Melville's Way

Melville's way: 

it was Melville's way, inspired by an ocean's vision, yet written entirely from a Berkshire's view of farm and fields, sun burnt corn husks substituted for the actual sea. The story of Moby-Dick took place in Herman Melville's mind, transforming farmland into an ocean's scene and mythic quest for the Ahab's whale. The ocean is always within us, our primordial home, saltwater coursing through our veins even now. In a true sense, we've never severed the ancient pull of tides, and find ourselves still called to wander on its shores, tempted to swim back to the depths of our origins one more. 

Melville's way was to transform farmland into the ocean, separated by hundreds of miles, and yet those inner tides were so strong and vivid as too pull his soul directly to a whale's chase across the water's vast expanse. This was a true transformation for the author, not purely imagined, but the actual spray of ocean's foam felt across his brow, the smell of brine filled his nose, waves knocked against the barn from where he wrote his tale. 

this wasn't done by his imagination, not a literary trick of his mind.

he simply called himself home.

his inner ocean all along.

and Melville's way is our meditation, that we are in our primordial midst right now, at home within the infinite reach of the cosmos. Our ocean is silence, and we are always at its shore, seamless really, a thought's edge from the depth of our existence, available to explore. For me, it's the mantra that acts as the ship for my exploration, but it could be the breath, or sensation of the body. Anything. It really doesn't matter because we are home right now, residing in the silence of the ocean, both wave and shore simply vibrations for the creation of our world. Meditation is our Melville's way of remembering where we truly are right now, with an ocean coursing through the very body of our existence. 

home. 

~

Peace, Eric