Blood From the Shoulder of Pallas

Tonight I wanted to share with you a piece of work which I consider specially inspiring. It is called "Blood From the Shoulder of Pallas" and it was written by Alan Moore, an awesome graphic novel writer (awesome is such a weak word to allude him). He is considered the best graphic novel writer in history, and one of the most influent English writers in the last 50 years. Should I say it clearer? He is one of my favourites, and he deserves a post. This fragment, "Blood From the Shoulder of Pallas" is one of the prose pieces included in Watchmen, one of his most known comic books. It is supposed to be an article written by one of Moore's characters in Watchmen, Dan Dreiberg, who is an ornithologist.

With no further delay, I will show you a fragment of the beautiful article.

"It was a bird advanced in years, its shriek that of a deranged old man, wheeling madly through the dark and freezing sky against the ragged night clouds, and the sound halted me in my footsteps. It is a fallacy to suppose that owls screech to startle their prey from hiding, as some have suggested; the cry of the hunting owl is a voice from Hell, and it turns the scrabbling voles to statues, roots the weasel to the soil. In my instant of paralysis there on the glistening macadam, between the sleeping auto-mobiles, I understood the purpose behind the cry with a biting clarity, the way I'd understood it as a boy, belly flat against the warm summer earth. In that extended and timeless moment, I felt the kinship of simple animal fear along with all those other creatures much smaller and more vulnerable than I who had heard the scream as I had heard it, were struck motionless as I was. The owl was not attempting to frighten his food into revealing itself. Perched with disconcerting stillness upon its branch for hours, drinking in the darkness through dilated and thirsty pupils, the owl had already spotted its dinner. The screech served merely to transfix the chosen morsel, pinning it to the ground with a shrill nail of blind, helpless terror. Not knowing which of us had been selected, I stood frozen along with the rodents of the field, my heart hammering as it waited for the sudden clutch of sharpened steel fingers that would provide my first and only indication that I was the predetermined victim.

[...]

The moment had passed. I could move again, along with all the relieved, invisible denizens of the tall gass.We were safe.It wasn't screaming for us, not this time.

[...]

Nowadays, when I observe some specimen of Caine noctua, I try to look past the fine grey down on the toes, to see beyond the white spots arranged in neat lines, like a firework display across its brow. Instead, I try to see the bird whose image the Greeks carved into their coins, sitting patiently at the ear of the Goddess Pallas Athene, silently sharing her immortal wisdom. Perhaps, instead of measuring the feathered tufts surmounting its ears, we should speculate on what those ears may have heard. Perhaps when considering the manner in which it grips its branch, with two toes in front and the reversible outer toe clutching from behind, we should allow ourselves to pause for a moment, and acknowledge that these same claws must once have drawn blood from the shoulder of Pallas."

I know my selection is quite long, but everything is a must in that text, so if you want to read it full, I'll leave a link down below. Of course, I strongly recommend reading Watchmen, you won't be disappointed. 

LINK: http://coldclaritymountain.blogspot.com.es/2011/04/blood-from-shoulder-of-pallas-written_15.html

NOTICE: This won't be the only post about Alan Moore and his work. 

Goodnight!