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My fellow whalers I love you

7.8.24

"A sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there; this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it."

I didn't expect this ending to be so gruesome. There's something so gutting about a bird being nailed to the mainmast as a flag and thus being pulled down with the ship. It's such a haunting image to end on.

There's something also about the motif of birds in this book; the final paragraph mentions small fowls flying over the whirlpool where the ship goes down, the sea-hawk that stole Ahab's hat, the albatross. So many omens through birds and it feels right that we end with one being caught in the shipwreck of Ahab's hubris.

"The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting velocity the line ran through the grooves;—ran foul. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone."

Holy shit the way Melville kills Ahab.

The whale did nothing wrong.

I don’t know why this part broke me, but this part broke me:

I think that there’s something so stubborn and childlike about it, and in the previous chapter (“the symphony”), Melville describes:

“the step-mother world, so long cruel—forbidding—now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that however wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save and to bless.”

And the way Starbuck speaks to him is almost like a young father to a child, not trying to reason with him but to appeal to speak to his best self; the self that retains agency and control over inexplicable desires that are so very human of us, and certainly not foreign to him:

Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all! why should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let us fly these deadly waters! let us home! Wife and child, too, are Starbuck’s—wife and child of his brotherly, sisterly, play-fellow youth; even as thine, sir, are the wife and child of thy loving, longing, paternal old age! Away! let us away!—this instant let me alter the course!

I think it is perhaps the desperate outpouring of emotion that arises precisely because this is the point of no return. This confession is not something they will have to live with, or live down.

A childish and stubborn and truthful train of thought, one I think we’ve all experienced to some extent: I want, I want, I want—without knowing how, or why.

"of the broken keel of Ahab’s wrecked craft the carpenter made him another leg"

Yeah sure why not let's throw another omen on the pile

Starbuck is wishing so so hard that he'd killed this maniac when he had the chance

Today is the second day of the climactic whale chase in Moby Dick, and I am so strongly on the side of the whale, it's hard to believe anyone ever wasn't.

Up to this point, we can side with the whale in a general sense, mostly on the basis of our modern sensibilities about endangered species and industrial exploitation of the environment, which no one expects either Melville or the average contemporary reader to have. The omens, Ishmael/Melville's dropped hints about the fates of the crew, and Starbuck's common sense awareness that Ahab needs to get over this stupid revenge fantasy and do his capitalist duty to hunt whales for oil instead of personal satisfaction are all enough to make everyone aware of the need to turn back and let the damn whale go, but we can grasp how a 19th century audience, primed to Conquer Nature, can succumb - like the sailors - to the thrill of the hunt and prospect of symbolic destruction of Nemesis.

But now that Moby Dick is actually on stage, his behavior is that of an animal trying to get on with its own business and acting in self-defense. Indeed, his self-defense is reasonable and measured. Smashing up four boats with only one fatality? He had a man in his mouth! He may or may not recognize Ahab, but he is familiar with humans in whaleboats, their vulnerabilities, and their aggressive tendencies. He could probably kill the whole lot of them, and from his point of view it would serve them right!

But he's a predator, humans are not his prey, and if he stays to kill them there's a chance their nasty pointy things will damage him severely. Also he knows that the amount of damage he's dealing out is enough to make whalers back off, like sensible predators, and look for easier prey. So he smashes the boats and keeps swimming, encumbered by those stupid ropes. Whales can't unwind ropes; he'll have to find a place to scrape it off or wait till it rots and falls away.

(We all know the meaning of Fedallah's prophecy here, don't we?)

Nothing this whale does is savage, vicious, cruel, malicious, or vindictive.

What happens tomorrow is all on Ahab.

Pedro Novoa aka Pedro Requejo Novoa (Spanish, b. 1964, Madrid, Spain) - Minotaur, 1990, Sculpture: Bronze

"There she blows!—there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!"

“What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike. And all the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this unsounded sea! Look! see yon Albicore! who put it into him to chase and fang that flying-fish? Where do murderers go, man! Who’s to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar? But it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky; and the air smells now, as if it blew from a far-away meadow; they have been making hay somewhere under the slopes of the Andes, Starbuck, and the mowers are sleeping among the new-mown hay. Sleeping? Aye, toil we how we may, we all sleep at last on the field. Sleep? Aye, and rust amid greenness; as last year’s scythes flung down, and left in the half-cut swaths—Starbuck!”

I love everything about this passage but line about the judge – God – being dragged to the bar

"That glad, happy air, that winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the step-mother world, so long cruel—forbidding—now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that however wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save and to bless. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop."

To me this is one of the most moving passages of the whole book so far. The visual of the of the cruel and indifferent universe hugging Ahab and that allowing him to cry a single tear. That tear being more valuable than the entire Pacific.

Shitty Biologist aesthetic: what do you call body horror if it seems like the person in question is genuinely pretty chill about it? body delight. body acceptance. body be not afraid

i wake up feeling back to normal -> get out of bed and gets ready -> i'm tired again ):

i think i finally got covid, lost my sense of smell and taste. haven't had fever for almost five days, but i'm still so goddamn tired. starting to get stressed out about missing classes urgh

Out of Touch

Pay me a living wage and give me a couple of red bulls and I'd create a whole moby dick cartoon in a fever

"What does this have to do with politics??" *Posts soviet suprematist painter Malevich*

my second favorite thing in Nosferatu (1922) is when it cuts to the "werewolf" and it's a hyena with the saddest gentlest eyes you've ever seen

Tatsuro Yamashita utterly killing it doing backup vocals for his wife, Mariya Takeuchi, at her Souvenir concert in 2000.

does anyone have that unsettling oil painting of a dark window with a sheet leading out into the darkness? it did the rounds on tumblr a while ago and i need itttt

dirty chai: shot of espresso

filthy chai: shot of espresso and shot of baileys

nasty chai: shot of espresso, shot of baileys, scoop of kratom

squalid chai: shot of espresso, shot of baileys, scoop of kratom, squirt of vape juice