Double Vision

I garden this morning along a Pella country road. I prune branches from the Cotoneaster, then pot one of its twigs that has sprouted roots where it touched soil. I uproot pigweed, dandelions, and miscellaneous grasses, sometimes wedging the digger beneath them to push roots from below as I pull stems above. Sometimes I simply pull the stems and hope.

During the same three hours, I seek cheap Nantucket lodging. The inn full, I consent to bed down with a cannibal named QueeQueg. Soon friends, we become whalers aboard Pequot, commanded by Captain Ahab. Call me Ishmael.

At age sixty-four, it is my first time as Ishmael. Though I majored in English and took American literature, I have never made it more than a few pages into Moby Dick before abandoning ship.

And now, thanks to Marilynne Robinson and a travel confession, I am listening to an online recording of Herman Melville’s classic.

Robinson, a John Calvin scholar and fan, said last week at the Festival of Faith and Writing, that she had started reading him to understand the theological background of Moby Dick. She advised us, “Read John Calvin. Read him twice.”

As we departed Michigan, we listened to a recording of Robinson’s 1980 novel, Houskeeping. During a break, I confessed to my car mate Hannah, the shameful Melville gap in my literary repertoire.

“I’ve tried, but I’ve never gotten beyond page three.”

Shamefaced, she—whose English major has far fewer miles than mine--confessed the same failing.

I added that, worse still, it had been assigned reading in American literature class, and I must have resorted to Cliff’s Notes. Then we returned to Housekeeping.

Although Robinson’s prose is more modern than Melville’s nineteenth century style, her books are nevertheless, for me a dense, rich fare.  On the long drive home, a slow-paced listen to a professional reader proved a good match.

I wondered as we crossed the Iowa border if long, slow listen might work for Melville, too.

I googled “Moby Dick audio,” stumbled across the Librivox Web site, and for two consecutive mornings I have inhabited two worlds—surprised by delight.

I stereotyped this novel as dark and dismal. Darkness may yet come, but in the opening chapters Ishmael, speaking aloud among the flowers, is a wry and witty Presbyterian. So the 1851 Nantucket seaside cohabits with my Iowa beds.

Last night I emailed the good news to Hannah. She, thinking of her fulltime employment and my retired status, asked, “And how many hours will the recording last?”

These days I live by a kairos, not chronos time. I told her, “I don’t know. I'm just taking it chapter by chapter.”

She lamented, “Your progress makes me feel even worse.”

I consoled. “You have another four decades plus a year of retirement before I will allow you any guilt.”

As chapter 20 ends today, and I throw a third bin of weeds atop the refuse pile, I remember Hannah’s question, uncase my smartphone, and look ahead.

Still 115 chapters left.

I do the math.  I have 11.5 three-hour mornings in the garden to inhabit two worlds. I’ll finish just in time for the annual perennial garage sale that supports my gardening habit.

And after that?

Robinson’s words re-echo: “Read John Calvin. Read him twice.”

I tell her I’m sure there is no audio recording of The Institutes.

And, if there is, even in this second childhood in which I’m wondering what I shall become as I grow old, I’m sure Calvin’s dense prose—which offers no imaginary whaling trip and no Nantucket—is beyond my reach.

This gap shall remain.

And I fear that all the way to the next world’s border, daughter of Eve that I am, I shall seek strange comfort in the ancient security blanket of guilt.