a description of the amazing and exciting adventures i have here in baltimore--- and other lies.

 
It was on my third tour of the Pequod. We had sailed a thousand leagues east of the Malvinas and for six months not seen a single leviathan. I met there a grizzled veteran of five voyages, two wars and three marriages, of which he insisted the last category was the most fearsome. He could drink a keg of rum for breakfast and a keg of whiskey for lunch, and drank kegs of port when he was "pacing himself." He was so grizzled he had once fought a bear holding a shark, by biting the shark and killing the bear with a toothpick and a pair of tweezers he had somehow fashioned into a gun. He claimed it was called "Greenpeace" because he had knocked out all of the other pieces, and that was the only one left. One day we hit a storm so violent, it would blanch a man from the Congo into a spectre so white as to rival snow. A night so violent as to make Achilles cry out for Thetis to save him. A night so cruel as to make Job abondon God. And, as the ship rocked the most trepiditously in an evening of sickening yaws, I turned to him and said, "Man, d'ye think we'll last the night?" He looked at me and said, with a twinkle in his eye which would make Puck shudder,
"You don't go looking for box, boy! Box, he come lookin' for you!"
Then he rolled over and fell into a sleep as peaceful as the the baby Jesus.

When things are at their darkest, I remember this, and it lifts me to glory.
posted by gregorio at 4:29 PM