You might be Ishmael, the survivor. As the Pequod sets sail in the pages of Moby Dick, Queequeg casts his bones. The throw reveals the pattern of an ominous future. Convinced that this voyage will be his last, he instructs the ship's carpenter to build his coffin. Queegueg is the son of a chieftain of an unnamed tribe who has left his home to discover the world. He is the whaling ship's harpooner, an imposing figure covered with tattoos inscribed on his body by a native holy man. He doesn't know what they mean, but he dutifully carves the same mystic symbols on the lid of his coffin. Hold that thought.

     Approaching my 82nd birthday, I cast my "bones": thrown four coins for my I Ching; read my Tarot cards from two vastly different decks; and considered the facts of advancing age. I concluded that though I feel fine...This is my last voyage.

     By the end of the book the great White Whale has destroyed the whaling ship and sent it and everyone on board, save one, to the bottom. Alone in the floating debris, Ishmael, our narrator, crawls onto that coffin.

     You be Ishmael, I'll be Queequeg, carving depictions of my life's voyages into a form that will last longer than my flesh. These books will be the mystic cryptic symbols on my empty floating coffin.

     

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