All day long I've been thinking about the feeling of getting a tattoo, and how much I miss it. It probably has something to do with the fact that my mom is coming to visit, and both of the tattoos I've gotten so far were:

a) a day that my mom left town, right after dropping her off at the airport, and
b) while my mom was visiting, in my kitchen, and she even helped draw the tattoo! :-)

The next tattoo that I want to get, methinks, is a series of bubbles going up the spine, from out of the sea grass, which is sprouting from the seed at the base. My love of bubbles knows no bounds.

Last night at the Evangenitals show at Tre Stage audience members blew bubbles during Quee Queg. Words cannot describe the beauty and happiness I feel watching bubbles waft by, illuminated by the lights, during that song. It is a slice of heavenly heaven on the heaven that is earth, every time.

In other news...

This is an old piece of writing from my 'ol play [or, the whale] that has been on my mind tonight, due to the bubble theme of the past 24 hours. I hope you enjoy it.


In the final moment,
when the day is done,
when the captain becomes one,
when it’s all complete,
and he turns into himself,
he turns into himself,
that is to say,
in the end,
a perfect moment,
pure light,
a clean world,
a complete man,
a floating globe,
a temporary eternity,
the starting point,
beginning of all geometry,
such a clean world,
even if it only lasts for a second,
'tis long enough,
for mine eyes have seen,
at the perfect moment,
a point of light,
on the horizon,
a clean world,
completely transparent,
as is everything,
as is it all,
alter of other,
either or whether,
before or before,
sink or swim,
to burst inward,
to undergo violent compression,
to collapse inward
as if from external pressure,
the act or action
of bringing to
[or]
as if to
a center;
integration.

And in the final moment,
all you are is all you were,
you remember.
And memory is nothing but air,
and all you are.

(Copywright 2001, excerpted from [or, the whale] by Juli Crockett)

If you only read one chapter of Herman Melville's Moby Dick, let it be Chapter 23, "The Lee Shore". It rocks my soul boat, every time.

In case you don't own the book, here's the Chapter, in full, all 6 inches of it, for your enjoyment:

Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall, newlanded mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn.

When on that shivering winter's night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her helm but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years' dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet. Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me only say that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that's kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship's direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights 'gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea's landlessness again; for refuge's sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!

Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?

But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God- so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing- straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!