office working and was motivated to get some work done, and thought I had some good ideas. So I stopped thinking and turned to my computer to write. And automatically checked my email. Then I checked the news. Then I looked at Facebook. By the time I got around to my chapter, I had lost all motivation. So effing frustrating.

The worst part is that this seems like a willpower question. It's easy to say, "just don't do that distracting stuff." But at this point, that's a hard thing to do. Argh. It doesn't help that this was at like 1:30, and I'm definitely a morning person. And in all fairness, this morning I did get the overview of how the coast is a good location for American Gothic, so that was good. But by lunchtime, I was done.

But see, now I'm looking forward to getting to work tomorrow morning. So here's to the morning and the sweet, sweet coffee that comes with it.

Pandora

A while ago a friend of mine told me about this music website called Pandora. If you haven't seen it yet, and you like music, you should check it out. It's free, and it plays music that you like.

All you do is type in a song or artist that you really like and the site searches through something called the "Genome Music Project" to play other songs by other artists that are similar to the one you picked. All the songs are linked by certain musical aspects (and the site tells you what they are), but there's enough variation that you won't get bored. It is probably the single best way to find out about music you didn't know about but would probably like.

As the song plays, you can easily get information about the group, the song, or the album the song comes from, and it gives you links to iTunes and Amazon so you can buy it if you want.

You can set up many different "stations," so you can always have different things to listen to. Right now I'm listening to a "Jurassic 5" station -- right now it's playing Blackalicious, and the last song was by the Beastie Boys. I also have a "Flogging Molly" station for Irish-punk/rock music, and (my current favorite) a "The Clash" station for awesome 70s-80s punk and post-punk.

If you go to this site, you really may never listen to anything else on your computer again.

Biking

Biking is hard. Very hard. You wouldn't think so--well, maybe you would. I didn't. I figured I knew how to ride a bike and that was all I needed. I'd be able to ride my old rusted mountain bike, whose gears don't all work and whose tires don't spin easily, for 18 miles and then get off an run. Wrong.

Luckily a friend of mine loaned me a road bike. I rode it out to Taylor today (12 miles round-trip) for the first time. I almost puked twice.

Starting to re-think a June 14th triathlon...

Swimming

I love swimming. More to the point, I love water. Even more to the point, I love the feeling that you get after you've been swimming in water. It's the most wonderful combination of tired, relaxed, and just all-over loose. It's as if all your joints work more smoothly, like the water itself has infused your body and replaced your bones. I get the same feeling after swimming a mile in the pool that I used to get after surfing for 2 hours, and maybe that's why I like it so much. And it's a good thing I like this feeling, because swimming laps is almost the epitome of boring exercise--just a short bit behind running on the treadmill and riding a stationary bike (or doing the elliptical machine, for that matter). Since you don't get this wonderful wet-spaghetti feeling after those machines, the only thing that makes them even bearable is that you can watch TV or listen to music while you do it. I don't use my iPod when running outside anymore, but I don't think I could bear using a gym machine with no music or tv sound. If I'm going to be stuck exercising inside, I better have something to distract me.

But I'm getting off track--this post was supposed to be about the glorious post-swim feel. But I guess I already said it was good. Well, it is.

Killer Kudzu

This past Friday, a couple of friends and I ran in a 5k in Holly Springs: the Killer Kudzu 5k. It was the first one I have ever done and I thought it would be a pretty good experience to have if I want to do this Triathlon in June. It was a lot of fun--Holly Springs is a little Mississippi town, and the course took us through some nice areas of town. At one point I ran by this well-dressed 40- or 50-something woman sitting on the steps at the front of her yard drinking a glass of wine as we ran by. For some reason I liked that; it was nice to know that while I was running in this race there were people having a nice, relaxing time. Though the next 15 minutes or so (by that point) would suck for me and probably go by very slowly, I'd likely be finished by the time the woman needed a refill. Strange thing to think about while you're running, but I did.

There were two things that really sucked, though. At some point on the course we had to run around a cone and come back down the hill we just ran up. At the bottom of this hill, there was a woman giving out water and also (supposedly) marking the turn-off where the course ran through a cemetery (which was cool, though there was a really steep hill in that cemetery). For some reason, this woman wasn't telling people they needed to turn, and as I ran by her and got some water I kept on going past the turn for a good 50 yards or so. I finally realized it when I got BACK to the 2 mile marker. Man was I pissed. There were probably 8 people behind me (I was leading my pack!) who did the same thing, and they probably weren't happy either. When we turned, all those people were now in front of me, which was also a kick in the pants. I ended up passing most of them again before the finish, but that's the other thing.

At the end of this race you were supposed to run to the end of this column of cones where a woman would give you a card with a number on it. This number matched a number assigned to your time--I'm guessing it was your place. Well, since this was my first race and they didn't tell us we were supposed to do this, I didn't make it to the woman fast enough (she was standing a good 10 yards past the finish line--at that point, I wasn't thinking about needing to go any farther) and some other guy grabbed my card. The woman got all flustered and wouldn't get it back from the guy, so my time time got all screwed up. So I'm not sure if the race organizers will get me down or what--some guy who seemed to be in charge gave me another card and told me he'd take care of it.

So anyway, with the missing the turn crap, I ran my first 5k in 22:46 (I think that was the time I saw when I ran past the line. I know it was under 23 minutes), which I think it respectable for a first race. Hopefully they'll get it worked out and figure out my "official" time.

Despite the screw ups I really had fun, and am looking forward to doing another one. And the best part is, if I actually run the course as it's supposed to be run, I should have no problem beating this time!