So tonight, as we drove home, we passed the frontage of our home and admired my Art Editor’s efforts:
I then, of course, had to disrupt her critique by suggesting the tree was “unsupported”, by which I meant, but failed to elucidate, that further house adornments might be in order to further enhance her efforts. But she, puzzled, asked why she should lash the tree to the house, for wasn’t its current support system adequate to the effort?
Ah, to lash, to hold tight, to steer yon ship into the teeth of the hurricane by dint of lashing the old wooden wheel into place and not allow the ship to heel over in the grip of the wild wind; worse yet, there are darker nuances of meaning to be found and measured, and those are what really came to mind: the vengeful Captain Ahab of the Pequod, notorious for lashing his crew onward in their relentless harvest of whale-kind as he pursued his private war against the greatest of the leviathans, in the end finds himself lashed to the white devil itself as it readies itself to become the vessel of his doom in a great depth-sounding dive in the last pages of Moby Dick….
So, ah, does anyone know where to find blow up effigies of white whales, suitable for positioning in the garden below our Christmas Tree, ready to take its revenge on this cousin to the wood composing the Pequod?
