And a youth said, Speak to us of Friendship. And he answered, saying: Your friend is your needs answered.
The Prophet – Kahlil Gibran (1923)
The moon is a constant companion. It’s always there, sometimes shining brightly, sometimes obscured by clouds, but it’s a reassuring presence in the night sky.
Like a friend, the moon is ever-present yet often silent, offering its gentle light and gravitational pull to Earth and all who gaze upon it.
But old Dim, as soon as he’d slooshied this dollop of song like a lomtick of redhot meat plonked on your plate, let off one of his vulgarities which in this case was a lip-trump followed by a dog-howl followed by two fingers pronging twice at the air followed by a clowny guffaw.
My sensations were strange. Let me try to explain them.
When I was a child, I well remember a somewhat similar circumstance that befell me; whether it was a reality or a dream, I never could entirely settle.
The circumstance was this: I had been cutting up some caper or other–I think it was trying to crawl up the chimney, as I had seen a little sweep do a few days previous; and my stepmother who, somehow or other, was all the time whipping me, or sending me to bed supperless,–my mother dragged me by the legs out of the chimney and packed me off to bed, though it was only two o’clock in the afternoon of the 21st June, the longest day in the year in our hemisphere.
I felt dreadfully. But there was no help for it, so up stairs I went to my little room in the third floor, undressed myself as slowly as possible so as to kill time, and with a bitter sigh got between the sheets.
Moby Dick, CHAPTER 4, The Counterpane by Herman Melville
There was an indescribably hideous monster standing quietly behind him. Arthur yawed wildly as his skin tried to jump one way and his skeleton the other, whilst his brain tried to work out which of his ears it most wanted to crawl out of.
“Bet you weren’t expecting to see me again,” said the monster.
Life, the Universe, and Everything by Douglas Adams