March 11: Bulkington, My Father, Keeping the Trains Running

Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall, newlanded mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn.

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!

Bulkington is a minor character.  Melville doesn't waste a whole lot of ink on him as compared to Ahab or Queequeg.  In this short chapter, Ishmael waxes philosophic on men like Bulkington, who steer the Pequod, go down on landing missions with Captain Kirk and Spock, sing in the chorus in Le Mis, or fill the seats at the Oscars when Jack Nicholson or Meryl Streep have to go to the bathroom.  Graduate students don't write doctoral dissertations about Bulkington.  Fans at Star Trek conventions don't line up to get Bulkington's autograph.  If Bulkington misses a perfomance, Jean Valjean will still get a standing ovation at the curtain call.  And Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep will still empty their bladders if Bulkington isn't sitting in their seats.

The Bulkingtons of the world do their jobs and don't complain or call attention to themselves.  They aren't there for glory or accolades.  They are there simply to keep the trains running on time.  My father was a Bulkington.  He worked his whole life, keeping faucets running, furnaces heating, toilets flushing.  In the weeks since he's been gone, I can't count the number of times that a person has come up to me with a story of how he helped them in a difficult time.

That's one thing I learned from my father.  I never wanted to be a plumber.  He knew that.  But he did teach me about the necessity of hard work.  He taught me never to turn my back on a person in need.  We might not have seen eye-to-eye on a whole lot of things, politically or socially or spiritually, but I knew that, if my sewer backed up or my sink drain was leaking, he would be there to help me.  Up until two years ago, he was still driving his riding lawnmower up to my house in the middle of the day to cut my grass.  I didn't ask him to do it.  He just knew it needed to be done.

I'm sitting in the dining room of my parents' house right now.  My mother, whose memory isn't good, just asked, "Is your father in bed?"  One of my sisters is reminding her that he died about a month ago.  It's difficult to listen to.  It's almost as if he's dying all over again for her.  Each day, the loss is new for her.

Despite my father's faults, he always took care of my mother.  I guess he was a Bulkington husband, as well.  He worked hard, stayed faithful, and made sure, even to the end, that Mom was taken care of.  In fact, I think that's why he fought so hard at the end.  He was worried that there wouldn't be somebody there to steer the ship, accompany the landing party, sing the finale, or fill the empty seats.

Tonight, Saint Marty is thankful for being taught the worth of being a Bulkington.

January 12: Bulkington, Age of Social Media, Chewbacca Mask

I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat aloof, and though he seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates by his own sober face, yet upon the whole he refrained from making as much noise as the rest. This man interested me at once; and since the sea-gods had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate (though but a sleeping partner one, so far as this narrative is concerned), I will here venture upon a little description of him. He stood full six feet in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I have seldom seen such brawn in a man. His face was deeply brown and burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast; while in the deep shadows of his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem to give him much joy. His voice at once announced that he was a Southerner, and from his fine stature, I thought he must be one of those tall mountaineers from the Alleghanian Ridge in Virginia. When the revelry of his companions had mounted to its height, this man slipped away unobserved, and I saw no more of him till he became my comrade on the sea. In a few minutes, however, he was missed by his shipmates, and being, it seems, for some reason a huge favorite with them, they raised a cry of "Bulkington! Bulkington! Where's Bulkington?" and darted out of the house in pursuit of him.

It was now about nine o'clock, and the room seeming almost supernaturally quiet after these orgies, I began to congratulate myself upon a little plan that had occurred to me just previous to the entrance of the seamen.

No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you would a good deal rather not sleep with your own brother. I don't know how it is, but people like to be private when they are sleeping. And when it comes to sleeping with an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town, and that stranger a harpooneer, then your objections indefinitely multiply. Nor was there any earthly reason why I as a sailor should sleep two in a bed, more than anybody else; for sailors no more sleep two in a bed at sea, than bachelor Kings do ashore. To be sure they all sleep together in one apartment, but you have your own hammock, and cover yourself with your own blanket, and sleep in your own skin.
The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I abominated the thought of sleeping with him. It was fair to presume that being a harpooneer, his linen or woolen, as the case might be, would not be of the tidiest, certainly none of the finest. I began to twitch all over. Besides, it was getting late, and my decent harpooneer ought to be home and going bedwards. Suppose now, he should tumble in upon me at midnight- how could I tell from what vile hole he had been coming?

"Landlord! I've changed my mind about that harpooneer.- I shan't sleep with him. I'll try the bench here."

"Just as you please; I'm sorry I cant spare ye a tablecloth for a mattress, and it's a plaguy rough board here"- feeling of the knots and notches. "But wait a bit, Skrimshander; I've got a carpenter's plane there in the bar- wait, I say, and I'll make ye snug enough." So saying he procured the plane; and with his old silk handkerchief first dusting the bench, vigorously set to planing away at my bed, the while grinning like an ape. The shavings flew right and left; till at last the plane-iron came bump against an indestructible knot. The landlord was near spraining his wrist, and I told him for heaven's sake to quit- the bed was soft enough to suit me, and I did not know how all the planing in the world could make eider down of a pine plank. So gathering up the shavings with another grin, and throwing them into the great stove in the middle of the room, he went about his business, and left me in a brown study.

Bulkington will soon become of part of Ishmael's life, in all his height and darkness.  Ishmael is intrigued by him, simply because he is different from the rest of the sailors.  While the other whalers are loud and drunken, Bulkington is quiet and reserved, uninterested in cutting loose, despite just returning from a three-year voyage, if my memory serves.  Instead of being swallowed up by the debauch of his crew mates, Bulkington slips away into the night without a word.

I appreciate solitary people.  They intrigue me.  I think the reason J. D. Salinger remained so famous--aside from being a fantastic writer--is that, after publishing The Catcher in the Rye, he chose to disappear from public scrutiny.  Stayed on his little compound in New Hampshire and sued anybody who tried to photograph or write about him.  That kind of mystery attracts interest.  Think about it.  Who would you rather spend time with--Kim Kardashian or Greta Garbo?  Stephen King or Harper Lee?

In the Age of Social Media, privacy is a difficult thing to come by.  Birthdays and anniversaries and concerts are opportunities for Facebook posts, Snaps, and Tweets.  It's almost a way for anyone to somehow become a celebrity.  You don't need talent.  You just need a YouTube video of yourself wearing a Chewbacca mask and cackling like the Joker.

I am just as guilty as the next person.  I post pictures of myself at football games and band concerts.  I write daily blog posts about my life.  I force my kids to hug each other in front of waterfalls, and then I put that image on some kind of social media platform.  My teenage daughter gets pretty annoyed with me.  When she sees me take out my phone, she immediate pulls her hair in front of her face to avoid being photographed.  She is the Bulkington/J. D. Salinger of our family.

As a writer, I sort of crave an audience for my words.  That's the reason why I've written almost four thousand blog posts.  It's my need to connect with other people through language.  Eventually, J. D. Salinger stopped publishing in 1965, fifty-five years before he died.  I guess he didn't feel the same compulsion to share his work.  However, the rumor persists that there's a vault of unpublished Salinger manuscripts.  That he labored throughout his life on various works.  Salinger has been dead seven years, and a new J. D. Salinger book has yet to appear.

People like Salinger and probably Bulkington care very little about public opinion.  Work for work's sake.  Perhaps they find most human beings silly and of no consequence.  I get that.  I prefer people of substance, as well.  People who care about the things that I care about.  Homelessness.  Racism.  Homophobia.  Universal healthcare.  You know--poets and social activists and saints.

Saint Marty is a solitary man.  Until he drinks a few gin and tonics.