Saluting every snowplow and salt spreader going down my street with gratitude and pride in my heart
Living near a DSNY garage and following @nycsanitation on Instagram has turned me into a Sanitation Dept Stan
Maybe that’ll be my tattoo
Doctors hate this one weird trick:
-Prep a coffin
-Line it with hard tack
-Suddenly remember you still have 3.5 chapters left of Moby Dick
-Recover
Not Ahab demanding his harpoon barbs be tempered in fresh pagan blood 😭🐋
Queequeg, such a legend…saves himself from death by suddenly remembering he has unfinished business on shore…I wish this method worked for me 🐋
I fell behind with my reading and posting…in fairness to myself, knowing what comes next, I was loath to depart the peaceful verdure draped whale skelly in the arsacides 🐋
What if we kissed inside the whale skeleton draped all over with fresh verdure, where Life folded Death and Death trellised Life? 🐋
Ishmael full-body tattoo reveal (Queequeg’s influence?) 🐋
An embarrassment of riches to have them so close together on the text
Ishmael slyly bragging that Tranquo, king of Tranque, invited him to stay for the holidays as a special guest and they went to see a whale skeleton together…sounds kinda romantic if you ask me 🐋
Partial list of silly names from Moby Dick:
- the learned Fogo von Slack
- Dr. Bunger, ships surgeon with a dent in his head
- Fitz Swackhammer
- Dr. Snodhead, prof of Low Dutch and High German
- Tranquo, king of Tranque
🐋
“Bunger and Boomer” is a beautiful name for a comedy duo 🐋
“You Bunger! Was there ever such another Bunger in the watery world? Bunger, when you die, you ought to die in a pickle, you dog; you should be preserved to future ages, you rascal”
Feels like I am reading Tom and Greg dialog from Succession and not Moby Dick 🐋
“Great pains, small gains for those who ask the world to solve them, it cannot solve itself.” 🐋
So many deep ponderings on the doubloon, but imo the Manxman has the biggest galaxy brain take with his assertion that the doubloon is the ship’s belly button 🐋
So many great scenes of work—
The Belly of Paris: Charcuterie and wholesale food markets
L’Assomoir: Laundry (all the little irons they use!) and a blacksmithing scene
La Bête Humaine: Steam engine driving
L’Argent: Stockbroking
Nana: Showbiz
The Ladies’ Paradise: mass market retail
Etc etc
If you like me are loving the descriptions of how whaling work actually gets done (with accompanying metaphors on how it’s all a microcosm for life itself), may I recommend Emile Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series 🐋
These men are moisturized. Happy. In their lanes. Focused. Flourishing (till the next whale is spotted) 🐋
TFW you are a mariner going about suffused in unctuousness 🐋
Eyes on the road, Ishmael!!! (Understandable though, Queequeg is very excellent)
Not Ishmael staring too long at beautiful Queequeg in the try-pot flames, going into a trance, and nearly capsizing the ship 🐋
WHY is Ishmael fantasizing about Louis Le Gros thigh tartare 😭 🐋
(Each of us starting in our respective pots, polishing away, making mathematical discoveries)
What if we kissed over the polished iron lips of the try-pots 🐋
I’m sorry, they do WHAT with the whale penis skin??? 🐋
According to Wikipedia he may have gotten replaced by Queequeg??
Sign me up for Spermaceti Immersion Therapy 🐋
Ishmael gazing moonily into various crewmembers’ eyes while gently squeezing their hands in a vat of unctuous spermaceti is beautiful…like a Whaler’s version of The Artist is Present 🐋
