Connections Enmesh

Life and art and death and ceremony – over the last three weeks, separate threads have woven about me a web of connections, a net not unlike that in which Moby Dick ensnared Fedallah, the shaman. Moby Dick?! Yes, Moby Dick.

The G.A.N?

All began when I read a NYT review of Albert and The Whale in which Philip Hoare explores fabulous animals in renaissance art, the genius of Durer, the mystery of the whale. Hoare, a British polymath, follows rabbit trails into art history, German literature, cetology (look it up) and more, but merges them back again and again into his mainline of thought.  Thoroughly engaged, I next ordered up from the library his earlier book, The Whale – all one would want to learn about whaling. The skeleton of that book is Moby Dick, so that led to diving again into 600 pages of Melville.

This all at a time when daughter, Amy, and favorite son-in-law, Jeff Stoner were laying plans for their first salt-water foray into our Salish Sea’s San Juan Islands. Amy’s desire was to see southern resident killer whales. They twice encountered a pod of orcas, a good omen. Their visit culminated in a wonderful birthday dinner prepared by them and shipmates/dear Mpls friends, Colleen and Jordan, who happen to be trained chef and restauranteur.

Two Fridays ago, I finished Moby Dick (my third reading, the last some 35 or so years ago) and prodded by Hoare to look more deeply, worked at doing so. The next morning (connection?) the New York Review of Books reviewed an exhaustive biography of Melville, adding to my new-found esteem for this witty, informative, sensual, intriguing morality tale of life and death, good and evil.  Like most great works of art, Melville broke conventions and conceived a new form of the American novel. Last Thursday, in conversation with a young fellow-Hamilton Chi Psi, he brought up founder Philip Spencer, the inspiration for Melville’s Billy Budd. Connections.

Yang taking shape

Last Sunday, following a stint in the stone yard where I’m nearing completion of Yang of The Yin and Yang of Yearning, Ann and I attended another’s birthday party, a celebration of the 90^th of novelist Mary Morgan, our dear friend.  She was widowed two years ago, but carries on – spry, vibrant, witty and with it.  One-by-one, she introduced 40 guests from around the world, relating to us how and why each was important to her. She’s a model (though no longer writing; try The Sound of Her Name – a good read; St. Martin’s Press, ’05.)  

A tale of the long reach of war

Then, last Thursday, came the ultimate ceremony: the funeral mass and internment of friend and fellow Olympic Clubman, 77-year old Dennis Ortblad who died of COVID despite being fully vax’d, alone in an induced coma, on a ventilator, in a Moscow hospital ten time zones and 5,000 miles from loving Mari and family and friends. That austere Catholic message: he’s gone; you will see him again in Heaven.

We sobered clubmen met after the internment; a speaker explored Biocentrism, the theory that there is neither life nor death nor a single, separate existence, but a continuous flow of perceived time and space and energy, of perceptual co-existences in multi-verses. Mysteries . . .

. . . Dennis’ coffin laid in Mt. Pleasant Cemetery

. . . Ishmael in beloved Queequeg’s coffin, floating on the South Pacific

. . . Fletch in his web of connections, immersed in his Sea of Rumination.

Dennis Ortblad, Citizen Diplomat