IVIV20: 'Glittering mosaic of doubt"

[alice wellintown]

When Ishmael sails into the Pacific he describes the confluence of his
doubt and the glittering masaic.

When gliding by the Bashee isles we emerged at last upon the great
South Sea; were it not for other things, I could have greeted my dear
Pacific with uncounted thanks, for now the long supplication of my
youth was answered; that serene ocean rolled eastwards from me a
thousand leagues of blue.

Those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod: legend had it that St.
John the Evangelist was buried in Ephesus in modern-day Turkey, but
that he was not dead, just sleeping in anticipation of being raised
again. It was said that the ground over his grave moved up and down
with his breaths, the way a sleeper's blankets do Potters' Fields:
burial sites for unknown or indigent peopleMagian: contemplative, like
a Zoroastrian priestMoles: stone or earthworks constructions in the
water that connect two land massesLave: washZones: encirclesPan: the
universe, thought by pantheists to be God Delta: a triangular
spreading of the mouth of a river Vaulted: archedThere is, one knows
not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings
seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath; like those fabled
undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St. John.
And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery
prairies and Potters' Fields of all four continents, the waves should
rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of
mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all
that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing
like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by
their restlessness.

To any meditative Magian rover, this serene Pacific, once beheld, must
ever after be the sea of his adoption. It rolls the midmost waters of
the world, the Indian ocean and Atlantic being but its arms. The same
waves wash the moles of the new-built Californian towns, but yesterday
planted by the recentest race of men, and lave the faded but still
gorgeous skirts of Asiatic lands, older than Abraham; while all
between float milky-ways of coral isles, and low-lying, endless,
unknown Archipelagoes, and impenetrable Japans. Thus this mysterious,
divine Pacific zones the world's whole bulk about; makes all coasts
one bay to it; seems the tide-beating heart of earth. Lifted by those
eternal swells, you needs must own the seductive god, bowing your head
to Pan.

But few thoughts of Pan stirred Ahab's brain, as standing like an iron
statue at his accustomed place beside the mizen rigging, with one
nostril he unthinkingly snuffed the sugary musk from the Bashee isles
(in whose sweet woods mild lovers must be walking), and with the other
consciously inhaled the salt breath of the new found sea; that sea in
which the hated White Whale must even then be swimming. Launched at
length upon these almost final waters, and gliding towards the
Japanese cruising-ground, the old man's purpose intensified itself.
His firm lips met like the lips of a vice; the Delta of his forehead's
veins swelled like overladen brooks; in his very sleep, his ringing
cry ran through the vaulted hull, Stern all! the White Whale spouts
thick blood!



On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 8:42 PM, Richard Fiero <rfiero at gmail.com> wrote:
> A glittering mosaic is what the surface of a large body of water appears to
> be much of the time. A glittering mosaic of doubt can be when the
> reflections off the surface makes it difficult to tell what direction the
> water is moving in, what's a duck. what's a seagull, a seal, a piece of
> debris, a bottle with a note enclosed.
>