Charles Burchfield, Journals, May 27, 1938

Today, the water looks right, and homogenous with the rest of the picture.

Melville, in speaking of the discarded carcass of the whale: “Espied by some timid man-of-war in blundering discovery - vessel from afar, when the distance obscuring the swarming fowls, nevertheless still shows the white mass floating in the sun, and the white spray heaving high against it; straightway the whale’s unharming corpse, with trembling fingers is set down in the log - shoals, rocks, and breakers hereabouts: beware! And for years afterwards, perhaps, ships shun the place; leaping over it as silly sheep leap over a vacuum, because their leader originally leaped there when a stick was held. There’s our law of precedents: there’s your utility of traditions: there’s the story of your obstinate survival of old beliefs never bottomed on the earth, and now not even hovering in the air! There’s orthodoxy!”

Charles E. Burchfield, Journals, May 27, 1938