The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld Read Online Free

by the long central keel; even so, all the individualities of the crew, this man’s valor, that man’s fear; guilt and guiltlessness, all varieties were welded into oneness.
    The word Nekyia derives from the title of the eleventh book of The Odyssey , wherein Odysseus descends into the underworld to commune with the dead. According to Edinger, Moby-Dick is the quintessential American Nekyia—a metaphorical “night sea journey” through despair and meaninglessness, symbolizing the dark passages that we all embark on during our development as individuals and as a society. In Jungian theory, most spiritual journeys begin with a kind of universal descent into the underworld, where we come face to face with our own darkness, weaknesses, and fears—our shadow. So Moby-Dick can be read as Ishmael’s confrontation with his dark side in the form of Ahab, just as most of us wrestle daily with our own dark moods and impulses, and our country reckons with its imperialistic shadow side. The clash turns bloody and violent, and Ahab’s resentful pursuit of the white whale brings down the entire ship. Only Ishmael is reborn through the wreckage; having assimilated his shadow after this deep psychic battle, he floats upward through a spiraling whirlpool. In Jungian terms, this circular current is a mandala, an ancient symbol of wholeness and individuation.
    I liked this spin on Melville’s tale—especially because a more literal analysis of Moby-Dick tends toward the melodramatic and purely tragic. The Jungian interpretation allows for darkness and shadows and tragedy, but ultimately points toward the light.
    This is where it began: my own White Death, a syndrome characterized by obsessive thoughts about Moby-Dick and Herman Melville, the collecting of old volumes of the novel and the schlepping around of one or more of these volumes at almost all times, and constant talk of Moby-Dick —its brilliance and relevance to contemporary life—to anyone who’ll listen.
    These early symptoms are mild compared to what manifests as the disease progresses.

GOING UNDER
    I n many ways, New York is perfect for someone with my peripatetic obsessions, my need to move. It’s a city where everything and everyone are in constant motion, flux—via trains, helicopters, bicycles, skateboards, taxis, strollers, horses. Even in movie theaters you can feel the subway rumble and pitch beneath your feet. The weather’s always changing; buildings are always rising up and coming down; everyone’s trying to get somewhere else—from Brooklyn to Manhattan, from Manhattan back to Brooklyn, from entry level to management, understudy to lead, assistant to editor.
    The problem for me is that, having grown up in the West, I’ve always been in control of my movement, the pilot of my own vehicle. But in New York, you’re at the mercy of forces larger than yourself, both dark and light; you have to resign yourself to being a passenger.
    My third night in the city, a friend invites me to an art opening near Union Square. I’d visited the city plenty of times as a tourist, but this is my first subway ride under the East River into Manhattan, and about halfway through it dawns on me that not only am I now living in New York City— New York Fucking City —but I’m also trapped three hundred feet below a polluted river—so deep that my eardrums pop—hurtling along at top speeds, with no way to stop what I’ve put into motion, to slam on the brakes and eject myself from this whole noisy, grimy, two-thousand-miles-from-home ride onto which I’ve willingly hitched myself. Suddenly my heart is a pipe bomb inside the suitcase of my chest, threatening to blow apart not just my body but also this entire train car and all the two hundred strangers who are about to witness me completely blow apart . I’ve been told that it will take me a few months to get used to the city, that these kinds of freak-outs are normal, but this does not feel normal, not at all.
    The