Herman Melville was born in New York to a respectable family, which fell on hard times and forced the young boy to work, but to escape impoverishment he went to sea culminating in a voyage to the South Seas, where he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. This escapade formed the basis of his highly popular TYPEE about two sailors who seek refuge with cannibals and how one falls in love with a woman named Faraway.

Once more with money he married and wrote more novels. Most notably MOBY DICK. A literary failure. Melville retired from writing and worked as a customs inspector in downtown Manhattan. I always thought thzt the US Customs Building was where, but it had been erect in 1907. Decades after Melville's death. Inside the Beaux Arts building is a large oval desk overlooked by maritime murals by Reginald Marsh underneath an oval rotunda. I imagined Melville at this desk. Not so.

Melville faded into a comfortable obscurity.

Somehow thanks to a Melville revival in the early 20th Century MOBY DICK was declared a masterpice and assigned to school reading lists. "Call me Ismael." I remember the first line well.

"And I only am escaped alone to tell thee."

I don't remember a single word in between unlike the Oxford Dictionary aardvak and zyzzyva, a tropical weevil or beetle. I have a copy of TYPEE someplace. Years ago I stumbled on a bust of Melville on the outside of 6 Pearl Street. It is no longer there. Such is fame. Fleeting and eternal in the mnds of the unreading public of the modern age. I wodner where the bust when.

to read more go to read Herman's Head by Adam Mellion

https://allvisibleobjects.substack.com/p/hermans-head

On the Bowery 1977

In 1962 my father had a business meeting in New York. He drove us down from Boston and we stayed at the Manhattan Hotel on West 34th Street. Between meetings we went to the Empire State Building, the Rockettes, ate at Tads Steakhouse, and saw the Statue of Liberty. On the way back by Yellow Cab we rode along the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. A sunny day much like that of the photo.

Spotting a man sprawled on that narrow meridian strip, I asked, if he were dead.

“No, he’s just drunk.”

I knew what drunk was since an old man hung out at the gas station in our suburban town. Red Tate. A Korean war veteran. My father sometimes gave him a buck for a bottle of wine. There weren't many bums in my hometown. It was a dry town without any liquor stores, but Red Tate always had his bottle of Thunderbird.

In the next block were three more collapsed men. Lost to oblivion.

I later lived in the East Village and frequented CBGBs, passing countless enlistees to a state of inebriation on the Bowery. I never joined them, but not for lack of trying.

Fare Thee Well Christmas Wreath 2025

Thanks to the tree elves

Office Chair On The Snow

Sunday afternoon the snow fell lightly. walking down Vanderbilt Avenue I spotted a black office chair. In relatively good condition. I brushed off the snow and sat down, thinking, "This might do."

A new writing chair.

The snowfall was less than an inch. I rolled it to my building on Myrtle Avenue. I hefted it. Not light. Heavy. I sat again. Not the right height. I live on the fourth floor. I wished the chair luck.

The blizzard hit Brooklyn. Traffic was closed to all, but emergency vehicles and plows.

In the morning I ventured out to buy butter for pancakes and red raspberries at Coco. The plows had cleared the avenue. The sidewalks were treacherously slippery. The gales harvested the snow into gathering drifts. The chair was gone. To someplace other than this frozen corner. I wish the new owner and the chair good luck.

ps only pour maple syrup on pancakes. Never corn syrup. Even fruit flies won’t ear that poison I bought. Quebecois. Syrup. No maple syrup from Maine at Coco. Next trip Downeast I'll find some. There are plenty of maple trees in the Pine Tree State.

I nary a word to the old faithful about the abandoned office chair. Some things are better left unsaid.

SNOW Jesse Winchester

Jesse Winchester recorded this song in 1970. Winter was winter back in the last century. Listening to this song reminds me of New England and leaving behind the cold . If only I could leave. Anywhere south as long as it isn't New Jersey.

Ash Wednesday

On Ash Wednesday Jack and I traveled into the city to 5th Avenue. To have ashes of repentance marked as a cross on our foreheads. Jack was not a Catholic. As an atheist Catholic I baptised her from the entrance font. We lit candles afore Bridget of Clare an old pagan saint of healing and then chanted 'mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima culpa' before the anointing priest. I was an altar boy. Latin was my first second language. Amo amas amat the verb to love was first learned. Mea culpa means I'm sorry. For what? There's always something. Numquam amare obliviscor If there is no sin, there is no reason to repent. My friend Alison had attended a Swiss bordering school and wrote to me that Mea culpa doesn't quite translate to "forgive me I have sinned". Close enough I guess for a paganist. Ash Wednesday's origins date back to Babylon. Isthar's consort dies and after forty days of fasting is revived with the coming of Spring. ps Isthar is the goddess of fertility and dates further back to the Sumerians 2000BCE

Opening Line JUNKIE

Junkie was my first encounter with William Burroughs, the infamous beat writer. I can't recall my ag, when I read his first novel. Maybe 18. Maybe 20. His novel was not in the stacks of the town library to the South of Boston in the 60s. Imust have found it in a Harvard Square bookstore.

Junkie along with Last Exit to Brooklyn opened my eyes to the transgressions life. I survived my early years without imitating that life.

In the 70s I sometimes saw Burroughs shuffling across the marble floors of Grand Central Terminal, his steps whispers on stone. His eyes not saw me. I studied him for several seconds. In a suit grayer than his skin. Gaunt. Glazed by heroin or vivid with the need for heroin. I never said anything. His world was his and heroin. Not mine. Some times. Never no more.

"I suppose I'm a junkie, which is a fairly long story." First line Junkie 1953. I was one years old. I'm much older than that now, unlike so many junkies.