Time

It is time to dust off this blog.  The grieving has gone on long enough.   Time has gone so fast.  It is November, so it is overcast.  Here is the beginning of Moby Dick. I share it with students to help them know some complex sentences, some parallel structure.  Now is the time that students feel overwhelmed and gloomy.  I hope they might feel connected to others.  For the first time, however, I felt uneasy about the final line.  My "sea," Lake Michigan, feels a long way off, so my substitute is pen and paper, and I hope that along with paint, brushes, crayons, keyboarding, strumming...it is others' substitute as well.

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.  This is my substitute for pistol and ball.

                                                      Ishmael, Moby Dick by Herman Melville

                                                          a nest made out of this and that