Thursday, August 12, 2010

MOBY-DICK, Page 343

Title: "I say, pull like god-dam," - cried the Indian.

8 inches by 5.5 inches
ink and marker on found paper
August 8, 2010

3 comments:

  1. Ah yes...flying sweat drops. The universally accepted comic book symbol of stress, surprise, or tension. I suppose my roots are showing through here.

    Also, something about this line struck me. I never imagined Tashtego "crying" this line out loudly. See, for the last 3 or 4 months I've been taking kickboxing pretty regularly. Every night we work the bag pretty hard, and when I'm in the midst of that almost brutally punishing physical exertion, the world seems to paradoxically shrink down and spread out. I start to feel all alone, just me and the bag, and other sounds come to me as if from very far away. I feel like Tashtego must have felt very much the same. Stubb screaming and shouting and exhorting his men to pull and pull and row and row, harder and harder, to beat the Jungfrau's boats to the whale. In the midst of that, Tashtego's world would shrink, and rather than shout back at Stubb, he would almost breathlessly gasp out the phrase while his body, like a machine, worked the oars.

    A long explanation, I guess, for a very simple piece. But this one, in a very strange way, felt kind of personal for me.

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  2. it is lovely. back to the city, to the computer and, tonight, to blogspot...
    lizzyg in paris

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  3. Thank you Lizzy. I was wondering where you had gone. Welcome back to the city and blogspot.

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