I'm on a long haul. Listenin' to Moby Dick on tape. I was riveted to Chapter 23, which is short, (six inches long Melville says). Ishmael watches the sailor Bulkington steerin' the Pequod and writes of him as a restless pioneer, fated to die at sea. And he considers this kind of death infinitely preferable to fading away through cowardice and comfort:
"When on that shivering winter's night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her helm but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years' dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet.
Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me only say that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that's kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship's direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights 'gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea's landlessness again; for refuge's sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!
Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?
But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God—so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing—straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!"
Better is it to perish in that howling infinite. Talk to y'all when I get back.
-Tom
1 comment:
Yeah, everyone pretty much figures all truck-drivers are not capable of such pursuits.
Which reminds me of the time Bill Hicks and I were in a waffle house down South, readin' our books, and the waitress there asked, "Whatcha readin' for?" Not: "whatcha readin'?" ...but, 'whatcha readin FOR?' Bill told her, "Well, one big reason is to be sure I won't end up bein' a fuckin' waffle house waitress."
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