Someone has recently asked me what
I'm doing for a living, to which I replied immediately- freight forwarding in
terms of sending goods on-board vessels shipped out of Israel to basically all
over the world. Her instinctive reply to me was "Oh… so that's why
you're taking a Moby Dick class…" Of course I laughed then, and
find myself smiling at the thought even now a few days later. In short, my line
of interest here in Israel my native country, has led me into tracking vessels'
schedules, waiting for boarding-on-time confirmations form shipping-lines,
crossing fingers each time that my clients will not suffer from departure
delays due to bad weather or union strikes at the sea-ports or just plain old
bad-luck causing their stuffed containers to fall off deck.
Curiously enough, one might think
that handling ocean freight as I do, which obviously concerns some aspect of
the sea, might have a kind of a link to Melville's sea. Yet my case is far from
resembling Melville's, since so many differences gap between my sea and his.
For me, the sea is distant and unreachable. Unlike Melville the seaman (prior
to his writing) I'm located in a cozy office remotely sending-out instructions,
while having no direct contact with the vessel whatsoever. I would dare to
imagine that going out to sea on an old sails' ship, sensing the ocean only a
couple of feet beneath had to be extraordinary, especially if compared with the
gigantic commercial engine-vessels we have here today. Unlike Melville, I
cannot smell the salt, nor feel the cold breeze on my face. I can only doze off
and imagine what it would be like to spot a shadow of an underwater creature,
as Melville has probably done, and evidently has done his fictional captain
Ahab.
Speaking of the captain, a funny
thing for me is that in my office we started a private office- joke based on a
very famous Israeli TV commercial, saying "Hot water, small glass, to the
Israeli Captain." Most people here would recognize this add which promotes
one the most famous coffee in Israel, Elite Turkish black ground coffee. The
add presents an airline captain, who loves his coffee served in a small glass,
and a waiter who confuses this captain with the captain of the Israeli soccer
team while playing on the field. So the waiter brings the small glass filled
with the hot water (all is needed now is to pour the ground coffee into the
glass and stir) to the captain on the field instead of to the airline captain,
causing the soccer game to pause since the waiter is now standing in the middle
of the field with a glass in his hand. So our joke in the office is that every
time someone gets up to make coffee for himself (some of us even drink a few
cups a day), someone else would shout to him "Hot water.. to the Israeli Captain!"
teasing him that he should now make another coffee round to the whole office.
So, for me the thing is that up until a couple of months ago, every time I
would hear someone shout the "Captain's request" I would laugh and
wait for my own cup in due time. Now however, every time, and I do mean every
time! Whenever I hear the order "Captain!" I suddenly visualize Ahab,
standing all silent on his ivory leg on the Pequod with his harsh look,
as if eying now my crew, waiting for his prize. Of course no one
in my office can understand this change of associated thought. Can you?
No comments:
Post a Comment