Out of season

At the beginning of Moby Dick, Ishmael, the narrator, speaks of the discontented feelings he has from time to time that drive him to go to sea as a sailor:

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.

That passage has been running through my head a lot recently, especially Melville’s wonderfully apt phrase about the “damp, drizzly November in my soul,” because the almost nonstop rain and unseasonable coolness we’ve had over the last month has made it seem like the damp, drizzly June of my soul. But today the weather finally lifted, and summer has arrived.

- end of initial entry -

Paul K. writes:

This has seemed like an odd June to me as well. I heat my living area with a woodstove, and this is the first year I can remember building a few fires in June to take the chill and dampness out of the air.

I try not to be one of those people who seems surprised every year that winter lasts through March, as it’s SUPPOSED to, but this past month’s weather has struck me as unusual.

Larry G. writes:

It sounds like Ishmael had clinical depression or a bipolar condition. Fortunately, it wasn’t treatable at the time, and we got Moby Dick.

Our immediate situation is due to the solar minimum. It’s lasted at least nine months longer than predicted. The sun has cooled a bit, the solar wind has weakened, and increased penetration of cosmic rays from outside the solar system may be increasing cloudiness on earth and other planets, resulting in cooling. Read more here: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/48607432.html . Who knows? Scientists know much less than the public thinks they do.

Laura W. (Laura Wood of The Thinking Housewife) writes:

I’m disappointed you would so readily succumb to a liberal analysis of spring.

LA replies:

How is it liberal?

Laura replies:

I’m just teasing. You’re right. It has been cooler and wetter. On the other hand, I’ve never known a spring when people didn’t complain about the dreariness and give in to feelings of victimization. Conservatives should be above all that. The nation depends on our fortitude. :-)

LA replies:

It has objectively been an unprecedented June, with day after day, week after week, of rainy weather and coolness. I personally have not been suffering from Ishmael-like hypos or depression over the weather. I like rainy weather, and I despise the moronic cult in our culture, relentlessly promoted and pounded into people’s heads by media weathermen, that sunny and hot equals happiness, and everything else equals life is no good. The whole point of writing the entry was to get to the joke about “the damp drizzly June of my soul.” But maybe the humor of it didn’t come across.

However, it was nice yesterday to experience some actual pleasant June weather after a whole month without. Since I had been joking all month about the damp drizzly June of my soul, I thought it would be ok (i.e., not liberal) to bring that out once the drizzliness had passed.

Laura replies:

You write:

“I personally have not been suffering from Ishmael-like hypos or depression over the weather. I like rainy weather, and I despise the moronic cult in our culture, relentlessly promoted and pounded into people’s heads by media weathermen, that sunny and hot equals happiness, and everything else equals life is no good.”

This is a relief. I did kind of think you were serious. The image of you, the impregnable fortress, brought low by a few rain drops—well, it was a bit of a shock.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 25, 2009 09:46 PM | Send