Time out of Mind/Mind out of time

[David Morris]

>From: Elainemmbell at aol.com
>"Or is it, that as an essence whiteness is not so much a color as the 
>visible absence of color, and at the same time the concrete of all colors; 
>from last passage of Chapter 42, "The Whiteness of the Whale", Moby Dick

And this chapter follows another great one with the title "Moby Dick" (which 
I am now reading for the 2nd time - the first time was in high school, and I 
cheated then):

"Nor did wild rumors of all sorts fail to exaggerate, and still the more 
horrify the true histories of these deadly encounters. For not only do 
fabulous rumors naturally grow out of the very body of all surprising 
terrible events, - as the smitten tree gives birth to its fungi; but, in 
maritime life, far more than in that of terra firma, wild rumors abound, 
wherever there is any adequate reality for them to cling to. And as the sea 
surpasses the land in this matter, so the whale fishery surpasses every 
other sort of maritime life, in the wonderfulness and fearfulness of the 
rumors which sometimes circulate there. For not only are whalemen as a body 
unexempt from that ignorance and superstitiousness hereditary to all 
sailors; but of all sailors, they are by all odds the most directly brought 
into contact with whatever is appallingly astonishing in the sea; face to 
face they not only eye its greatest marvels, but, hand to jaw, give battle 
to them. Alone, in such remotest waters, that though you sailed a thousand 
miles, and passed a thousand shores, you would not come to any chiselled 
hearthstone, or aught hospitable beneath that part of the sun; in such 
latitudes and longitudes, pursuing too such a calling as he does, the 
whaleman is wrapped by influences all tending to make his fancy pregnant 
with many a mighty birth.
[...]
One of the wild suggestings referred to, as at last coming to be linked with 
the White Whale in the minds of the superstitiously inclined, was the 
unearthly conceit that Moby Dick was ubiquitous; that he had actually been 
encountered in opposite latitudes at one and the same instant of time.
[...]
Forced into familiarity, then, with such prodigies as these; and knowing 
that after repeated, intrepid assaults, the White Whale had escaped alive; 
it cannot be much matter of surprise that some whalemen should go still 
further in their superstitions; declaring Moby Dick not only ubiquitous, but 
immortal (for immortality is but ubiquity in time); that though groves of 
spears should be planted in his flanks, he would still swim away unharmed; 
or if indeed he should ever be made to spout thick blood, such a sight would 
be but a ghastly deception; for again in unensanguined billows hundreds of 
leagues away, his unsullied jet would once more be seen.









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