This week I've been weathering the storm with Una--Captain Ahab's wife, who much like me, is a skeptic and therefore, naturally, a star-gazer. It just so happens that the sky outside had been a Nantucket gray for the past few days and I feel myself absorb, both body and mind, into Una's life on a New England Island by the sea. And when that Island grows small, and she escapes to life on the sea disguising herself as a cabin boy for a whaling ship heading to the Pacific, I breathe easier and feel that I too have broken loose from the definition of a life I have prescribed for myself. Strangely, when my sorrow spills over in the deepness of the dark, I can't tell if the tears are for the hollowness I feel on my own behalf or if it's Una's brokenheartedness and loneliness of being with a man afflicted by madness, who once was sane and kind, who she still loves despite him injuring her with the vilest of words and actions. All that is to say--I had forgotten what beautiful companionship books provide in a time when friends aren't so readily available for you. And today, as the sun begins to shyly shine again, I feel a clarity and calmness as if Una herself has taken my face in her hands, looked me in the eyes and has said, "If I can get through the battering of storm after storm after storm, and not lose my curiosity and eagerness for life and new adventures, then surely you can traverse this stormy patch of the sea. "
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