Moby Dick, Chapter 27: Knights and Squires

"Third among the harpooners was Daggoo, a gigantic, coal-black negro-savage, with a lion-like tread--an Ahasuerus to behold. Suspended from his ears were two golden hoops, so large that the sailors called them ring-bolts, and would talk of securing the top-sail halyards to them. In his youth Daggoo had voluntarily shipped on board of a whaler, lying in a lonely bay on his native coast. And never having been anywhere in the world but in Africa, Nantucket, and the pagan harbors most frequented by whalemen; and having now led for many years the bold life of the fishery in the ships of owners uncommonly heedful of what manner of men they shipped; Daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues, and erect as a giraffe, moved about the decks in all the pomp of six feet five in his socks. There was a corporeal humility in looking up at him; and a white man standing before him seemed a white flag come to beg truce of a fortress. Curious to tell, this imperial negro, Ahasuerus Daggoo, was the Squire of little Flask, who looked like a chess-man beside him. As for the residue of the Pequod's company, be it said, that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men before the mast employed in the American whale fishery, are Americans born, though pretty nearly all the officers are. Herein it is the same with the American whale fishery as with the American army and military and merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed in the construction of the American Canals and Railroads. The same, I say, because in all cases the native American liberally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles." (pp. 107-108)

A beautiful life

I'm at Saint Louis Central Library, which is on Olive Street downtown. I am seated in one of the many book rooms holding various reference books with a nofiction stack spreading out to my left along the wall and in uniforms stacks at the back of the room. I am the back left or North East table with my back to the stacks, according to my orientation to the room. I am facing a central walk way between the 4 existing tables, each with 4 seats, a central lighting bar, and tabletop electrical outlets. To my right, at the North West table is a man with a stocking cap, a long dark beard, a worn out sweater, and a jacket hanging from his chair. The man is quietly engrossed in a book. It is early September. It is 87 degrees outside. This man is homeless.

He spends his days in this library I can surmise. He carries his possessions with him I suppose. And he's engrossed in an age-old practice, reading. He's not playing with a phone or reading magazines. He's engrossed in a book. At fleeting moments throughout his day as he reads I could imagine that he forgets that he may be hungry, he may have not showered in days, his total possessions are on his back or on the back of his chair, and he's swept away by the narrative of his book to someplace other than this. This man is unburdened by the risks of finance. This man is unburdened by house payments. The man has no address at which to receive bills or junk mail. At this moment, in this majestic building, this man lives a beautiful life.

American Mythos

This is the wedding portrait of Ty Ziegel and Renee Kline. The picture was taken in Cincinnati by photographer Nina Berman while she was on assignment for People magazine. Berman titled the photo "Marine Wedding."

Ty is a Marine. Here, he's about to get married. While we normally find great joy in marriage or getting married, here, no one is smiling.

Ty cannot smile due to the extent of the injuries he received while serving as a Marine in Iraq. He has scar tissue covering over 90% of his head and face. Renee has no facial injuries, and Renee is not smiling either. That's likely due to the extent of Ty's injuries in light of her engagement to him prior to him leaving for war. And now Renee is looking forward to a life-long commitment to a short sale. She promised her hand in marriage to her high school sweetheart prior to his tour of duty, and now she is about to consummate that love on her wedding night to a scarred and drugged war alien. Ty's face is wrapped in pale scar tissue; holes serve for his nose and ears; and his mind, shattered by a suicide attack, is encased in a plastic dome. War has transformed another patriotic young man into an existential Other.

When Nina Berman took their picture, Ty had yet to recover his health. And Renee had yet to fathom what a life-long commitment to an injured war veteran means. And like a crying child handed an ice cream, their community, their friends. the military, the press, the American war zeitgeist scooted Ty and Renee before the altar to consummate not a marriage, per se, but a return to normalcy for the two and their community and a symbol for America's resolve in the face of war. But the only face of war is his. It reflects the seriousness of marriage commitments, the seriousness of war, the seriousness of an IED explosion, the seriousness of military technology and battlefield triage medicine. The sheer gravity of all the institutions brought to bear on this moment pulls Renee's face and Ty's body into a forlorn monument to burden.

Medicine learns a lot from war by treating the wounded and studying the echoes of war, living on in the twisted visages and shattered mental states of its most wounded survivors. Most of what medicine knows about orthotics, prosthetics, plastic surgery, and neurology comes from the profusion of war-specific injuries suffered on the battlefield. One could think of the advances in these fields as the unholy alliance of scientific method with national military recruitment, enrolling the brave and the few to stand in the way of projectiles, bombs, shrapnel, and fire as its subjects in order that it can determine the efficacy of its weapons, its tactics, and its medicine. We have to thank Ty for teaching medicine a lot about treatment: treatment of severe burns, treatment of concussions, treatment of brain swelling, treatment of skull removal, and treatment of affect, the affect of the soldier in the aftermath of a most traumatic experience. There, trapped in his overturned patrol vehicle, burning alive, Ty survived a hell to then come home decorated, honored, and soon to be married to his high school sweetheart, Renee. And there he had to cope with being a grotesque, Humpty Dumpty monument of war's sheer horror and the medical attempts to embalm him alive and memorialize him as a hero. 

This is the American flag. It first emerged from the skilled hands of Betsy Ross in 1776. The flag is a symbol representing, in this case, a new nation. The thirteen stripes represent the thirteen original colonies who revolted against British colonial rule and founded a new nation. The red represents the blood of sacrifices by those original revolutionists. The white represents the bandages wrapped around them in order that they may live to see freedom. The stars on a blue background symbolize a new constellation. This would become a confederation and subsequently a republic, consisting of fifty states, hence the fifty stars. I learned most of what I know about the flag through drill in my Taekwondo class, which Marines had brought back to the United States after the Korean War.

This flag is a symbol, a collection of shapes and colors, the heraldry of which is arcane to some but the feeling of which is palpable to most. Flags have consequence. People fight and die for them. The blood symbolized by the red stripes is what gives the flag impetus, ultimate meaning, power. The bandages are what provide citizens with living exemplars, the war wounded and veterans. These tattered trophies of freedom represent the ultimate sacrifice. To have your legs blown off or your face twisted like a melted plastic bottle by the weapons of war and then to live if not to tell but at least to represent a nation's conviction to its sovereignty then you understand just how utterly consequential that flag is. The veterans were the heroes when you were a child. And so, in aspiration, you joined the effort and became one yourself. The fact is, the sacrifices that make the flag meaningful historically become the impetus for future generations to sacrifice so that this flag can be consequential to future generations of recruits. Ty was well aware of this and inspired by this, and so he joined the war effort. But Ty wasn't fighting for our freedoms really. He was fighting for his understanding of them. Ty was fighting for his flag and all that it meant to him in that particular way that patriotism sets up in small towns like his: "Dad and uncle Joe fought in the war. They fought for my right to be here and live the way I do. And I will do the same." This provincial view of freedom is the key to its authenticity for most in the US. It is draped upon cherished objects, people, and places close to home.

Nina Berman's award-winning photo is all that remains of Ty and Renee's wedding. Their wedding lasted from 2006 to 2008. Ty, then single, permanently so; Ty, then disabled, permanently so, decided to go on living his normal life, propped up on a platoon of pills, some of which he called 'don't kill your wife pills.' Ty had a practical view on objects that related to consequences. When Ty viewed the flag, he knew the consequence; he must sacrifice for it. This flag was a totem for that thing underneath the symbols we use to represent the nation. In the sequence of human actions the flag leads others to march into the maws of unfathomable hell, proudly, naively for the sake of an even more ambiguous concept: freedom.

At the heart of the American mythos are a set of symbols, some visual, some spoken, which are supported by the ideological puppetry of soldiering off to war, sacrificing for war, supporting the cause, and siding with leaders. Behind war is a fundamental desire, the desire to live or to survive. Behind war is a fundamental desire, the desire to kill or to prey. Pairing the two makes warfare an engine of sacrifice set in a theater of war. Upon this sacrificial altar the nations laps up the blood of their citizen, adding flesh to their ideological skeleton. Meaning is created through their sacrifice. This dialectic between survival and state-sanctioned murder supports the nation and its ambiguous concepts. For many in the US a purpose of waging war is to 'protect,' protect what? our freedoms. Behind war is that dialectic, which is, primordial to symbolism itself, on/off, yes/no, good/bad, action/reaction stimulus/response, 1/0. Dialectics is an expression of our neurology. And dialectics is about finding boundaries, segments in a sequence, actions and reactions, differences that make the difference. The very basis of meaning is in the margins that define the relationships between things. War is about boundaries, their protection, their expansion. And nations march their citizens-cum-soldiers out to those margins like communal scapegoats, to die "for God and country," adding flesh to the vaunted rhetoric of nation-state ideology. Soldiers marched out to the margins carry the sacrificial stain of the scapegoat.They are sent to die; their suspension between life and death is a matter of warfare technology to enhance the probabilities of outlasting a conflict.

At its most fundamental, war is about probabilities: the probabilities of projectiles finding flesh, the probabilities of winning strategies and winning wars, the probabilities of living or dying. As for the architects of war, their lethal weaponry enhance the probability that if you're marched out to that margin your purpose is to follow kill orders until you finally succumb to your war injuries and die. The only probability in your favor is the architects' designs to make equipment that extends your life to war's end. And at war's end the soldier-as-scapegoat brings those margins home: war's gut-wrenching fear, its cries of pain, death, burning, dying, its suffering internally, mentally in a ward, in a home, or on the street ignored and forgotten between bouts of drug abuse, its fighting to speak again, walk again, live a normal life back in the bosom from which one sprung again.

Ty tried to return to his old life and its sense of normalcy. Ty died in December of 2013 from a fatal dose of alcohol and heroin. Ty left for war a starry eyed and patriotic soldier, much like many who sacrifice for their country. Ty returned a hero, a miracle of modern medicine, a cyborg of synthetic parts and grafts, sewn together into a symbol, much like those thirteen stripes and those fifty stars. Ty returned a new constellation. But Ty was no totem. Ty was a man. Ty is now dead and the flag waves goodbye.

Why I don't write screenplays: Exhibit 1

The man with only one wish

by Jason Lesko

12/31/2009

Summary:

A man is diagnosed with a terminal illness, possibly cancer, and sets about finding meaning in his life. He gets some of his life in order, pays off his debts, and does some of the things that he had always wanted to do. Since he spent the majority of his life in a successful professional career he failed to meet and marry a woman let alone have a child. This, he proposes is his last wish, the one wish he wants fulfilled before he leaves this world.

He begins enlisting his friends to help him, and while canvassing the area one suggest that he post a want ad in Craigslist. Desperate, he thinks this is a good idea. He meets a few potential women and one sticks out as the potential candidate. She’s friendly and obliging throughout. She appears genuine in her interest and intent. After all, she confided in him that she wants a baby more than anything else and has been looking for the right man to father her child. He thinks he has met the perfect mother for his child, so he prepares for the child’s future as they work at having a kid. Success.

The man hires a lawyer and gets his will in order. He entrusts the woman with his savings and with an antique watch that has been in the family for generations. He wants the woman to give his child the watch. She agrees and he prepares for his departure. His illness gets progressively worse and he passes on.

EXTERIOR: PAWN SHOP

A car pulls up. The woman and expectant mother exits the vehicle. She enters the shop.

A brief exchange occurs where the pawnshop clerk consults some manuals and appraises the value of the watch. He hands her cash, and she leaves the shop.

EXTERIOR: MEDICAL BUILDING

The woman’s car pulls up. She exits and greets a man in a suit, her lawyer. The brief exchange between the two indicate that he has found a loophole in the will. If a doctor can find medical grounds on which to abort the fetus then, legally, she is granted the right to do so. This particular doctor is prepared to go through with the procedure. She hands her lawyer the cash, and he goes inside to broker a deal with the doctor.

INTERIOR OF DOCTOR'S OFFICE

The doctor is visibly intoxicated and quiet rough for his age. He is willing to perform any number of operations given the right price. He agrees to perform the operation as well as forge the medical documents to deem the fetus ‘non-viable.’ 

INTERIOR: OPERATING ROOM

The scene is the operating room. The woman is in stirrups, prepped for her abortion. The doctor walks in and prepares for the procedure. The viewer is entreated to the sonogram view of the abortion as the doctor inserts his instruments into the woman to extract the fetus. Something occurs which causes the instruments to shut down. He goes for other instruments and has the woman help him push out the fetus that he has grabbed with forceps. After a few moments the extraction is successful. The doctor takes a look at what he has extracted and is horrified to see a fully formed and fighting small baby. The baby begins to cry.

The crying and struggling of the baby are, we find out a language, and so the crying and gesticulations of the fetus are given subtitles.

BABY
 “Stop it! I’m alive damn you!”

“Get it away from me. I want to live!”
“I want to live!”

The doctor cuts the child’s throat and blood slowly pours from the wound and its mouth. He turns to his assistant.

DOCTOR

“Speak of this to no one, EVER!”
 

In the distance a devil man peers in the window approvingly, laughing a menacing laugh.

EXTERIOR: HOUSE, DAYTIME

An auctioneer has set up and is preparing to convene an estate sale. People begin bidding on the man’s items.

CONCURRENT SCENE: SHOPPING

The woman, dressed elegantly, is shopping. Happy music (“Walking on Sunshine”) plays over a montage of the woman shopping while the estate sale of the man's items occurs. The woman tries on clothes. Buyers are active in bidding on items.

EXTERIOR: HOUSE, DAYTIME

The final scene is the exterior of a home. It is day. The woman’s car pulls up and she exits carrying with her several bags. The final shot is of woman’s car seat. A small pool of blood has formed where she sat. A disembodied cry of a child is heard.

Moby Dick, Chapter 16: Captain Bildad

"Like Captain Peleg, Captain Bildad was a well-to-do, retired whaleman. But unlike Captain Peleg--who cared not a rush for what are called serious things, and indeed deemed those self-same serious things the veriest of all trifles--Captain Bildad had not only been originally educated according to the strictest sect of Nantucket Quakerism, but all his subsequent ocean life, and the sight of many unclad, lovely island creatures, round the Horn--all that had not moved this native born Quaker one single jot, had not so much as altered one angle of his vest. Still, for all his immutableness, was there some lack of common consistency about worthy Captain Bildad. Though refusing, from conscientious scruples, to bear arms against land invaders, yet himself had illimitably invaded the Atlantic and Pacific; and though a sworn foe to human bloodshed, yet had he in his straight-bodied coat, spilled tuns upon tuns of leviathan gore. How now in the contemplative evening of his days, the pious Bildad reconciled these things in the reminiscence, I do not know; but it did not seem to concern him much, and very probably had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusion that a man's religion is one thing, and this practical world another. This world pays dividends. Rising from a little cabinboy in short clothes of the drabbest drab, to a harpooneer in a broad shad-bellied waistcoat; from that becoming a boat-header, chief-mate, and captain, and finally a ship-owner; Bildad as I hinted before, had concluded his adventurous career by wholly retiring from active life at the goodly age of sixty, and dedicating his remaining days to the quiet receiving of his well-earned income." (p. 76)

Moby Dick: Chapter 16: The Ship

"You may have seen many a quaint craft in your day, for aught I know;--square-toed luggers; mountainous Japanese junkets; butter-box galliots, and what not; but take my word for it, you never saw such a rare old craft as this rare old Pequod. She was a ship of the old schoool, rather small if anything; with an old fashioned claw-footed look about her. Long seasoned and weather-stained in the typhoons and calms of all four oceans, her old hull's complexion was darkened like a French grenadier's, who has alike fought in Egypt and Siberia. Her venerable bows looked beaded. Her masts--cut somewhere on the coasts of Japan, where her original ones were lost overboard in a gale--her masts stood stiffly up like the spines of the three old kings of Cologne. Her ancient decks were worn and wrinkled, like the pilgrim-worshipped flag-stone in Canterbury Cathedral where Beckett bled. But to all these her old antiquities, were added new and marvellous features, pertaining to the wild business that for more than half a century she had followed. Old Captain Peleg, many years her chief-mate, before he commanded another vessel of his own, and now a retired seaman, and one of the principal owners of the Pequod,--this old Peleg, during the terms of his chief-mateship, had built upon her original grotesqueness, and inlaid it, all over with a quaintness both of material and device, unmatched by anything except it be Thorkill-Hake's carved buckler or bedstead. She was apparelled like any barbaric Ethiopian emperor, his neck heavy with pendants of polished ivory. She was a thing of trophies. A cannibal craft, tricking herself forth in the chased bones of her enemies. All around, her unpannelled, open bulwarks were garnished like one continuous jaw, with the long sharp hempen thews and tendons to. Those ran not through base blocks of land wood, but deftly travelled over sheaves of sea-ivory. Scorning a turnstile wheel at her reverend helm, she sported there a tiller; and that tiller was in one mass, curiously carved from the long narrow lower jaw of her hereditary foe. The helmsman who steered by that tiller in a tempest, felt like the Tartar, when he holds back his fiery steed by clutching its jaw. A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that." (p. 72)

ball of hate

"His body was a collection of taut sinews wrapped around a ball of hate."