You're No Different Than A Reed Flute

"Lost in the Symphony of Life"

by Andy Graham

There's a natural longing that all humans have for something. Something that we don't understand yet.. and we spend our whole lives trying to figure it out. We spend our time trying to figure out how to fill this void so that we can... so that we can.. can what? Well, truthfully we don't know what we'd do if we filled the void because no one ever has. There's never enough money to fill the void, never enough food, laughter, sadness, sex, never enough joy or togetherness. So many things feel like they come close, but they never actually fill the void because it only grows as you get closer to fulfillment. Something out there always knocks you down, someone ruins the moment, and somehow, someway the good thing you wanted to last forever.. stops.

We embrace the things we trust when this repeating cycle rolls around and as you become aware of the emptiness again, you're awakened to that same longing that was there before. Every human thinks they deal with it differently, but we're all the same. We're all connected by that same void. Sure, I'd agree that we all try to fill it in different ways but the inability to do so is unbelievably common. Many turn to the story of Jesus, or the laws of science and nature, or the teachings of Buddha, the living practices of Muhammad, to consumption, to entertainment with the countless diversions available, to the evidence of the Yin and Yang found everywhere in the Tao, many  meditate to get in touch with an inner peace, or make sacrifices to find balance, I'm sure I cannot cover everyone's method, but I can tell you that we all find the void again. You can attribute this void to whatever you need to, but the well known whirling dervish, Jalalu'ddin Rumi, attributed this void to the separation from God when becoming human. To paraphrase, he said 'we were like the reeds who were separated from their roots and whittled into flutes'. He said that 'just like the reed that becomes a flute by having a series of holes drilled into its figure, mankind also has various holes forged into our hearts that are hardened and toyed with throughout our lives'. These holes that are covered and revealed motivate us to go where we go, do what we do and react the way we react. So just like the wind that blows through the reed flute and makes a beautiful song of longing for those unknown memories of the moments when, in their reed hearts, they knew they were attached to roots, there is also a wind blown into us. It's a gift given to all creatures like ourselves that are animated by powers greater than ourselves. We're animated into this song called life, animated by some maker, some life force. This is how Rumi saw us.. as mere instruments that ALL long to be one with our musician once again. The separation isn't something that Rumi knew how to rationalize and he didn't have the answer for this most difficult question, but I'm confident he recognized the 'music' that flowed from his and other's hearts around him. And surely he attributed the beauty surrounding him to that musician he could never see. He simply and only knew that he loved his musician.

There's something about music that can move through us unlike words or pictures. It's like being touched by a loved one. It can send shivers through your spine or embrace you when you're hurting. Certain drum beats will remind you of the heart in your chest, the perfect trumpet melody can remind you of your voice, and when a rosined horsehair bow is caressed just the right way across the strings of a flawlessly tuned violin, it can make every hair on your body stand up. It's unbelievable what instruments can do all alone, but to hear them played beautifully together.. well that's something else. If you're not angry or frightened, it's so difficult to shut music out, especially when it's trying to find a way in to tickle something inside you and use all your hardened holes to remind you of why they're here.. to feel something. To feel excitement build, or maybe to feel lost love again, or remind you of someone you love at home or next to you, or maybe you could feel the tension you still harbor, or that sweet release once again, it could be any array of human emotions. The emotions we're so frequently forced to ignore.

Rumi's metaphor about the reed flute is something that I think about from time to time, but I'd like to believe that you could use this metaphor with any musical instrument. The reed flute is an easier metaphor because of it being crafted from one cutting of a rooted plant, but life is so often about borrowing from one another in order to determine who we are. We're shaped by others, so why can't the metaphor be more like us. More complex. Like a violin. There's pieces of maple, spruce, willow and rosewood that go into a violin. There's also layers of varnish, stains, polish, the material for the strings and that's not to mention the horsehairs that form the bow or the rosin that applied to the horsehair that creates the friction. Without the friction the rosin creates, nothing beautiful will play. To me, that sounds more like a human. Thrust this violin into a symphony, give it a musician and suddenly the violin is alive, but it's the musician that make any of it possible. Without this musician, the violin can't go about doing what it was made to do. With the grace of this musician, it's been given life!

This violin is not alone.  There's a symphony of life right there with this violin. The conductor lightly taps the music stand as the various other instruments in the ensemble ready themselves, and the violin waits to come alive with noise. Without a given notice, it's wedged between a cheek and shoulder. Other violins are raised in the vicinity and together they all play a note. The cellos answer and both begin to bounce quarter notes to one another, clarinets fill in the spaces, then flutes and oboes flutter across the measures giving you a sense of questioning, then the horns voice an answer, and just when you find the rhythm of the song, the percussion waltzes in and let's you know you were right. You feel all the sadness going away as you begin to lose yourself. Your sadness is gone because you are lost in the music. You're lost because you were not you for a moment, you were the symphony. If only you could lose yourself permanently, that would be something wouldn't it? That's the endgame of the Sufi, to kill the self yet remain where you are. You can no longer hate because there is no you. You can no longer judge because there is no you. You can no longer long because there is only we. And then you can start to see that together we are all mere instruments being played in tandem with all the other instruments around us and together we are playing the beautiful song of life. Humanity is more diverse than any beautiful symphony and while I find unbelievable beauty in a philharmonic orchestra performing Tchaikovsky's 'Swan Lake' while amazing ballet performers choreograph and wrap the stage with storied tragedy, these performances will never outshine the audience. This is because the audience is never to be outdone. Ever. If you find yourself lost in the music of life, tell us about it. There are gifts that await and those gifts are the audience that will never be outdone.  
         
I'd like to thank Rob Landes for his performances on youtube, especially the one in Bangkok, Matthew McConaughey for turning himself into an instrument in The Wolf of Wall Street, Luka Šulić and Stjepan Hauser of 2Cellos, Angèlia Grace, and Samuel Barber (ThatCelloGuy on youtube check him out!) for inspiring me while I was coming up with the concept and writing this piece. You are all beautiful.   

Ancient Astronomers and Hallows of The Solar Eclipse

My writer friend Dave Floyd, another friend ours Dal and I went treasure hunting back in 2013 down in the Rio Grande Gorge of New Mexico. We were hunting for the notorious box of gold that Forest Fenn hid and left clues for. The clues sent us packing it into the gorge with hopes of finding overnight wealth. I was equipped with plenty of camera gear and I was focused on making a documentary film. As you hike through the gorge, you'll notice that the paths are not well worn. Over what I gather is some 29 million years of formation, the Rio Grande Gorge has been formed where the North American and Pacific tectonic plates have been rifting. It's clear that as these two young rock walls have separated, that the integrity of the newly exposed surface was not very reliable. With the river cutting through the rift and sweeping away small amounts of sediment over time, the walls crumbled in lots of places. The resulting landslides can be seen every hundred yards or so and in order to go traverse the canyon, you have to do some horizontal rock climbing over jagged boulders. There are plenty of beautiful hikes in this area that are far easier on the knees and so you see very few people walking those river banks even though it's undeniably beautiful. It's also well documented that there are ancient petroglyphs throughout the region and it's not uncommon to run into them if you hike it in. The glyphs were created by the Pueblo people who still have descendants living in the area today. With that background being laid out, during our hike, I had been gathering shots to be able to edit into the feature I was working on. I found myself being left behind by Dal and Dave. I had just packed up my camera and noticed petroglyphs that lined up peculiarly on the rocks. If my memory serves correctly, I believe I remembered one that was clearly the sun (circle with rays), then a sun and a circle, then the circles were together and the sun rays were gone. I was in a hurry and focused on a documentary, so I saved the glyphs to memory until it had dawned on me what I'd just seen:  An ancient petroglyph visually explaining a solar eclipse.

Western Civilization has this amazing history of conquering and destroying knowledge. We know that Ancient Egyptians used papyrus scrolls to collect their teachings. Most, if not all of those scrolls were moved to Alexandria during a period of Macedonian occupation. Alexander the Great was a great believer in knowledge and after conquering Northern Egypt, no doubt he would have amassed papyrus scrolls as part of his war trophies. We know that Ptolemy, one of Alexander's bodyguards, was put in charge of the city of Alexandria following Alexander of Macedonia's death. Ptolemy's dynasty ensured that the Ancient Library of Alexandria would flourish for many years. Great Greek philosophers of the era would visit Alexandria because there was no other place in the world with so much knowledge collected in one place. Citizens within the Ptolemaic Dynasty would often adopt the name Ptolemy. Even Egyptians that became part of this Macedonian Empire did this and adopted greek names. One of these Egyptians was the famous astronomer, Claudius Ptolemy who is simply known as Ptolemy (100 A.D. - 170 A.D.). Confusing yes, but these two people were not the same. Ptolemy the astronomer is attributed with writing 'Almagest', a book on astronomy that was taken as gold by astronomers around the world for centuries. Somewhere between Caesar in 30 B.C. and the Muslim Conquest of Egypt in 642 A.D., the papyrus scrolls all burned. Had it not been for the greek visitors who made copies of some of the scrolls, nothing would be known about the contents of that library.

Babylonians from 1700 B.C. kept careful records of Earth, Venus, Mars, the Sun and the moon.  They were able to predict lunar eclipses with their findings. Unlike the Egyptians, the Babylonians kept some of this information on stone tablets and stone held these findings for us to observe and applaud today because stone just doesn't burn quite like papyrus. Stone stood the test of time, but the downside of stone is that it's difficult to pass proof of complex sets of knowledge to future inhabitants.

The Ancient Chinese have vast records of celestial findings that date back as far as 750 B.C. and an explanation of a solar eclipse can be found in 120 A.D. I've found a mixture of information about their findings that seem to indicate they may have been able predict when solar eclipses occurred, but there seems to be more research needed in order to verify this claim.

Thales, a philosopher from 600 B.C. is said to have accurately predicted the solar eclipse on May 28th, 545 B.C. He is noted in history as a great thinker that disassociated scientific observation from mythology. He studied in Egypt and came back with a way to determine something incredibly complex. Unfortunately we have no explanation of how he was able to predict the eclipse so accurately. So much knowledge has burned in the fires of time, but we know that we will not be the first nor the last to observe this phenomenon that is a solar eclipse. Today we can accurately predict and post date eclipses going back a great deal of time. This can be an incredibly useful tool for historians that can match dates with recorded observations and be able to know more about what recordings depict. For example, it's now widely believed that we can confirm that the six year war between the Kingdoms of Lydia and Medes ended on May 28th, 585 B.C. This is the day that soldiers of both armies put down their weapons and stopped fighting as they witnessed Thales' solar eclipse. Perhaps that if that did occur, that many saw it as a bad omen. But if Thales prediction was known, maybe the knowledge that it was going to be a once in a lifetime occurrence for them, that it was worth it to stop fighting and enjoy the event together rather than fighting their way thru it.

I hope you know there's going to be a solar eclipse this Monday, August 21st, 2017. In central Texas the eclipse is going to occur between 1:00 pm and 1:15 pm central standard time. You'd have to wait for years to see the next one so don't miss out. Unless you're saving someone's life, stop what you're doing and go check it out. It will last less than 7 minutes and it's bound to be a pretty cool experience. You can think about all the moments in history where people stopped what they were doing and looked to the sky for meaning, then you add whatever it meant to you.

For me, trying to look backwards and see it for myself on Monday, it means this: people aren't stupid now and they never were. We're not any smarter than older civilizations, but these days our knowledge is easily shared and spread. That's the difference between us and them. If we had all the papyrus scrolls from the Egyptians, we might have a much fonder respect of them. Their ability to think was never tested by modern science because they were never given a chance. The same could be said of a lot of opposing views that out there in this world. Sure, you can resist knowledge and destroy all ideas that come from opponents like we've always done in the West or you can listen to your opponent, learn from them and be stronger for it.

Ptolemy is one of the few connections that the modern world has with Egyptian science. This is mostly due to the great minds that visited and copied his works for themselves. So because of them, we know he predicted within a factor of 20, the distance between the Earth and Sun.  Considering this was in 150 A.D. and that the Sun is 92 million miles away, I'd consider his educated guess within 1/20th the distance to be pretty good. He was also able to predict that the world is round, that other planets and stars were spheres as well. He formulated the idea of the equator and longitudes, but instead of degrees he used hours from sunrise to sunset so the equator was 12 hours and the North Pole would be 24 hours at the summer solstice. This was one man almost 2,000 years ago. Imagine if we didn't seek to destroy our opposition all the time, what our world could be capable of? If we saw value in everyone being involved in our intellectual marketplace.. what would that look like? I'm not saying peace, love and everyone wins. I mean, you tolerate differences respectfully so that all can mutually benefit.

  

"The Closeup Hazel Eye of Many Shared Histories"

by Andy Graham

I'll leave you with my favorite little factoid about this. I haven't read this anywhere so no need to credit anyone. The maximum theoretical amount of total eclipse time is 7 minutes and 32 seconds. It takes 8 minutes and 20 seconds for light to travel from the Sun to Earth, so the first moment that you see the moon block our beloved Sun, know that the Sun has already sent at least 48 seconds worth of sunlight to wake your senses from this eery scene that the position of the moon is creating.  

Washington, Turn, Washington, Charlottesville and Robert E Lee

After writing this book where my whales represent religious and social equality as a main theme, I felt like I should say something about what's happened this weekend where a white supremacy group invaded a town to try to spread some kind of message. My sister lives in Charlottesville right now and I was nervous about what she was experiencing amongst all the news. She has two young children and a husband that probably all felt this quarrel's hate. I tried calling her several times during the day and there was no answer. I couldn't think straight, I just wanted to know that her family was okay. I had volunteered to work on a race committee that day and as I sat waiting for the chairmen to spout off directions, my thoughts were in Virginia. Then she called as I was waiting. Relief. She shared all the events she experienced and none of it made me feel good, but knowing she and her family were fine, I could think again.

I was born in Baton Rouge and unquestionably it's part of the old south but it didn't really feel like it, then my family moved to the small town of Joliet in Illinois, then we moved just outside Washington D.C. to an area called Fairfax County. I was right around 10 years old and impressed by all that seemed to feed into and drive the control center that is our government. Our home was just about 25 miles from the capital. The capital of the country that so many of us hold near and dear, regardless of our opinions of how things should go. Regardless of where we're from or who we vote for or what sides we've taken when issues with policy arise, America is our shared home. Over 200 years ago, issues with policy arose in Colonial America that many people believed were worth fighting for. Worth fighting for freedom, worth the risk of danger and at that time, a lot of underlying issues between colonies got ignored because the birth of a new nation justified ignoring them. Once this uniting cause ceased, our nation of many states began arguing over policy and it has only stopped when we've faced a unifying cause.

The final episode of the series 'Turn: Washington's Spies' just aired on Saturday and I completed the last installment of the episodes. The show stars Jamie Bell who plays one of Washington's most important spies, Abraham Woodhull, a spy in the Culper Spy Ring during the Revolutionary War and the series also covers Major Benjamin Tallmadge, played by Seth Numrich, who was charged with leadership of the Culper Spy Ring by none other than George Washington. (Please note that Tallmadge was only 22 years old when the Continental Congress declared independence from Britain.)  As I was watching the closing moments of this series, it dawned on me that the entire time I was writing 'The Pod', everyday I was also reading Ron Chernow's comprehensive biography of the Father of Our Country, George Washington. The biography is simply named 'Washington: A Life' and its coverage of his life begins before the birth of George and includes events that occur a few years after his death as well. It's an honest approach to his life, it hides very few details about him and covers both the good and the bad aspects of an imperfect man's life. And while we can look back and judge the man with today's standards and see just another slave owner that commanded over a war without ever engaging his opponents fairly, we can also look back and see that he was clearly the only man in the world for the job. Now he's become the beacon for self rule that has spread around the Earth like wildfire. His leadership and the countless good decisions he made on behalf of a young nation are the reason that we still have one to claim as our own. He made unbelievable sacrifices for us throughout the Revolutionary War because his properties became unprofitable. It cost him unknown amounts of money, but he hid his debts from society because they needed him to be the foundation that we're still built upon today. In addition to financial sacrifice, he also lived most of the 8 year war without his beloved wife Martha. He had so many strong beliefs that were incredibly forward thinking as we moved away from imperial rule. He believed in the inclusion of all our diverse people, in a government that pays its bills, in centralized government and military,  a government separate from any type of church rule, and he believed that free speech was necessary for free people to rule themselves. As a writer, I hold free speech near and dear. And I hope in some ways that Washington's character rubbed off on Narwhal, the leader of 'The Pod'. It could be my little way of saying thanks for all he did so selflessly.  

Living near Washington D.C. as a kid, I've seen the White House, the Capitol, the Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson Monuments, both the original Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I saw so much of what Washington envisioned, but he wasn't there to see the government finally set up shop in the city in the year of 1801 because he had died 4 years prior in 1797. The design of the city is extremely well planned with streets coming in from 4 different directions that are all connected by an array of loops and parallel passage ways. It seems that no matter which way you come into the city, you can easily get to the center of it all. It almost seems like a visual representation of our government. However, roadblocks can be set up in a well planned capital and they are. It's frustrating anytime you run into a roadblock much less one that effects your every day life. Not having your voice heard can erupt into anger and over the years of our established democracy, people have gotten angry by not being heard. It's an ugly side to democracy that can't be avoided. Without roadblocks, no policy would last and a feeling of insecurity would certainly arise. Without having your voice heard and recognize, people get angry. That same sense of insecurity and same sense of anger is created by large groups of protesters.  It's that part of you that wonders what will come of this, but our Bill of Rights protects those that feel the need to protest and that is a point of strength in our country. That being said, the government does request that your protest be peaceable and if it is not, it's no longer protected. In other words, it is not within your rights to violently protest.

The United States Constitution went into effect in 1789, by 1801 we found ourselves in a war with the Barbary Coast (Ottoman occupied coast of North Africa) for 14 years, we had the War of 1812 that lasted 3 years, and then we had The Mexican-American War which lasted from 1846 to 1848, all the while we were expanding as a nation and living our Manifest Destiny. When things started to settle, the American people began to think about their differences again and in 1861, the Southern States went to war with the Northern States in the Civil War. Slavery was certainly a big issue in the debate, but that was part of a larger issue that boiled down to economic differences. The North couldn't live without the goods the South provided and the North wanted to tell the South how they were going to go about doing that. The votes in the North overpowered the South and so the South protested. They no longer believed their voices were being heard. Eventually, it all boiled over and became anger that fueled the Civil War on both sides. The casualties of the war numbered over a million combined. People lost a lot, especially in the South. William Sherman marched into the South during the war and while away from the eye and control of the Northern leaders, burned cities down to the ground. It was total war. Sherman's men stole food from anywhere they could find it in foraging parties, if hostility was felt by the commanders of Sherman's armies, they could destroy houses, cotton gins, grain mills, the soldiers were allowed to steal any livestock they wished to take including horses, and the recently freed negroes could be taken and put into the service of the army against their will. I'm sure many of you reading this think that the North was a bunch of angels that came down to kindly free the slaves and make everything better, but Sherman's Army was more like the apocalypse with army issued paperwork justifying any action. This treatment of the South was never rectified and trust me, there are people in the South that are still angry about it, angry about not having their voices heard even though they live in a democracy where everyone has a voice.

Fast forward to this past weekend, the White Nationalists gathered in Charlottesville and from what I can only gather by an educated guess, the group was there initially to protest the removal of General Robert E Lee's statue in Charlottesville Virginia. They came ready for a fight, this was never supposed to be a peaceable protest, it wasn't and now a few people are dead and many many others have sustained injuries. I can't help but believe that all of this could have been avoided had these White Nationalists followed the constitutionally protected guidelines and protested peacefully. Everyone in this country has the right to free speech, especially those you disagree with, so be aware if you oppose this idealism. You could rightfully be punished if you take this right from others. You have the right to be angry, you have a right to be heard, but you don't have the right to be violent. If you want to win this debate, whatever the hell it may be, it will not be done with violence. Now, I personally believe that no Robert E Lee statue should be taken down. The man fought for every state and every American in the Mexican-American War and is a hero for that, his leadership of the Southern Armies at the end of the war was such that when he surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant, the armies he led followed suit rather than continue a bloody war that was only serving to hurt all sides. After the war he sought reconciliation with the North so that we could move forward together as one nation. After the war ended, Robert E Lee got involved with the Washington University, started by George Washington when he granted his Potomac Canal shares to the organization, and because of the donations he separately made to that educational system, the University is now called Washington Lee. It would be foolish to strip his name away and pretend he didn't exist. West Point has a barracks named after Lee and in general, the Northern states warmed up to Lee following the war. Clearly this man was not some pure entity of evil and this is not some good versus evil matter anyway where there is only right or wrong. He, after serving the United States Army in the Mexican-American War, struggled to choose a side in the Civil War. Certainly he was aware of the positive merits of the North's cause, but surely he understood that the South was not without merit as well. War is full of tough decisions and maybe Robert E Lee was the right man to decide to negotiate a truce rather than fight on and to me, that's what he should be remembered for. The man that ended the violence by conceding the fight when the fight was deep, widespread, and as old as our nation.

People aren't perfect, you're not perfect, I'm not perfect, but we all deserve to be remembered for our positive contributions to this world when we're gone. I hope that this weekend will serve as a reminder of what happens when we let violence try to solve our issues. Turns out that when you're protesting with violence, nobody can hear the meaning of your actions. The young men that fought the Revolutionary War were angry too, they were tired of being oppressed, but though they were not being listened to, they kept their heads and won a war where they were outnumbered, outgunned, out-supplied, but they were not outwitted. I will probably never agree with anything that this White Nationalist party has to say, but I'd suggest to any group that is outnumbered, outgunned, out-supplied, they can still keep their head and at least attempt to win in a peaceful game of wits. At least no one dies that way and you might be heard. To this group, I literally have no idea why you were there in Charlottesville and so the Robert E Lee statue was just a guess. That means your protest was a complete failure with me and probably for many others you tried to persuade. For now you're just a bunch of angry white dudes preaching hate for others and I pity you. You're missing out on the bright side of life.

To the young lady revealed as Heather Heyer that gave her life to opposing this protest, thanks for giving of yourself. May you be a beacon like George Washington whose memory may serve to cool tempers and give the a nation a boost that can help us move on once again. Your life may have ended because of anger, but may you live on in our hearts and minds because of a natural love that we all share with our fellow humanity. Your work is not finished.    

Attar and his Conference of Birds

The orange avian creature on the cover of 'The Pod' is not some oversight, that bird is a hoopoe and very important in the process of concocting my own piece of fiction. The hoopoe is the winged leader of the 'Mantiq Au Tayr'. This is the lasting creation of Attar, a sufi writer that roamed this Earth 800 years ago. The legends say that he was a pharmacist in his day and was well loved by the people of his birth city, Nishapur, in the Khorsan Valley of Persia. They say that he stopped to say hello to anyone he would pass and that the children of Nishapur would stop whatever they were doing and run to him if they caught sight of his face. He was the son of a father that enjoyed the teachings of Sufism and his father passed his love of Sufism onto his son. They say Attar left his home in Nishapur and traveled around the world to learn more about this belief system. When he returned home, he had the teaching in his heart and he poured them out into his masterpiece. Today that masterpiece is more widely know as 'The Conference Of The Birds'.    

They say Attar was so well loved in his town that the people protected his identity even upon the threat of death. In 1220 AD, Attar was killed at the age of 78 by the invading Mongols. The Mongols had been looking for the famed man that led the heart of his people and after some time, a small group of soldiers found him after his identity was mistakenly said aloud. The soldiers were taking him back to their leaders when they crossed a wealthy woman who offered to buy Attar's freedom with a small sack of silver. Attar looked at the soldiers and asked them not to take such a small amount for him, that he was worth far more than this sack of silver. The soldiers listened to Attar's advice and continued their return trip to the command post. As they continued their journey home, they crossed paths with the most wealthy man in the region. The man had a highly valuable sack of gold on him and the man offered the entire amount to free Attar. Attar looked at the soldiers and told them that he was worth much much more than this so they continued on. Then as they approached their home base a poor man passed them with a donkey and sitting on the donkey was a large stack of firewood he had been collecting all day. The poor man offered his entire stack of firewood to the Mongolian soldiers and Attar said to them, take this man's offer, it is a very good price for the freedom of an old man. Enraged by his advice and being enraged that they lost out on silver and gold and were now sitting here negotiating his life for firewood, they killed him. This was Attar, I'm sure you can see why he was so widely valued by the common people and abhorred by rulers.

Not all of them, but this creation still lasts to this day. Over the years there have been many many creations of art that Attar inspired.  One of my favorites is a carefully crafted art piece by Habiballah that hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It's a watercolor painting of the 'Birds' gathering that uses both actual gold and silver in the piece. Attar has inspired countless pieces of art around the world, but he's also inspired musicians and writers as well. The well known Persian poet, Rumi, was influenced by Attar, in fact, Attar's name appears in some verses. So, I would be remiss if I failed to tell you that his book has inspired me as well. 'The Conference Of The Birds' is told using couplets where each bird speaks or responds in couplet format. It has been 800 years and still Attar's words linger in our world today, but it is hardly the oldest epic to stand the test of time. 'The Iliad' and 'The Odyssey' punch holes into our society and creep in regularly. The television producers of 'Game of Thrones' mentioned Odysseus in the interviews following a recent episode. They mentioned how Arya Stark had been gone from Winterfell for so long that the guards patrolling the gates did not recognize her just like King Odysseus was not recognized after returning from his long journey. Poetry has a unique way of standing the test of time and an influence of Attar's used poetry as well as anyone in the history of writing.

"The Concourse of the Birds" by Hibiballah of Sava 

(created somewhere between 1590-1610)

Attar wrote in couplet format where each couplet was twenty-two syllables and the eleventh and twenty-second syllable always rhymed. Amongst Attar's influences was a very well known man whose poetry and scientific discoveries are still prevalent today. The influential man was Omar Khayyam and both Attar and Khayyam were born in the same Persian city, Nishapur.  While Attar wrote the beautiful and rhythmic couplets Khayyam wrote powerful quatrains that were meant to be read as single entities. I'll share my favorite one that Fitzgerald translated from Persian to English:

Why ponder the future to forsee, 

and jade thy mind to perplexity

Cast off thy cares, leave Allah's plans to him- 

He formed them all without consulting thee.

With so few words Khayyam could speak to the deepest thoughts in your mind and challenge all the layers of ideas you had previously stacked upon them. So what I have done is mix the two ideas of these poetic giants and pulled in elements of Homer's and Melville's to structure 'The Pod'. My whales speak to each other in quatrains that have eleven syllable lines where the last syllable in the line rhymes with next in an AABB rhyming format. I've been told that the rhythm this creates somewhat of a feel for the ebb and flow of the oceans.   

In 'The Conference of the Birds' the birds come together in search of a leader. They were going to vote for the noble hoopoe to lead them, but instead the hoopoe tells them that the true leader would be the mythical firebird that we call the Phoenix. I knew my whales in 'The Pod' were going to need their Phoenix, but I wanted them to search for a religious character that almost every culture shares, so I have them searching for the Green Man instead of the mythical Phoenix. So, to find this Phoenix or 'Simorgh' in Persian, the birds have to travel through seven valleys.

First) The Valley of the Quest

Second) The Valley of Love

Third) The Valley of Insight Into Mystery 

Fourth) The Valley of Detachment 

Fifth) The Valley of Unity

Sixth) The Valley of Bewilderment 

Seventh) The Valley of Poverty and Nothingness 

The book is fantastic and certainly gets you thinking, but half the book is convincing the birds to go on this journey another huge section of it is about what to expect on the journey, then the journey itself lasts 3 or 4 pages after all the preparation. It works and I would suggest that you read it, but it's not a style westerners are used to absorbing. So in that sense, I felt like there was room for me to write my story and use Melville's whales, Homer's sense of facing trials, Khayyam's four line structure and Attar's valleys.  However, whales cannot cross valleys so I instead I had my whales travel through the incredibly deep oceanic trenches.  If you've seen my map from an earlier blog post, you might know that they cross seven trenches:  The Aleutian Trench, the Arctic Trench, Kuril, Marianna, the Tonga Trench, The Java and the Indian Trench. All of the trenches are real places in our oceans except for the Arctic Trench. Due to the shape of the Earth, the spin of her and other scientific mumbo jumbo that could definitively explain it to you, the ocean surrounding the North Pole is pretty shallow and lacks a true trench. Perhaps it's all Saint Nick's doings but this is all to tell you that this journey was very very carefully plotted. Every scientific finding on these whales and places was put into the story if I could find a way to include it. Each species has characteristics that I tried to humanize so that you could relate to them. Each location has some element of reality tied to it even though the story seems so impossible. The whales face hunger, ice, changing arctic temperatures, hoards that want to kill them, tsunamis, a typhoon, a maze of coral and enemies that want to stop them at every turn. It's scientific, it's exciting, it has unexpected plot twists and it's philosophical. And I owe it all to my influences and to all of you who inspired me to write it because your future self has agreed to read it and I knew that while I was writing it for you. And maybe, just maybe one day, far into the future, a young lady or young man will pick up 'The Pod' and be just as inspired as I was when I read all these masterpieces. And maybe, if I've done my job right, that young lady or young man will say that 'The Pod' was my masterpiece. Maybe they tell people that this one work of art amongst all the pieces I've created, is the only work of art that could define me just like I believe that 'The Conference Of The Birds' defines Farid uddin Attar. 

  

The Conclusion and Inclusion of Moby Dick

Call me Andy. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my bank account, and nothing particular to interest me out and about Austin, I thought I would read at home a little and read about the watery part of the world. Scouring the classics shelf I flipped through the printed sheets of a great many novel and settled upon a curious and mind you - lengthy choice with which to spend copious hours with. During that time a character with great fortitude and inner strength pushed me to sail - and by that I mean read - further on with him and to meet our doom together. The character's name was Captain Ahab and he led a strange crew. Now I would not have called them strange once embarking upon the blue swelled liquids of the North Atlantic Ocean or her six sisters, but using my mind's eye to see them in an earthen bound dwelling with imported tea from South Asia in hand and squirming in the comfort of cloth covered armchairs, you wouldn't be so quick to call me wrong. No - in fact you would agree that they were not meant for this solid based world. They - in all detail that mattered to an ocean adventurer, were sailors from mind to toe, from garment to heart, from followed dream to the equipment they handled. Their dream was none other than to pursue the greatest beasts to ever walk or swim the Earth. They had a fancy and that fancy was to chase the very whales around that live great lengths of their lives within liquified mansions and I, the reader of the great 'Moby Dick' by Herman Melville was going along for the ride.

In nine of ten attempts to find a story to place myself in, I'm able to find just such a story, but for that one in ten, I find myself able to enter the world that story created again and again. The wordiest of writers, the first person of all first persons, the creator of contradictions, the ultimate ride along without leaving homerist, the great Herman Melville created just such a story and I would be hard pressed to present my own story to you without telling you of the magnificent impression his words placed upon my head and heart. His first person character that tells you to call him Ishmael, pulls you deep into a world of pride, madness, and the voice of reason. In a way, you become Ishmael. The first personage does not ever describe themselves and you could even argue that you're not aware of this "Ishmael's" gender for in fact, Ishmael is likely nothing more a description of who ye are to the world as you chase the White Whale than a name. None of the surrounding characters ever calls you Ishmael, but they do assume that you're a man with little experience aboard a whaling vessel. With all the biblical references found in Moby Dick, it is likely that Ishmael is supposed to be like the Ishmael that was kicked out of Abraham's house by Sarah and as such is a reference and so furthermore that reference is likely to mean 'outcast'.

In addition to Ishmael, there is another seemingly biblical character that tells a bold fortune to 'Ishmael' about his journey to hunt whales. That character is named Elijah. In the Old Testament, Elijah was a prophet so it's not too much of a stretch to label this character a biblical reference. The lesser known biblical reference is to Ahab King of Israel. In Moby Dick Ahab is the somewhat logical and authoritative captain that inspires his crew to follow him as he attempts to exact insane levels of revenge. When the novel begins, Ahab's already lost his leg trying to hunt down the white whale Moby Dick and now his only goal in life seems to be killing the previously noted sperm whale. It seems that only this will provide any level of personal justice and even though the leg of this captain is not the leg of the crew, he convinces the others on the ship that it must indeed be their leg in spirit and therefore in spirit, it is also their revenge. The captain is the lowest kind of villain the bares no ethics, he only acts on his motivation and has a willingness to sacrifice anyone to get a shot at the White Whale. Melville's description of this maleficent being inspires thoughts of some of the worst humans in history, a small number of which came after Melville penned his masterpiece. The biblical Ahab, which it is clear to me that the captain was based off of, was King of Israel and was just as putrid as his doppelganger. After Israel had been blessed by Kings that shone light upon the land like David and Solomon, the quality of kingly leaders dropped and spiraled downward rapidly until the moral fortitude of rule bottomed out with the anointing of Ahab. This King, Ahab, abandoned the God of his ancestors and worshiped the idol god Ba'al instead. The Old Testament story follows how the Prophet Elijah went in service to the Hebrew God in order to straighten out King Ahab and his people and return the beliefs of the Hebrew God to their 'rightful' place in Israel. Ahab continually challenges Elijah, is humbled time and time again only to regain his gumption to challenge the commands of Elijah and the word of God once again. In the end, King Ahab's own desires destroy him and Elijah is left standing to claim that he'd been right all along, that he was a true prophet. Just like King Ahab, Captain Ahab is humbled many times, yet still challenges Moby Dick to his doom. I find the similarities to be too much to ignore.

All this is to say that I am of the strong opinion that Melville looked to the story structure of 1st Kings and turned it into this masterpiece and it is not lost on me that after reading Moby Dick, shortly thereafter I began penning my own book about whales. However, mine was not to be about the hunting whales but instead it is about the perils that whales face in our world where the pursuit of human comforts often impedes on the success of their lives. I could talk or write all day about the merits of Melville's observational comedy about society, but I really just want to spell out the grapnel that pulled me for a Nantucket sleigh ride, the baited hook, the whirlpool that is 'Moby Dick Chapter 32: Cetology'. To be clear with you and above all else, Moby Dick is a comedy. Nothing within this comedy made me laugh more than to read Melville's 'expertise' on whales in said chapter. To paraphrase, he justifies that 'whales are air breathing fish that swim with a horizontal tail'. He's got a whole line of reasoning for this conclusion but something whispers to me quietly that he wanted to be wrong about his erroneous definitions. Afterall, he was telling the story from the perspective of someone who'd never been whaling or studied whales in their whole life. But amidst all my laughter, Melville lists off a great number of whales that I had known nothing about and that lack of knowledge stuck with me as something I wanted to remedy. With a little research I found out that cetology is nothing new, that Aristotle(~300BC) took up the occupation and declared that whales were indeed mammals. Roughly 300 years later the Roman philosopher and naturalist, Pliny the Elder contradicted the great philosopher of his time, Aristotle and declared that whales were fish. The debate continued through the years of whaling, but today there is little doubt. Whales are mammals, not fish, but it was the discussion of classifying these amazing creatures that sucked me in, not the debate of what to call them and it is the reason that my 300 plus page epic poem includes 20 different whale species. I also knew I wanted a whale like Ahab, that could convince his crew to come along for an impossible journey, but my issue was that I generally think of whales as 'good'. They seem like gentle giants at peace with the world around them so I couldn't make this persuasive orator vile like the captain or king. We all know in our hearts that not all persuasive people are evil, so why not have a kinder gentler, well meaning Ahab that cares about his mates? So this is how whales entered my mind and never left, and though they are the characters that tell this tale, the structure of the story has more to do with a different author whom I have an equal level of respect for:  Attar.      

Below is my interpretation of a complex set of events that conclude the story of Moby Dick(I'll explain the piece below if you're interested):

"The Conclusion of Moby Dick" 

 by Andy Graham

In the front of the picture at the bottom is Pip and that is me to the left wearing the orange shirt and holding the oar. I'll get back to those two later, but to me they pop out first, so I'm just making that a placeholder. To the right is Moby Dick and Moby's eye is a squared up version of the Egyptian symbol for Ra or at least it's the Eye of Ra. Ra is the sun god that continues to rise and fall for eternity. In the center is Ishmael's best friend Queequeg. He's an islander who's tattooed all over the place, but Ishmael learns to see him as just any other man. The man secured to the body of Moby Dick is Fedallah, he's a fire worshiper (Zoroastrian) from Persia. His eyes are distended because he's been dragged around for several days by Moby and has been dead for a while at the moment this was 'painted'. Moby is splintering the boat and knocks off several important crew members that are covered in the story. When Moby Dick ends, no boats are left to speak of and Ishmael floats to safety on a wooden coffin. The coffin is not pictured yet because The Pequod, the ship that the whalers all call home for three years on this voyage is sinking in the background. The coffin eventually floats up from that wreckage. On the right side of the splintered boat is Daggoo the African tribesman that the others see as a natural leader not to be challenged, left of him is Starbuck whom the coffee company Starbucks is named after. He is the voice of clarity much like your own voice after you've had coffee. Left of Starbuck is Flask who is angry at all whales, then Stubb who doesn't take much of anything seriously, then Captain Ahab. In the movies, you'll frequently see Ahab being tied to the whale instead of Fedallah, but in the book he's yanked off his small vessel when he clears a rope with his body only to get the hemp rope tangled around his neck. It is one of the final scenes and he never resurfaces. This all brings me back to Pip and myself. The entire crew is crazed with Moby Dick fever and Pip knows it. Twice he jumps ship and once they save him from the sharks that always seem to follow whalers for an easy meal of whale meat. To me, he's the 2nd most realistic character in the book and it's the reason he's not 'painted' in the same way that the others are. Lastly, I'm playing Ishmael because Ishmael is your eyes and ears and thoughts while you read this first person narrative. Ishmael is not actually on a small boat at the end of the book, he's on the Pequod and witnesses all the destruction of boats and people from her. When a large boat sinks, it pulls down things and people with it, but Ishmael luckily avoids this undertow and swims to safety, but I've symbolize his control over this situation by putting an oar in his hand. He's the only one with the power to survive this grim picture where Moby Dick destroys all that challenge him. Ishmael never truly challenges the white whale, so he (or she because frankly Ishmael could be a woman and I have a theory that supports this claim of Ishmael being a woman) is able to survive to spin the tale and no one survives to say otherwise. This piece took me 8 or 9 days to execute my ideas. I hope you enjoy it as it was not exactly great fun clicking 1000s upon 1000s of times over the last two weeks!  

Talk to you later!

-AG (aka Ishmael when I'm caught reading Moby Dick)