dual personalities

Tag: Moby Dick

What’s playing at the Roxy?

by chuckofish

What have you been watching lately? Anything good? Me neither.

I did watch the movie RV (2006) directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and starring Robin Williams, Cheryle Hines (Mrs. RFK, Jr.), Jeff Daniels, and Kristin Chenoweth. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Sometimes you are just in the mood for such rated PG silliness. And there was a good moral to the story.

I also watched the classic John Huston version of Moby Dick (1956) with Gregory Peck, Richard Basehart and Leo Genn. It really is quite a good adaption of the huge and marvelous book, well worth watching.

Better yet, of course, to read the book, but do what you can.

Speak, thou vast and venerable head,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world’s foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor’s side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw’st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed — while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!

Also, yesterday was the 14th wedding anniversary of the boy and daughter #3. They have been a couple since 2009, and as you know, they were engaged at aged three while in preschool together.

They have been through a lot together and, God willing, they will have many more happy years together! L’chaim!

So watch an old movie, read an old book, celebrate a milestone. Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

I look deep down

by chuckofish

We all have our pensive moods.

And when we do, it’s a good thing to have our quote books at the ready…

“Oh, grassy glades! oh ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in ye,—though long parched by the dead drought of the earthly life,— in ye, men yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover; and for some few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life immortal on them. Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm. There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause:— through infancy’s unconscious spell, boyhood’s thoughtless faith, adolescence’ doubt (the common doom), then skepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood’s pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.”

And the same day, too, gazing far down from his boat’s side into that same golden sea, Starbuck lowly murmured:–“Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his young bride’s eye!–Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and thy kidnapping cannibal ways. Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.”

–Moby-Dick, Herman Melville

We can also go to YouTube and line up our favorite movie scenes. Recently I saw someone’s list of the five best speeches in film. You can imagine what was on it: Jack Nicholson In A Few Good Men, Mel Gibson in Braveheart, Russell Crowe in Gladiator and so on. Ho hum.

These are the five that came immediately to my mind:

Gregory Peck in Twelve O’Clock High

Olivia de Havilland in The Adventures of Robin Hood

John Wayne in The Searchers

Burl Ives in The Big Country…

Gene Hackman in Hoosiers

Watch them all–they’re short. They’re like quotes from Moby-Dick. They whet your appetite for the whole great thing. And they remind you why you are on this journey in the first place.

For the victory of battle standeth not in the multitude of an host; but strength cometh from heaven.

–1 Maccabees 3:19

And here’s one more, for good measure. Leslie Howard in The Petrified Forest:

Loomings

by chuckofish

We seem to roll our eyes a lot these days. At the grocery store, at the gas pump, and so on. We say, “Is there no balm in Gilead?” and we aren’t kidding.

When in doubt, we re-read the first paragraph of Moby Dick…

Haven’t we all felt like methodically knocking people’s hats off in the street? Well, it may be high time to get to sea, but that is out of the question for me. So I watched John Huston’s 1956 version of Moby Dick. It is a wonderful and quite faithful rendering of the great novel and I recommend it.

Starbuck to Stubb and Flask: “It is an evil voyage, I tell thee. If Ahab has his way, neither thee nor me, nor any member of this ship’s company will ever see home again.”

Stubb: “Aw, come on, Mr. Starbuck, you’re just plain gloomy. Moby Dick may be big, but he ain’t THAT big.”

Starbuck: “I do not fear Moby Dick – I fear the wrath of God.”

Even better, re-read the book!

Maybe, as we approach Herman Melville’s birthday on August 1, we should have another Moby Dick reading party…

or at least make some punch…

…food for thought.

P.S. Anne is back after a four week break. Thanks be to God.

And daughter #1 sent me a link to this fabric and it made my day. Clearly there is a market for this! How great is that?