"Do you have a flag?"

Yeah. So that didn't happen, did it? I have no excuse, really. I've been a bit off, lately, when it comes to the kind of reflective reading/thinking I wanted to do. I kept the reading up ... I just wasn't connecting with it. Been feeling a little scattered and distracted.

But now, one week into summer break, the mental gears that seemed to have ground to a halt appear to be budging. (Not fast enough for my liking, given my ponderous to-do list, but still ... a win's a win.) Let's see if I can keep this up and running (at least a little) during my next few trips (Tennessee, then Wisconsin, then ... Grand Canyon! Wooo!)

[Sidenote: The audiobook I've got for the highway portion of my Grand Canyon/Vegas adventure is Stephen King's Desperation, in which folks driving through a desert landscape are terrorized by, I think, the devil? In sheriff form? Says my friend leavesofglass: "I never really understood why people found Stephen King scary until I read the first chapter of that book." I'm a little terrified. Stephen King may be a far cry from Herman Melville, but road trip audiobooks serve a very specific function: to make the time pass quickly. Ten hours feel like five when you're being chased by zombies -- which is why World War Z is the best road trip book ever.]

Where was I? Oh right ... whales. I may say more about this later, but the past ten chapters or so have been just seething with carnage. So many whales chased and obliterated. All described in language ranging from ruthless to piteous. And then I reached chapter 89, "Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish" (my second favorite title, right after "The Town Ho's Story").

I knew that only a tiny sliver of the novel had to do with encountering the white whale himself. But I assumed that the bulk of the book would then contain, you know, character development and stuff. Which it does, of course, but I had expected to be a witness to Ahab's growing obsession and descent into madness, Ishmael's increasing uneasiness with his captain's mania, and all that business. But the fact is, the peg-legged sea captain is referred to as "crazy Ahab" in the very first chapter that introduces him, so there is no "dawning realization" of this.

What's the rest of the book filled with? Detailed descriptions of types of rope. Explaining the function of each piece of equipment on the ship. Who eats with whom and in what order. How to take apart a whale. The difference in appearance between the forehead of a sperm whale, and the forehead of a right whale. And, in chapter 89, laws.

Not so much written laws, as unwritten rules by which whalemen, in competing for their prey, can agree upon who gets what. After all, killing a whale is a dangerous, hours-long, exhausting business. And if the almost-killed whale breaks free, only to be taken, with comparative ease, by a ship that just happens upon the weakened creature ... well, you can imagine the peavishness that could ensue. So. Rules. But only two of them:

I. A Fast-Fish belongs to the party fast to it.
II. A Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it.

Of course, there is a lot of wiggle-room, here, in definitions. [I at first wondered if this was where the phrase "playing fast and loose" came from. I was wrong.] For example, one way for a whale to be "fast to" one ship, is for said ship to have ecumbered the whale with a "drugg" attached to a "waif" ... that is, if the whalemen are too busy with one whale to give chase to another convenient prey, they may pierce the second whale with a type of harpoon that both slows the whale (by way of attached wooden blocks, if I understand correctly) and marks it -- the "waif" bears the symbol of that boat.

After explaining this, Ishmael then goes on to entertain himself in his usual way -- that is, by turning this element of whaling into A Metaphor for Life:

"... these two laws touching Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish, I say, will, on reflection, be found the fundamentals of all human jurisprudence ... Is it not a saying in every one's mouth, Possession is half of the law: that is, regardless of how the thing came into possession?"

So many things in this way, he says, are Fast-Fish. Mexico is a Fast-Fish to the United States. India is a Fast-Fish to England. All the money of the populace is a Fast-Fish to the Archbishop.

Oh, Ishmael. Thank you for the excuse to link to one of my favorite Eddie Izzard bits.

Update: Hey, I just realized this is my twentieth post. Yay, little blog!