The stable earth, the deep salt sea around the old eternal rocks

[sovay]

I got up to spatch greeting me with the news that Biden has dropped out of the race in favor of Harris, which hasn't actually defused my need to scream about how the media coverage of the presidential race seems to exist in a hands-free parallel universe. It doesn't make a difference to my vote: I have been in ethical artichoke mode since 2016. But it still feels like playing a fantasy sport with people's lives. I have to hope that people will vote for the lives and not the sport.

Elsenet a friend of mine linked a piece from Lord Dunsany's Fifty-One Tales (1915). Under the circumstances I should make clear that I am not sharing it as a presentiment of doom or even a resignation to the long run. It reminded me at once of Kipling and James Elroy Flecker and P. J. Hammond. I had never run across it, not even in a couple of collections I have of sea-poetry. I am confident I would have used its last line as an epigraph for something of my own if I had.

The Raft-Builders

All we who write put me in mind of sailors hastily making rafts upon doomed ships.

When we break up under the heavy years and go down into eternity with all that is ours our thoughts like small lost rafts float on awhile upon Oblivion's sea. They will not carry much over those tides, our names and a phrase or two and little else.

They that write as a trade to please the whim of the day, they are like sailors that work at the rafts only to warm their hands and to distract their thoughts from their certain doom; their rafts go all to pieces before the ship breaks up.

See now Oblivion shimmering all around us, its very tranquillity deadlier than tempest. How little all our keels have troubled it. Time in its deeps swims like a monstrous whale; and, like a whale, feeds on the littlest things—small tunes and little unskilled songs of the olden, golden evenings—and anon turneth whale-like to overthrow whole ships.

See now the wreckage of Babylon floating idly, and something there that once was Nineveh; already their kings and queens are in the deeps among the weedy masses of old centuries that hide the sodden hulk of sunken Tyre and make a darkness round Persepolis.

For the rest I dimly see the forms of foundered ships on the sea-floor strewn with crowns.

Our ships were all unseaworthy from the first.

There goes the raft that Homer made for Helen.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

That is such a lovely little story about our little efforts against Oblivion. And this icon came up of its own.

[thisbluespirit]

All we who write put me in mind of sailors hastily making rafts upon doomed ships.

Oh, that is lovely - the whole thing is. Thanks for posting it here! I've never read anything by Lord Dunsany, but watching Dean Spanley recently made me curious, because the film was such an odd thing, and beautifully done, so I was thinking dly about what the original novella was like, or whether the film added the depth; this now, even more so. I think the only thing by him I ever saw in book form anywhere, was a volume in 'my' library (i.e. my official base library when I was a children's librarian), but it was quite hefty and I had many children's books to read for work, so I never tried it. Maybe I shall have to see what I can find by him some time....

[aurumcalendula]

But it still feels like playing a fantasy sport with people's lives.

This so much!

[gwynnega]

But it still feels like playing a fantasy sport with people's lives.

Yes. And now I'm bracing for the whine of: "Can't it be somebody other than her?"

[kore]

Dunsany was so amazing.

[newredshoes]

What is "ethical artichoke mode," beyond an absolutely wonderful phrase?

[asakiyume]

I've got the whole thing open in a tab, but what you quote here is perfect all on its own. Our ships were all unseaworthy from the first

Our ships were all unseaworthy from the first.

[vass]

Oh, wow. I don't know why, but I find that oddly comforting.

"I have been in ethical artichoke mode since 2016."

[kathmandu]

Right there with you, except I've been saying I would vote for a well-behaved houseplant over Trump. At least a plant would sit there quietly improving our CO2 balance.

I have hopes that Harris will do a great deal better than a houseplant.