This was originally published on my old blog BackpackBook (Livro de Mochila), a project that blended literature and travel, sometimes just traveling in my lucid dreams. It ran as āViajando com Moby Dickā on November 8, 2007.
The mysterious whale created (and perhaps still creates) an incurable fascination in her hunters. Getting out alive after meeting her was a victory, and the accounts these survivors brought back weren’t simple fishermen’s tales. They were fabulous whale fishermen’s tales.
This classic was retold by Fernando Nuno in another book from the Correndo Mundo collection, the same one that gave me Gulliver’s Travels, which by the way is off traveling the world again. Perhaps Moby Dick and her hunters are next.
According to Frederico “sleeps heavier than a whale” Dubiel, the original book isn’t really a backpack book, since it’s big and heavy and, let’s say, tires more than just your back. So I’ll leave that weight on Captain Ahab’s back. As well as losing his leg to the whale, he lost a good part of his judgment and managed, insanely, to encourage the entire crew to hunt the feared white sperm whale.
After the first contact with Moby Dick the men were bewitched by her. Chasing her became the purpose of a life and nothing could get it out of their heads, even if they had to lose those heads. Ishmael, the narrator and crewman, was on a different level of fascination, aimed at the horizon, the sea and the voyage.
Beware of dreamers
Ishmael also leaves a very important warning for the captains of fishing boats. Be careful about hiring the dreamy looking young men, the thin ones with hollow eyes, because whales have to be sighted before they can be hunted, and a lad given to meditation will take your ship around the world ten times without ever spotting a single one.
At almost that exact moment, Daisy “pirate poetess” Carvalho went past shouting from a distance on her raft in a thousand mysterious winds, saying the captain had seen me away from the lookout post, staring at the moon instead of the whale. I tried to organize myself, get into position and focus, but before returning to the post I drifted off into Ishmael’s warning:
… ten times around the world …
And before I could get back down to earth, that pirate of the poetic winds came about fast, attacking to starboard and offering one last chance. Jump off that ghost ship now, she said, because it’s going down with every crewman aboard blinded by whale oil. Leap into the sea and take the risk of drowning while dreaming about the moon.
Do I go back to my post, or throw myself into the sea?
I’m not a good swimmer and I could drown, but I’d rather see the moon go blurry through the ocean closing over me than live pretending to be a whale hunter.
Good winds and currents guide me.