Cannibal

Much is made of Moby Dick. 

       But I’ve read Moby Dick three times anyhow and I can really see how it went out of print before the author died. Once aboard Pequod, he lost the heat of the Try Pots.   I never got beyond dark Queequeg standing naked on that deck stripping ocean off himself and his impassive face seeming to say, “It’s a mutual, joint-stock world in all meridians. We cannibals have to help these Christians.”

      Don’t get me wrong. I’m Roman Catholic by baptism of fire, but Queequeg focused my faith to a white-hot dot. I had joined the U.S. Navy. Naval forms wanted to know my religion. For CINCPACFLT, I spelled it out  – “c-a-n-n-i-b-a-l”. Nobody ever asked me about it officially or unofficially – not during my enlisted years nor after I was commissioned. Not once.

      How could Queequeg, a cannibal, pacific-rim islander be the epitome of humanity plus on the right track toward eternity when crippled by no exposure to the advances of western thought? But he is. One moment, he is absorbing ridicule from a red-headed man with a Bible. Next instant, he is swimming the freezing north Atlantic, rescuing the same pale-face and acting as if it’s all perfectly natural.

       Because of a fictional character more real than some of the illusions with whom I have shaken hands, sure, I’m a Racist. I am, at the deepest core of me, biased toward anyone non-western  - either in appearance or in the accent of their ESL. I am inadequate to the description of my curiosity of their places of birth and conditions there. Usually only interacting with them briefly, I search their faces anxiously for traces of the heartbreak of being forced to abandon native cultural ties. I slave over the correct pronunciation of their names. It becomes vital to me that they succeed here.

      Still, I’m western American. By dint of this culture, my own ambition interferes.