An ex special ops guy once told me you don’t understand Moby Dick until you’re thirty.

I’m not sure he meant the dense metaphors or the inexplicable yearning to have adventures before you die, to ship out, to leave behind familiar space and explore mythical space—the places you can barely concieve, where there might lurk frost giants or kraken or Amazon warriors. Maybe he meant the urgency of feeling your life stiffen up like your joints, and knowing that even at 25 you aren’t as free as you were at 19.

So I suppose that it is appropriate that this man is trying to translate Moby Dick into Emoji, the popular Japanese uber—emoticons.

This is what going to sea is about: mixing worlds, daunting tasks, uncharted territory and a secret confidence that whatever this turns into you can’t afford to be too worried about the consequences. Or, you could have The Book Bench’s take: “No, seriously—why?”