The monstrous snail of the idiocracy

Our final monument is now weathering the return of the northerly winds. It seems as though time is running out. The monsterous snail is in its last days of suspension along the seawall. It perches there reaching up to its slab of marble, as a reminder of the slowness of our evolution, but even more so of the sucking and dragging back that this great earth performs on us daily as we attempt to alienate ourselves from her limitations.

We would like to mention more on the subject of Jules Verne's visit to Wellington as a young man, but that moment now has become so shrouded in the past that it may well have taken on the guise of mythology. It is true however that our wit has perhaps run its course, and that the monstrous inaction that sits just out of sight, the abject and unthinkable other is coming now to meet us bearing with it the symbol of the vortex from which all things commenced.

"There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of god. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch, slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever."

Herman Melville Moby Dick