Mount Greylock
© 2006 Curt Miller
White Whales and Apheresis
The Daily bLog
Call me Ishmael.
The picture today is a view of Mount Greylock pretty much the way Herman Melville saw it from his porch over on Holmes Road in Pittsfield. To him, the shape of the mountain conjured up the image of a great white whale. Moby Dick epitomizes the struggle between man and nature, man and life, in much the same way as Hemingway's "Old Man and the Sea" or London's "To Build a Fire." In all three, the struggle is personal. When we read the stories, we feel connected to the futility and impossibility of the situation at hand...but we can always come back to reality. Such is life with "Gravis."
On this, my second day after apheresis, I feel stronger again than yesterday. Some of the weakness lingers, some of the tingling in my hands remains, but, on the balance, I feel the harpoon has penetrated deep into the flesh of my affliction.
