Scene II

Ahab’s quarters. Ahab sits going over maps of ocean currents and whale feeding grounds. You have no power, you have no strength, you are reduced to a gelatinous blob, you are a jellyfish. We float: we spread ourselves out universally over the face of the whole sea: we are many: we are anarchy. We have no leader, we have no master, we are angry, we are tormented with dreams that keep coming and keep coming. This is your little crystal, this is your little coin: they are hard like bone, they are solid, they are real. You are nebulous, you are like a cloud or a jellyfish or a shadow, you drift from here to there at random. What did you call this spirit out of its home under the earth to do?—were you conjuring strange spirits for sex and pleasure?—were you conjuring incubi and succubae for some demonic orgy?—is this your life, then, going about raising the dead and killing the living? You are bitter poison, you are disease, you are sickness and plague. You are mildew invading houses and killing crops, you are sour fungus, you are moistness and mold. Where did this jungle sprout from, what are all these strange flowering plants, what are these trees and all this tangled undergrowth? Still, you are wild with urges: you are made of your urges: this is your world: you have urges. You reach out for pleasures with your long tentacles, you grasp at things and stuff them into your mouth, you pierce things with your phallus, you are constantly grasping at pleasurable things with your tentacles: this is disgusting, you are disgusting, you are gelatinous, you are the eater eating. What is this mission, what is this passion, what is this obsession with fire and destruction? The fire consumes everything, this is a wet fire, a cold icy fire, with blue flames and red flames, this is magical fire, it lives in water, it lives in ice, it freezes everything and turns everything to ash; if one merely looks at it straight on one will turn to ash. This is the freezing fire. One tiny flame will give an arm frostbite. It is the devil’s fire. It is I.