/lit/ - Literature

>>23144697
Ok what about Moby Dick

>>23144697


The others were all without specie having drunk their purses empty at the last tavern but the judge delved into the recesses of his clothing and brought forth a couple of small bronzecoloured coins and with them he purchased from the dilapidated icebox at the rear of the store a wrapped cone of confectionary of a style the men did not recognize and unwrapped it and broke it open and set it in an empty water dish and retired a few yards.

The possum approached and ate and the judge produced his sketchbook and began to sketch the animal with quick deft strokes. The naked mole hands gripping the rim. The cuneiform nose chasing the melting block.

Hey judge, called one of the men.

The judge looked up and raised his eyebrows.

What else you got in that book.

Wordlessly the judge handed the sketchbook across and the man wiped his travelstained hand on his shirt and flipped the pages back. Other creatures, other repasts. The book it seemed was both old and welltraveled for the tableaux therein progressed through an assortment of pencilshades and inks and further back they were faded and worn and though the subjects remained the same the backgrounds changed. Trees, shrubs. Dwellings alien to New Mexico and after a while alien to the whole American continent. The man handed the book back.

Whats the purpose of it, he said. When youve seen one critter eatin a ice-cream Id say youve seen em all.

A possum going hungry is an affront to me, said the judge. I’d have them all well fed daily.

Thats a fools errand. No man can feed ever critter in the world.

Indeed so.

You ever passed a possum you didnt feed, said another man.

Not yet, said the judge.

The creature had finished the meal and after snuffling briefly around the damp cardboard shreds it scurried away and the judge gazed after it with an air of immense and benign satisfaction.

You ever try to tame one of them things, someone asked.


[1/2]

>>23145391


To tame a wild creature would be to set its nature at naught, said the judge. The man who would act so has in truth no regard for it because he wishes not to preserve the recipient’s world but to assimilate it into his own. How would such a man’s benevolence differ from the hawk’s for the quail?

Yet you are disturbing the creature’s world by the very act of feeding it, said Tobin.

The judge smiled. It is in the nature of the possum to scavenge food it finds. Food dropped with intent, food dropped without. The volition of its benefactor is no part of the possum’s universe and its nature remains thereby unperverted.

Tobin said nothing and the vendor spoke into the silence.

Tengo más comida, señor, he said. Habrá más animales.

Of those who understood the sally one laughed and one looked at the judge but he smiled as if he too appreciated the jest.

También habrá más vendedores de comida, he said.

The shopkeeper accepted the rebuke with a shrug and a smile of his own and the judge rose and put away his book and mounted his horse and the others did likewise and they set out into the wabbling heat and before half an hour was passed they were lost to sight down the arroyo.


[2/2]

nice story anon

>wabbling

>>23144697
What cat breed is that, bruda?

>>23144697
>The possum ate a vanilla ice cream today. today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know

>>23145560
bah, fucked it up but you get it

>>23144697
I've never seen a possum irl only its representation through the camera

The possum
It ate vanilla ice cream
Yes
YES
The possum is full

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a possum in possession of a large appetite must be in want of an ice-cream.

>>23145595
KEK

>>23145595
clever