Ishmael

Poking around in my library, putting a few things away, I ended up spending the entire day on a tutorial of loneliness. Pulled out my friend Diana George's excellent book of essays "The Lonely Other" (I'm a character in a couple of them) and then on to some pages sent to me of the Eyal Peretz book "Literature, Disaster, and the Enigma of Power: A Reading of Moby Dick", a book I must get on inner library loan. Which of course meant getting out Olson's "Call Me Ishmael" and then the parent book, wishing I had the Barry Moser illustrations. Thunder storms moving through and I lost power several times, dark enough once that I had to read with the head-lamp McCord sent. Peretz opens right into the ambiguity of the opening line, if we are to call you Ishmael, who are you really? and makes the argument that Ishmael is actually Pip. Olson discovered, among many other things, that the second draft of "Moby Dick" came after Melville read "King Lear", so, of course I had to reread that treatise on the lonely family. Very muggy between showers, I walk outside in the cool rain, then steam when I come back in the house. Too hot to eat anything other than raw vegetables, cheese and crackers. I need to extend the sauce and concoct a rub tomorrow, for the ribs on Wednesday. Started an interesting extension for the sauce tonight, a sweet onion, run through the blender, reduced in a base of enchilada sauce, with cumin, and a bottle of porter. I'll add some of the drippings from cooking the ribs. Start building a rub. So many dried chili powders at my disposal right now, garlic salt, onion powder, cumin, fresh ground mixed peppercorns, a touch of maple sugar. The ribs will be great, I do them really well, just another thing I learned; but the sauce is actually peaking right now, at that point where a single taste makes you remember a childhood you never had. I was never lonely, even as a child, as long as I could have my books. The world we create, later in life, is a shadow of what we first felt. I sense this acutely, for reasons I don't understand. I'm as close to normal as anyone of us would ever encounter. In that position, what would you say? Welcome to the club.