Some vague ramblings, senseless and aimless as a colorless moth
Guh, my friends, the heat has come to torment me once more.
I do so despise the summer. I picked this week for my vacation thinking it would still be nice and mild, like it was last year, but I was wrong! It’s always nice to have a break from work, but in the future I may elect to take more time in the fall or spring, rather than the doldrums of summer.
Continue reading “Chapter 104: The Fossil Whale”Ahhhh, nice to be able to get back to this.
I’ve been so busy lately, very stressed out about this project at work, plus I got sick last weekend. Ugh. But now, I’m on vacation, time to get back to my true passion: writing about writing about the sea.
Continue reading “Chapter 103: Measurement of the Whale’s Skeleton”Guhh, it’s hot.
The one bad thing about living in this apartment, rather than at my parents’ place in West Seattle, is that it gets hotter and stays hot longer. We always had a nice breeze coming off the water, but now I’m inland! A who two or three miles from the Salish Sea, probably! Merely on a river valley… alas! Anyway, I’ll go turn my fan on and we can get to the business at hand.
Continue reading “Chapter 102: A Bower in the Arascides”Alright, we got the big one outta the way, let’s keep moving!
I’ve been feeling energized lately. Maybe it’s just that the weather has cooled down a bit, but my creative juices are flowing again. And this chapter is a great canvas for my, shall we say, creative interpretations of this book.
Continue reading “Chapter 101: The Decanter”Ahhhhhhhhh, a hundred chapters! Hard to believe I’ve made it this far. It’s very funny to me how the first 75 ot so posts were written in about a year, while the latter 25 have taken… significantly longer, shall we say. The events of the last, oh, three years have not exactly been conducive to my creative endeavors, or those of many others, I imagine.
Speaking of, I must apologize for the gap between posts, once again. I’ve taken a crack at this chapter several times, I got a bit too… in my own head about it. Lost the thread about what I was even doing with this blog for a while, went through cycles of overwhelming confidence and a complete lack, you know how it is.
Continue reading “Chapter 100: Leg and Arm”Hoo boy, this is a big one.
I’ve really got my work cut out for me this time ’round. This is a very important and fascinating chapter, and has been the subject of a lot of study and discussion over the years. It’s not hard to see why, there’s obviously a lot going on here, and I will do my level best to untangle it, and perhaps offer a bit of my own commentary on top of all the others.
Continue reading “Chapter 99: The Doubloon”Ahhhhh, my vacation is nearly over, but I managed to find time to do a bit more reading.
This chapter is a bit meatier, a hint at things to come, and it’s a really good one. We’re back into some classic Ishmael philosophizing here. I simply had to tear myself away from various JRPGs to get down to writing about it, before the specter of the work week comes once more to sap all of my creative energies.
Continue reading “Chapter 98: Stowing Down and Clearing Up”Ahhh, time for a nice, short chapter.
Surely that means my post will be nice and short as well, right? Well, that remains to be seen. There are some interesting ideas to be teased out of this one, I think.
Continue reading “Chapter 97: The Lamp”Ah, time for a nice short chapter. I believe the next one is too, we’re kinda of building up to one of the big setpiece chapters of this book, one that’s been argued over for years and years by academics, rich with meaning and Thematic Weight.
This chapter concerns a mysterious object that is harvested from the dead whale, as another part of the rituals of extracting everything of value that can possibly be found. It’s a little obscure what part of this beast is being referred to in this chapter, but hopefully I can elucidate any questions it may leave you with
Continue reading “Chapter 95: The Cassock”Sometimes it’s easy to go skimming along through this book and then be suddenly met with an ugly reminder that it was written before the civil war.
Naturally, this is any time a Black character shows up. It happens again this chapter, and while it’s not as bad as the cook, there are still some off-hand comments and just… general weirdness and discomfort around the portrayal of Black characters in this book. Like I think it’s about as good as you can expect from any white writer in 1850, but still, it’s a bit jarring.
Continue reading “Chapter 93: The Castaway”
The Beige Moth 