“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.”
While few of us set out to sea “whenever it is a damp, drizzly November” in our souls, most of us, at one time or another, identify with these sentiments of Ishmael, Herman Melville’s narrator in “Moby Dick.” We waken one morning, and an interior fog befouls the sunny day outside the bedroom window. The coffee lacks its usual zing, and our energetic colleagues at work seem as dull as dishwater. We slog through the hours as if up to our waists in a miasmatic swamp, and return home wanting nothing more than an extra glass of wine and the oblivion of sleep.
