January 8: Tepid Tears of Orphans, Human Company, Face in a Crowd

Coffin?- Spouter?- Rather ominous in that particular connexion, thought I. But it is a common name in Nantucket, they say, and I suppose this Peter here is an emigrant from there. As the light looked so dim, and the place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and the dilapidated little wooden house itself looked as if it might have been carted here from the ruins of some burnt district, and as the swinging sign had a poverty-stricken sort of creak to it, I thought that here was the very spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea coffee.

It was a queer sort of place- a gable-ended old house, one side palsied as it were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak corner, where that tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than ever it did about poor Paul's tossed craft. Euroclydon, nevertheless, is a mighty pleasant zephyr to any one in-doors, with his feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed. "In of that tempestuous wind called Euroclydon," says an old writer- of whose works I possess the only copy extant- "it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside, or whether thou observest it from that sashless window, where the frost is on both sides, and of which the wight Death is the only glazier." True enough, thought I, as this passage occurred to my mind- old black-letter, thou reasonest well. Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of mine is the house. What a pity they didn't stop up the chinks and the crannies though, and thrust in a little lint here and there. But it's too late to make any improvements now. The universe is finished; the copestone is on, and the chips were carted off a million years ago. Poor Lazarus there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his pillow, and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he might plug up both ears with rags, and put a corn-cob into his mouth, and yet that would not keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon! says old Dives, in his red silken wrapper- (he had a redder one afterwards) pooh, pooh! What a fine frosty night; how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let them talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give me the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals.

But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding them up to the grand northern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra than here? Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the line of the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery pit itself, in order to keep out this frost?

Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being a president of a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans.

But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a-whaling, and there is plenty of that yet to come. Let us scrape the ice from our frosted feet, and see what sort of a place this "Spouter" may be.

Ishmael is standing outside The Spouter-Inn, taking in its rough shape, shabby and lopsided.  He doesn't really have the choice to be particular.  With little money in his pockets, he has to lodge at Peter Coffin's establishment, despite its intimations of whaling death.  It's between being blue and cold as Lazarus, or going inside and finding hearth and fire.  So, in he goes, scraping the ice and frost from his soles.

I find myself in sort of a similar situation at the moment.  Having just dropped my daughter off at her dance studio, I had every intention of going to my office at the university to work and write.  However, I didn't want to enter the deserted building, for the campus is still fairly derelict because of the Christmas and New Year's break.  I would have probably been the only person there.

Despite being a rather solitary person (as most writers are), I felt a craving for human company.  Not to visit with or tell jokes to.  No, I just wanted to be around some sort of hubbub.  Therefore, I am sitting at a table in McDonald's, listening to people order burgers and shakes.  I am one of three people in the restaurant.  Two old men are sitting in a corner booth, nursing coffees and speaking in low tones.

It is enough to satisfy my need for companionship as I wait for my daughter to be done leaping and pirouetting.  I'm a little weary after having worked today for the first time since before New Year's Eve.  My body still needs to adjust to the early hours once more.  When I got home this afternoon, I changed out of my work clothes and climbed into bed.  Fell asleep for almost an hour, and felt no great impulse to return to the living world when my alarm sounded.

Yes, Ishmael has it right.  Find someplace cheap and warm to defrost my feet.  Maybe exchange a "cold night" or "getting dark" with some stranger before retreating into my book or laptop.  Listen to the French fries being fried.  Cooks calling out orders.  Be content before heading out into the night again to go a-whaling.  Sometimes, the greatest gift in a day is simply being a face in a crowd.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for human beings and cheap food.