Island of the Manhattoes

BEFORE

*

There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs — commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme down-town is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.

Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall northward. What do you see? — Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster — tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here?

— Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

*

AFTER

So I read to myself
A chance of a lifetime to see new horizons
On the front page
A black and white picture of
Manhattan Skyline

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

I'm re-reading Melville's Moby-Dick (the hyphen in the title is consistently forgotten) on a long weekend, and it's even better than I remember. Every sentence is a toe-curling delight. Every chapter brings some new sense of recognition. Although the novel was written 150 years ago, it still communicates easily with me. Some recognitions of similarity are particularly sad, though like the last line in this passage.

But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way - he can better answer than any one else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:

Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States
"WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL"
"BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN"

150 years. Nothing much has changed.