Message: 35594824, 90 lines
 Posted: 10:30am EDT, Mon May 23/94, imported: 10:31am EDT, Mon May 23/94
 Subject: Ahab's diary, for what I think is episode 45
 To: Kris Fazzari, thari@umich.edu
 From: jlarke@css.itd.umich.edu
 
 	You'd think that after all this time I would have
 learned better than to cope with depression by reading "The
 Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." But it would seem that
 pouring peroxide into open wounds is so much fun that I have
 to do it metaphorically as well as physically. I wish that I
 felt some sort of guilt over the whole situation- that would
 motivate me to go out, find Kimbdyl, apologize
 extravagantly, and promise to improve. She'd hit me anyway,
 but it would give me something to do.
 	Right now, though, I'm feeling like this is mostly
 her fault, that my behavior is Ahab-normal and nothing to be
 ashamed of- or at least no more shameful than being Ahab in
 the first place. I feel badly that I hurt someone I love,
 but that's not at all the same thing. If she has been hurt
 by something that no sensible person would be hurt by, it's
 her Serpent-spawned little problem. Yeah, that's it- the
 tough guy approach, that's sure to make everything work out
 all right.
 	OK, so I want to go after her and make things
 alright anyway, even if I don't feel like it's my fault. But
 once I find her, what am I supposed to say? It's not like I
 can assure her it won't happen again. I'm not sure I would
 even apologize for it. Given some of the things she's said
 to me, she's hardly in a convincing moral position. So I'm
 stuck where I am, stewing in my very own emotional boiling
 pot.
 
 	Which makes me several times more hypocritical than
 usual to be giving Foster advice about doing the right
 thing. But the boy seems to have no sense at all. "I didn't
 want to worry Dad by leaving, so instead I conspired with
 Vetch to turn him into a coat rack." Genius. As I've told
 him over and over again, telling the truth in this family
 saves an awful lot of trouble.
 	I like some of his other logic too. He refused to
 talk to Felix because Felix would have tried to stop him
 from taking the Logrus. Now, Foster had very good personal
 reasons for wanting to do this, and Felix would have been a
 real weenie to say no without providing some other solution
 to Foster's problem. He might even be accused of being a bad
 father. But Foster would rather turn him into a coat rack
 and then frame himself than call his Dad a bad father- even
 if that's exactly what he is.
 	This is not a point of view that the son of Deirdre
 and Corwin can readily understand.
 
 	In any case I told him to try to undo the spell and
 then come clean to his Dad. Felix responds strongly to
 emotion, and Foster is radiating so much guilt that on
 Shadow Earth the FCC would ban him.
 	I also told him that you should always tell the
 truth on the first pass. Many people will respond positively
 to trust, and it gives you moral superiority over the rest.
 Those who don't prove trustworthy you can lie to from then
 on, or kill if their rank allows it. Those who do are not
 only likely to be useful, but they make good friends, and
 I'd think Foster could use some.
 	I also said that free will is important. I think I
 lost him on that one. In any moment of decision, you can do
 the right thing or the wrong thing. If you never get the
 chance to decide, you may not be able to screw up, but you
 can't do the right thing either. I suppose that for Foster
 the Eternal Pessimist the important thing to do is stop
 people from doing wrong things to him, but my rules are
 different. I decided a long time ago that I believed in the
 perfectability of the human (and hopefully Amberite) spirit,
 that people can be enlightened to the point where they will
 do the right thing. Since then I've decided that while
 perfection isn't likely, improvement is certainly possible.
 Foster's way assumes people always try to hurt you. I prefer
 to assume that people happen to hurt me, and might not do it
 again if we can reach an understanding.
 
 	Of course, we can put that on file with the
 Department of Ulterior Motives. What I really mean to say is
 that I prefer to assume that Kimdyl and I keep hurting each
 other because we don't yet know how to talk to each other
 properly. I hope that we can get over this immature phase
 before our son grows old enough to be hurt by it. I hope
 that, as Elliot wrote, "There will be time... time for you
 and time for me, and time yet for a hundred indecisions, and
 for a hundred visions and revisions". I hope she comes back
 soon.
 
 	But I've also read to the end of the poem, and the
 part of me that remembers who it feels to be Foster keeps
 trying to tell me something.
 
 	"I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
 	 I do not think they will sing to me."