St. Bulkington's Parish

St. Bulkington's Parish is a Temporary Autonomous Zone, a "Pirate Utopia." It is not down on any map; true places never are (Moby-Dick, Ch. 12).

No priest serves this parish as there is neither want nor need of one. It is simply a gathering of those who are dedicated to 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. (Moby-Dick, Ch. 23).

Few people, it seems, are cut out for this kind of freedom. They prefer obedience and voluntary servitude to another human being.

Which is to say, that there are few true iconoclasts among us. Ours is an idolatrous species, composed mainly of fetishists who gather about totems for which we are willing to kill and die.



The people of St. Bulkington's Parish gather for the purpose of bearing silence and questioning. (Martin Heidegger, Contributions, p. 64).

And then, as quickly and as mysteriously as they were summoned together, they return to their simple lives in a ruined world.