Herman Melville, p.1, Faith and Dying with a Smile

"Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope."

In everything that Melville writes there is a heavy feeling of death, of shadow, and darkness, but he always makes sure that the dark tunnels have some kind of light. Moby Dick is a dark novel, but there is a lot of humor in it as well. Few have read this book, and some would say that is a tragedy. I say, sucks to be them. And if you have read it and do not love it, then there is no hope for you. Stop reading. I'm only sort of joking, at the least you should feel badly about yourself.

Death being a major theme of Moby Dick it is easy to see why people are uncomfortable with the book, but as I read it death became to me what it was for those sailors on The Pequod that worked a job where death was always with them. Always a possibility, and a quick one that left no body. The ocean as a grave is more final then dirt, and in their case often more sudden. That is life, no matter who you are death could be any number of unfortunate random occurrences. Or, is there more to life than chaos, but some kind of order, fate, destiny, to everything?

"Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being"

It is almost cliche to say, but death is no end it seems. That depends, I suppose, on what you believe, but even believing death is not an end does not make it less sad or less frightening to most.

Shakespeare, p.1, All the world's a stage, or Emotion is of the Heart, Mind, and Soul

"All the world's a stage,/and the men and women merely players"

Does this mean that we are all merely playing at life? Is Shakespeare saying that we aren't really living, but acting out emotions?

Maybe only some people do this. It seems that some react to life based on emotion. Avoiding unpleasant things because it makes them feel bad, or pursuing pleasure for the sake of feeling good. For instance, a guy not asking a girl out because he is afraid of rejection, or having sex as often as possible for the pleasure. Is that really living through emotion though?

In the case of a guy not asking a girl out it is clear that he is forsaking something possibly great for the feeling of comfort and stability. Instead of pursuing something, he is doing nothing. Is that living based on emotion?

Someone who has sex for pleasure is pursuing a pleasurable feeling, but not the possibly greater feeling of being truly close to someone. So, emotion is separate from sensory pleasure.

Emotion comes from emovere, which is Latin for out (ex) move (movere). Emotion is outward movement, but from where?

Is emotion more than a mental and physical process then? It can, of course, be tracked and measured in the brain, but that only answers how emotion exists. Not why. Is emotion more than just feeling good, or feeling sad, or feeling angry, or feeling at all? Maybe emotion goes beyond even the mind, and comes also from the soul.

So, does emotion come from God?

Henry Miller, p.1, Passion for Living Comes Not From Me

"I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive"

And it seems that he was the happiest man alive, which I found to be a shock because as Anais Nin said, "in (Henry) alone I have found the same swelling enthusiasm, the same quick rising of blood, the fullness. Before, I almost used to think something was wrong. Everybody else seemed to have the brakes on". He writes always about being a writer, and he savors everything about life. The dirty, grimy, awful things are to him diamonds.

There are passages where his passion becomes so clear it can be felt, and this passion is directed toward living. He doesn't live life to the fullest as a choice, but rather he was born "so damned well off" that it is the way he is. I feel so connected to him, because this is the way I have always felt. No matter what, I've been soaked through with joy almost as if I couldn't feel anything else. Henry Miller says, "I could afford to be good, kind, generous, loyal, and so forth, since I was free of envy". It wasn't that he was so terribly good, but he was so well off that the only sensible thing was to be good. The only interesting thing was to do good.

"I wanted a metamorphosis, a change to fish, to leviathan, to destroyer. I wanted the earth to open up, to swallow everything in one engulfing yawn. I wanted to see the city buried fathoms deep in the bosom of the sea. I wanted to sit in a cave and read by candlelight. I wanted that eye extinguished so that I might have a chance to know my own body, my own desires. I wanted to be alone for a thousand years in order to reflect on what I had seen and heard-and in order to forget. I wanted something of the earth which was not of man's doing, something absolutely divorced from the human of which I was surfeited. I wanted something purely terrestrial and absolutely divested of the idea. I wanted to feel the blood running back into my veins, even at the cost of annihilation. I wanted to shake the stone and light out of my system. I wanted the dark fecundity of nature, the deep well of the womb, silence, or else the lapping of the black waters of death. I wanted to be that night which the remorseless eye illuminated, a night diapered with stars and trailing comets. To be of night so frighteningly silent, so utterly incomprehensible and eloquent at the same time. Never more to speak or to listen or to think. To be englobed and encompassed and to encompass and to englobe at the same time. No more pity, no more tenderness. To be human only terrestrially, like a plant or a worm or a brook. To be decomposed, divested of light and stone, variable as the molecule, durable as the atom, heartless as the earth itself."
Tropic of Capricorn