John Tooke

American Fiction

Blog 1

It is about midday, and I am poised on a cement ledge that separates Riverside from the St. John’s River. I come to this particular spot often to relax on sunny days; losing myself in the soft rhythm of small, tea-colored waves. In the distance, the geometry of downtown is a distorted reflection in the dark mass and the high sun scatters across the moving surface. Sounds seem distant and muffled, as if absorbed in the tide. On occasion, a fish appears airborne and I can see its blank eyes before it slaps back under.  I reflect on my experience with the river which, as a Jacksonville native, I have come to know well.

         As a child, I would venture out in the same river with my Grandfather to fish.  In the summer, he would go out nearly everyday; leaving right before sunset and returning in the evening.  Fishing was never my thing, but I’d entertain him, from time to time, by coming along.  The boat ride out to the “spots” was always my favorite part of these day trips.  My eyes would water in the wind and the spray from the river would coat my face.  Some days we would catch many fish and others we would return nearly empty-handed, but that was not the point.  To be out on the river, away from the hustle of life; where school and duties where put in the back of the mind and worries could wait until docking was, as I came to recognize, a strong attraction to the sport.  I didn’t have to think about cleaning my room or Johnny at school making fun of my shoes.  I was separated.  I set aside my life on sturdy ground for the uncertainty of the water.

            “Is that the appeal?” I ask myself fifteen years later, “are we all so unhappy with our lives that we need constant escape?”  Melville seemed to touch on this idea early on in Moby Dick.  He describes the masses flocking to the shoreline, drawn by some unknown force, as if inspired by, not want, but need.  Ishmael is no exception, who finds himself “going to sea” when he begins “to grow hazy about the eyes” (1).  Is it the sense of adventure in leaving the predictability of ground, and a perhaps a mundane life, that attracts a man to the water, or is it the urge to put things in perspective in something large and indifferent?  I believe that it could be both.  Day to day life can sometimes become a changeless ritual that, though things become quite hectic, puts us in a state of familiar comfort.  Going out on a boat, or even to the water’s edge takes us away from what is normal and forces us to acknowledge the insignificance of the problems and troubles that tend to grind away at our lives.

            So, to answer my own question, I do not think that the case that we need to escape unhappiness is the draw to the shoreline, but the comfort in the idea that the rat race can be left on shore, even if only for a while, while we focus on the importance of something larger than ourselves.  Sitting now, looking over the river, I can see what I think Ishmael saw.  An escape? yes but not from unhappiness, necessarily, but from the things on shore that work to distract us from basic human vitality.

   1.  Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick. New York: Bantam, 1981. 593. Print.