Starting to Read Moby Dick

Starting to Read Moby Dick

The first thing that happened was the way the kitchen countertop seemed to heave and pitch
when I turned away from it, and how the voices on the street started to belong to whalers
looking for a ship instead of high school students moving toward the bus stop. I felt the pounding
of waves against the walls, the presense of something large out there, fuming and seething,
just beyond my reach. In the first chapter, Ishmael speaks to us briefly of ancient Egypt,
a reminder that death is not the end—and I find myself considering how the book itself is flat
and rectangular, preserving words instead of bodies. The postscript to this thought is that all books
are tombs and coffins, urns full of ash, but the kind that save you at the end, that keep you afloat.