Notes - Ahab and the human species in the soul / the Styx

Mid-morning. Up early. Breakfast and the Sunday St. Petersburg Times. Owen and Paul are out on the beach enjoying water, sand and sun. Kim and Carol are heading south with Jean and Linda to shop at the outlet mall near Crab Trap II where you, Paul and Owen will meet them for lunch around twelve-thirty to one. Lot of runners on the beach and on Gulf Blvd as there is a marathon this weekend.

         It is a beautiful morning. Gulf greenish-toned water, tide going out, pleasant waves. Very calm, calmer than the Great Lakes presently.

Paul & Owen

         I have forgotten how much patience it takes with a little one. He woke up cranky because yesterday was so filling and lack of nap. Raising little ones is for the young no doubt about it as far as I am concerned. I like it library quiet, at least some of the time, like now. Studying the horizon is a good way to gather my thoughts – well, attempt to. Alas, they are flying off like the pelicans – a leisure Sunday morning at the beach. It’s a mild day in May.

         You almost wrote it is a mild day in April as your mind was floating above the deck of the Pequod with Captain Ahab and Ishmael below, as they were shortly to confront the great white whale one last time. Soon, now, all goes down save Ishmael, more innocent than the others, who is saved by Queequeg’s coffin, to tell the tale.

         For me Melville’s Moby Dick is the greatest piece of American literature, focused on the basic human condition, ever written. I have both legs and have never been whaling but I feel more in tune with Ahab than any other character in literature. I don’t know why, but I always have whenever I look deeply within.

         In where, orndorff? Now that you know it could be mind, soul or heart, where is it that you feel this Ahab character most deeply in? – Amorella.

         Good question. Soul comes to mind first, second would be heart, but I think it is within my soul I have most empathy for Ahab’s character. The mind displays hope at its rawest.

         That would be the heart, boy. Hope at its rawest most basic, is the heart. – Amorella.

         I did not think that, but you are right, that makes more sense. Hope in the mind is measurable (at least in my mind).  I think the soul for Ahab because there is a sense of a pre-conditional experience or event. Not a sense of doom – I don’t feel Ahab felt doomed – it was meant to be – he and the great sperm whale were tied together. Our species is also spermanegg tied together.

         You have hit on it, my man. The key words here are “our species”. Post. – Amorella.

          Dusk on the Gulf. Pastels of a blue, red and green layered sky, a ceiling for wavelets of water stretching to the thinly marked horizon. And, what comes to your mind?

Dusk: 22 May 11

         How it must be looking out onto the great River Styx. Where oh where are the other Dead? How must it be for them, and why? Can we ever reach an accord for the raising of hearts and souls and minds? To cross the River, to return to Life, to explain how it is to be conscious and knowing and dead, to help the Living to an understanding, an understanding of necessity.

         Quiet time before bed. You have nothing more to say, and for a time, neither do I. Post. – Amorella.