Call Me Israel

Aristides conjures the words of Melville;

From Moby Dick, on Ahab:

There was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate, unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance. Not a word he spoke; nor did his officers say aught to him; though by all their minutest gestures and expressions, they plainly showed the uneasy, if not painful, consciousness of being under a troubled master-eye. And not only that, but moody stricken Ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his face; in all the meaningless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe.

And, a little later:

There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gentle rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea, by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all, and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at midday, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!

That, my friends, is nonpareil.

Annoy Mouse waxes poetic:
I no longer see God in the face of others, for He has slipped under the sinewy blue ribbons of the sky and has arisen again unto the commodious depth to say that he is neither you nor I. The pantheon is but the reflection of the broken mirror cast upon the shards of that shattered sea.