Prairies and Oceans
Momarita joining the ship reminds me of one of the things I love about M-D: the analogy of ocean and prairie. We're all Kansans in my family...which for us means the prairie is a big thing. (Oh..you all can call her Momarita if you want, but you can also call her Carol...she's a groovy girl....don't worry, you don't need to censor yourself in your posts. She's dealt with me for 34 years--she isn't easily shocked.)
Although I don't remember a specific mention in M-D to the fact that indeed the prairie is an ocean floor (a truth that seems to have much meaning in itself...more on that in a sec), there are a lot of references to the similarities between the rolling ocean and the rolling prairie.
One of my favorites is further up in the book but for those who aren't finished, yet, I'll give you a taste of loomings to come (from the Pacific chapter):
"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.
There 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."
I think it would be lovely if the next time someone flippantly dissmisses KS as flat, I would whip out that last paragraph...this is what I feel when I'm driving across I-70...it's the dust of the hidden soul of the ocean, now in memorial. It's the millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls...the waters have receded but the ocean floor and blankets of sediments of shadows, dreams, lives, and souls are below our feet every day.
Moby-Dick06 (technorati tag)
Although I don't remember a specific mention in M-D to the fact that indeed the prairie is an ocean floor (a truth that seems to have much meaning in itself...more on that in a sec), there are a lot of references to the similarities between the rolling ocean and the rolling prairie.
One of my favorites is further up in the book but for those who aren't finished, yet, I'll give you a taste of loomings to come (from the Pacific chapter):
"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.
There 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."
I think it would be lovely if the next time someone flippantly dissmisses KS as flat, I would whip out that last paragraph...this is what I feel when I'm driving across I-70...it's the dust of the hidden soul of the ocean, now in memorial. It's the millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls...the waters have receded but the ocean floor and blankets of sediments of shadows, dreams, lives, and souls are below our feet every day.
Moby-Dick06 (technorati tag)
posted by Erica at 5:17 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home