Baby Wipes Are Made of Chocolate Stardust

I work with some fellow fanboys who long for the days before heroes were dark and tortured, the emotionally damaged and psychologically complicated types that have been popular for a while now. They don't find such characters and stories inspiring, preferring heroes who can find a way to rise above our normal human flaws and limitations to demonstrate a better way. I can understand tha, but I'm much more likely to feel inspired by someone I can relate to, someone I see overcoming the same things I struggle with and succeeding despite those things. See, for instance, The Patron Saint of Mediocrities, where I shared my recurring thought that some of the characters I find most inspiring are the hobbits in the Lord of the Rings for their everyday valor.

They are as down to earth and ordinary as they come. They don't succeed in their quest because they are inherently great, but because they are able to find extraordinary strength of character and courage within themselves. They are you and me succeeding in a crisis situation despite our mortality and weakness. This may be called a fantasy, but it is one that we can actually put ourselves into and identify with. Ideally, it is one that can inspire us to live our own lives like courageous Hobbits and discover our own versions of greatness. It is a story that might make us better people.

Plus, I have to admit, I enjoy stories with some darkness. Characters, too. While I relate to hobbits, I'm a bit more entertained by characters who have sharper edges and deeper complexities. So while I understand those who find their inspiration in heroes of the purely heroic varieties and try not to "yuck their yum," I look for something different.

The trend toward dark and tortured heroes started in comics, I think, in the 80s, especially with Batman. Later that decade, Watchmen came out as the definitive superhero deconstruction. Similar types of stories have been around since. TV has had hugely popular shows featuring Anti-Heroes for about as long. My first exposure, though, came before any of that in the form of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever.

I was turned on to Fantasy as a genre when my seventh grade teacher read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to the class. I fell in love, and immediately went on to read the entire Narnia series. Then Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain, which someone recommended. Then The Hobbit and LOTR. This was the early 80s in a small town in Kansas so, even though there were other fantasy books for kids in existence, I didn't know anyone who could suggest more. My best friend and I spent the next few years making all of our selections from the town library's adult Science Fiction shelves. We read many things that I would likely remember with a bit of prompting; the two series I remember most vividly, though, have always been The Belgariad by David Eddings--which I've been told is not stellar literature despite the ways it fed my young imagination--and The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson.

Thomas Covenant is about as anti-heroic as they come. The premise, as I remember it (from the early 80s, remember, when I was, I think, in 8th grade): Covenant is a contemporary bestselling author who unexpectedly develops leprosy. He ignores the symptoms long enough that by the time he gets a diagnosis his body has deteriorated somewhat, with all sense of feeling gone from his hands and feet and two fingers amputated. Worse, everyone starts treating him, well, like a leper. His wife leaves him and everyone else shuns him. At the start of the first book he is an isolated and bitter hermit, cynical about his life, his only purpose to avoid accidental injuries around his house that will never heal. Hope is his enemy, as that can only end in despair that his life will never improve.

Covenant is knocked unconscious and wakes in a strange land, supposedly summoned by a servant of Lord Foul. A teen girl helps him escape, and he quickly learns a few things. He is in a magical Land that is under threat by an ancient enemy. His leprosy is magically cured and he is restored to full health (aside from his missing fingers). And the people he encounters believe his is the reincarnation of legendary hero Berek Halfhand, White Gold Wielder, who defeated Lord Foul last time, and that the magic in Covenant's wedding ring is what will save the Land this time.

He refuses to accept this role, believing it is all a vivid dream cooked up by his unconscious brain, and that any hint of acceptance means capitulating to the hope that his leprosy might some day be cured for real. Except, carried away by his renewed vigor and desperate loneliness, he quickly rapes Lena, the teen girl who has been helping him--who continues to accompany him because of the hope he brings to the Land. And Covenant has no choice but to continue with the adventure, trapped as he is in the experience regardless of his belief.

That's just the first few chapters. I read both trilogies at the time (a third series was written more recently, it seems). Covenant continues to be a reluctant hero and general asshole the whole time. The other characters, the world building, the epic struggle and adventures throughout the land were good enough that I enjoyed them despite the anti-protagonist. Yet my memories of everything else have faded with time, and the only thing I really remember clearly is the beginning that sets up the story and introduces the character. Thomas Covenant made an impression.

I don't have a clear sense of just what the impression was, of what I took away from the story. I'm sure some of what made him memorable is that he stood out as so different from any other character I'd encountered. I know I didn't fully get all of the themes and dynamics at play due to my youth, and would be curious to see how they strike me now as an adult. But I believe part of it was inspiration by negation, by defining for me what a hero was not. If the hobbits inspired me by showing what an ordinary person is capable of, Thomas Covenant inspired me because I knew I could be and do better than he did. I think. Maybe. That's the way it feels to me now, at least. I believe I learned that if this sad man could manage to help people, then surely I could, too.

Plus, I have to admit, I enjoy stories with some darkness. Characters, too.

It's Amy's favorite. (She seems so sweet on the surface, no?) Amy and I do not always have the exact same taste in things, but this I like.

When she told me it was her favorite, it suggested to me strange and wonderful things about her character that I had not guessed, dark places that I might like to visit.

People tell boring lies about politics, God, and love. You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question, What is your favorite book?

― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

It suggested to me strange and wonderful things about her character that I had not guessed, dark places that I might like to visit.

A Man Said to the Universe

A man said to the universe:

“Sir, I exist!”

“However,” replied the universe,

“The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation.”

― Stephen Crane

This is not the first time on this blog I've shared that Stephen Crane poem. It captures a central truth for me, expressed in the metaphor at the top of the page. Humans are finite and limited and by definition unable to fully grasp the apparently infinite nature of the universe. And of God, for the religiously inclined--I love the phrase "The Mystery of God" as one way of talking about our inability to ever  understand everything. I believe that to be happy we have to embrace our smallness, to accept that there is far more we'll never know than what we do.

(See, for instance, Doesn't Look Like Anything to Me and Um, Maybe . . . Kinda . . . I Dunno: Or, Ambiguity. A lot good thoughts at each one.)

So I found this article fascinating.

Terrifying Vistas of Reality

H.P. Lovecraft, the master of cosmic horror stories, was a philosopher who believed in the total insignificance of humanity

Underneath those weird tales was a distinctive philosophical project, one that can reveal as much about our anxieties today as about those of a man living in Providence in the early 20th century.

Lovecraft captures the spirit of his philosophy in the opening paragraph of ‘The Call of Cthulhu’, a story about an expedition to the sunken dwelling of a tentacled Old God worshipped by an ancient cult who pray for their deity to awaken from its slumber and resume its control over mortal-kind. How would Lovecraft start such a fantastic tale? Like this:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

Most of his stories, however, are less philosophically explicit. Lovecraft’s thought is often obscured in his tales, and must be pieced together from various sources, including his poetry, essays and, most importantly, his letters . . . These tales, he wrote, were based on one fundamental cosmic premise: ‘that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large’. . . . 

Throughout his life, he maintained in his ethics the total insignificance of humanity in the face of a vast and inherently unknowable universe. ‘We are all meaningless atoms adrift in the void,’ he wrote in a letter to his friend, the publisher and writer August Derleth. Though he was pessimistic about humanity’s cosmic position, Lovecraft did not fall victim to the fatalist fallacy in his tales; the actions of his characters still have moral value and meaning on the individual level for the purposes of bettering the self and society. . . . 

Anathema to many philosophical systems, or perhaps philosophy itself, Lovecraft’s philosophical project fundamentally holds that contemplations of higher reality or the nature of things can never be fully realised. Ultimately, the search for knowledge does not constitute some telos, some purpose, for humankind, but rather leads to the violent dissolution of the self. Higher reality is that which the limited human psyche can never fully comprehend. . . . 

Lovecraft suggests that higher philosophical knowledge should not be sought, since finding it entails learning of our cosmic insignificance and purposelessness. . . . 

For Lovecraft, art and literature are the ideal means for individuals to find beauty and meaning, despite humanity’s profound lack of cosmic purpose. If the universe is infinite and indifferent, one can ward off nihilism by seeking solace in artistic self-expression. This idea appears in many of Lovecraft’s stories, but the best example is the author himself. Throughout his life, the act of writing weird fiction became a modus vivendi for finding meaning. Though his letters might describe his philosophy most clearly, Lovecraft’s stories – all written in a single genre – are the primary mode through which he creatively expressed those ideas. . . . 

Lovecraft’s stories are dotted with attempts to describe the impossible within the limitations of human expression and experience. . . . 

For Lovecraft, horror is found in what we think could be out there in the universe, given our glaringly deficient knowledge about reality. ‘The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear,’ he writes in his 1927 essay, ‘and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown’. . . . 

For Lovecraft and his protagonists, knowledge of the boundless and unknown is a profound source of anxiety eased only by taking refuge in illusory dream-space. . . . 

Real knowledge, Lovecraft suggests, is impossible; humans have a limited capacity to think in truly rational ways. This perspective might explain why Lovecraft was not an evangelical atheist and accepted the usefulness of religion for the vast majority of the population, for whom a godless existence would be intolerable: ‘It helps their orderly conduct as nothing else could,’ he wrote, ‘and gives them an emotional satisfaction they could not get elsewhere.’ And besides, if we ever discovered that the universe really was as cosmically purposeless as Lovecraft imagined, then delusions of Cthulhu-esque gods might seem reasonable — or even desirable.

The actions of his characters still have moral value and meaning on the individual level for the purposes of bettering the self and society.

Yes, that's it exactly. Trying too hard to understand everything, in the big, universal sense, can only end in frustration; the key is to focus on improving your context, on "bettering the self and society."

Thinking of the incomprehensible vastness of space reminded me of this scene from Smek for President by Adam Rex.

"I think this is the Museum of Noises," I told Bill. I stared at it for a second. "Let's cut through, if it's open." . . . 

I nearly skipped through the next corridor. It opened onto a room that was wide and round and empty and tall.

I stopped abruptly. The scuff of my sneaker echoed back and forth in stiff little whispers.

High above the center of this big bell-shaped chamber was a marquee that read THE SOUND OF SPACE. It wasn't like the other exhibits. It didn't have any electronic eye, just four helmets hanging down from accordion tethers around a little center pedestal. To hear the sound of space you apparently had to put one of these helmets on.

"That's dumb," I whispered to Bill. Bill didn't have an opinion about it. I was going to have to pass these helmets to get through the room, but I wasn't tempted. "There is no sound in space," I told Bill.

I walked right through the center of the room. The helmets were hanging so high I wouldn't even have to duck. As I approached, each helmet dipped to meet me, but like any good city girl I avoided eye contact, didn't take a flyer, didn't stop to sign the petition or listen to the hard-luck story. They reeled up again after I'd passed.

At the Green Exit I looked back, "I don't get it," I said. I returned to the pedestal, and a helmet lowered itself, slowly, like it was worried I'd make it look foolish again. I read the English inscription on the pedestal as a cool plastic plate settled on my head and arms flexed inward to cradle my ears.

Todaynow, the Boov are nearly 8 million solar lengths from home, I read. That is fifteen light-years. That is 142 trillion kilometers. That is 88 trillion miles.

The helmet on my head began to hum softly.

The Boov will never again see that motherworld that made us, it continued, and was later then forfeit. The Museum of Noises introduces to you the Sound of Space, withto evoke the vast distance inbetween the Boovish peoples and our lost HOME.

That was everything on the plaque. Then a pair of blinders flapped down to cover my eyes, and the hum of the helmet fell away, and I heard nothing.

Not a recording of nothing, but actually nothing. The earpieces somehow canceled out the sounds of the air, and Bill's faint whirr, and distant noises I hadn't even realized I was hearing until they were suddenly gone. I heard nothing. Just my heartbeat.

"Big deal," I whispered. The sound of it was all inside my skull, and surprisingly loud. Cowed, I fell silent again and listened. I wondered what I was supposed to be thinking about. I wondered if I was supposed to remove the helmet myself or if it was a moment-of-silence kind of thing; I'd just have to ride it out until the helmet decided I'd searched my soul or whatever. My big dumb soul.

I couldn't tell if Bill was still there. I couldn't tell if any walls were still surrounding me. I might have been anywhere; I might have been home. Fell asleep with my headphones on again, I thought with a smirk.

When it came, it came without warning. I thought it was going to be a yawn. Something ordinary but unstoppable, rising up from my chest, seizing control of my mouth and eyes. Just a yawn.

Oh, I thought suddenly. I'm crying.

Inside my blinders tears pooled and escaped, drawing shameful lines down my cheeks. Like coward's war paint, I thought angrily. For J.Lo's rescue I needed battle cries, not the regular kind. I sat heavily on the floor, sobbing, trying to catch my breath.

I stayed there a while, and cried, and thought about the vast distances.

Then the blinders flipped up, and the hum returned. I frowned and blinked into the dim light.

He maintained in his ethics the total insignificance of humanity in the face of a vast and inherently unknowable universe. Knowledge of the boundless and unknown is a profound source of anxiety.

Knowledge of the boundless and unknown is ultimately a futile pursuit, an exercise in absurdity. If you make that your purpose, life is essentially absurd.

If I was a superhero, my name would be Lonerman. My superpower would the the Existentialism--a ray I could shoot out of my hand that renders people powerless to face anything but their own personal pointlessness in an absurd world.

― A.S. King, Dig.

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

They do.

As Wikipedia explains, 

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously was composed by Noam Chomsky in his 1957 book Syntactic Structures as an example of a sentence that is grammatically well-formed, but semantically nonsensical. . . . There is no obvious understandable meaning that can be derived from it.

I find I have two basic responses to life's essential absurdity. One, as I said above, is to focus on improving my context, on "bettering the self and society." The other is to embrace nonsense.

source

Embrace that we can never fully, truly make sense of our existence. Accept that, from a universal perspective, we matter not at all. And have fun with it. Don't try too hard too find sense or to make sense, don't take yourself too seriously, just try to have fun with it all.

(See Finding the Joy of Absurdity for some excellent examples.)

I find myself constantly, instinctively injecting nonsensical humor into conversations and situations to remind us of that. Probably to the annoyance of others. But it's one of the ways that I both cope and find enjoyment. Sometimes it makes sense given the context, other times it's random non sequiturs.

I work in a fairly large library building where those of us on the public service desks can't all see each other. We use a chat app to keep in touch. Generally we try to keep things work related, but on Wednesday nights we sometimes get silly.

A few weeks ago I made the following contributions to our group chat:

Man, the random sentence generator is on fire tonight. I asked for a batch of 10 and they're almost all winners.

She advised him to come back at once.

Baby wipes are made of chocolate stardust.

When money was tight, he'd get his lunch money from the local wishing well.

She had that tint of craziness in her soul that made her believe she could actually make a difference.

When I was little I had a car door slammed shut on my hand and I still remember it quite vividly.

The bread dough reminded her of Santa Clause’s belly.

The snow-covered path was no help in finding his way out of the back-country.

I used to practice weaving with spaghetti three hours a day but stopped because I didn't want to die alone.

Nancy thought the best way to create a welcoming home was to line it with barbed wire.

A suit of armor provides excellent sun protection on hot days.

I think the spaghetti one I could actually own and use authentically in my memoir.

(Also, in all seriousness, the car door one.)

https://randomwordgenerator.com/sentence.php

But, you know, speaking of the spaghetti, I have been known to ask for a chunk of fake words from that same random generator then turn them into poems, like this one from a few years ago:

Submers yapple nortoniously as

the nexilinessive trealop izzillently

expets the apererbacks.

Tranians surrow with

vampilluntion;

guisities ponessing in

conscipatheon eggmode.

Will ferras refurn the reptom?

Craccurrelss.

Unless infusidicienes

has already signitined.

Then the eferbarn ariterg

will modisres until

all is imstreockt.

Then I decided to define them.

• Aperback (noun) - a bird of moderate size known for its yellow stripes and social nature.
• Ariterg (noun) - a sense of coolness to the air unrelated to temperature; an atmospheric aura of chilliness.
• Conscipatheon (adjective) - observable; obvious.
• Craccarrelss (adverb) - dependent on circumstances; momentarily undetermined.
• Eferbarn (adjective) - recently materialized.
• Eggmode (noun) - unrestrained disorder; tumult or chaos.
• Expet (verb) - to watch with careful focus, often to the exclusion all other pursuits.
• Ferras (noun) - where wilderness meets development.
• Guisity (noun) - an insect related to crickets and grasshoppers.
• Imstreockt (adjective) - soothe; to have hurts healed.
• Infusideicienes (noun) - a noticeable quality to the wind, atmosphere, or air; "something in the air."
• Izzillently (adverb) - full of joy.
• Modisres (verb) - to have a material quality, to have substance.
• Nexilinessive (adjective) - in search of connection.
• Nortoniously (adverb) - having an unexpected, vaguely musical quality.
• Ponessing (verb) - to hop multiple times in rapid succession.
• Reptom (noun) - a moment in time set apart from surrounding circumstances.
• Refurn (verb) - to provide a place of rest; to create a space for respite.
• Signitine (verb) - to mark, leave an impression.
• Submer (noun) - a small bird notable for its digging capabilities and burrowed, subterranean nests.
• Surrow (verb) - to sway in a circular motion.
• Tranian (noun) - a purple flower.
• Trealop (noun) - a small, omnivorous marsupial characterized by large eyes, dexterous climbing, and far leaping.
• Vampilluntion (adverb) - rhythmic; characterized by temporal regularity.
• Yapple (verb) - to repeatedly give a sharp, shrill bark; related to yap.

(This was during covid lockdown.)

[(See: Just Saw My First Rabbit of Spring.)]

(And now you understand why I fear dying alone.)

"Some people have eating disorders and there’s a special group for that. Some people have more than one person living inside them and there’s a special group for that. That’s serious stuff. That really does stun the hell out of me. I mean, I only have one of me living inside me and that’s bad enough. If I had more than one of me inside me, I’d off myself."

― Benjamin Alire Saenz, Last Night I Sang to the Monster

I shared those thoughts in bits and pieces over the course of some time, and they were my contribution of random nonsense and absurd humor that night. It's longer than most, but not too unusual.

There's a fine line between horror and humor. I try to stay on the fun side.

I enjoy this article.

Trapped in Routine? Here’s How to “Dishabituate” and Rediscover Joy

There are wonderful and cherished things in life, and when we take these things for granted, it lessens them a bit. When you see a friend every week or a spouse every day, they can start to fall into the background. Bit by bit, we start to see others not as people but as props on a set. Even our closest relatives, such as children or loved ones, can become folded into our routines.

So, habits have one major pitfall: They let us ignore what needs to be seen. . . . 

Habits are useful. Our brains need certain habitual heuristics to function at all — and often the most successful people are those who form strong habits. So, the question is one of balance.

“We talk a little bit about explorers versus exploiters,” Sharot said. “So people who are explorers like to try a lot of new things. So, they might go visit different places, and they might talk to different types of people, right? Exploiters tend to just do more of the same thing that they find that they like a lot. Eat the same kind of thing and so on….and the optimal solution is somewhere in the middle you want to exploit; you want to take the good stuff they already know.”

The overall thesis of Sharot’s new book is that too many of us are living the lives of exploiters. We’re staying put and sticking with old favorites. This is especially true in middle age. . . .

The midlife crisis and the dissatisfied ennui of stagnation are fueled by an excess of exploitation. We’re often made unhappy by our habits. So consider finding ways to change and break some of yours. By challenging the comfort of our daily patterns, we open ourselves to new experiences, perspectives, and connections. It seems foolish to wait for a crisis to jolt us out of complacency; instead, we should seek opportunities to explore. We should aim to grow and not stagnate. Embracing change is not just an escape from monotony, but a step toward living a life full of purpose and joy.

Dishabituate yourself.

And this poem.

Alison Davis

MYSTERY LIGHT

Have we finally become a visionless people?

 

We confuse self-combusting debris for stars and blame everything

on our earthly enemies. Sometimes the light is nothing

more than space junk burning up in the atmosphere. Restoration

 

takes many forms. An eclipse is also a story of molting.

The sky-gazing continues. Sometimes the visitors tell stories

of coyotes and votives and sobriety, whose light is the same

 

as its ugliness. They return from the faraway camps carrying baskets,

woven with light. The light is more than skin stretched over the surface

of a galaxy. The stories are less than the future on an old man’s tongue.

 

The earth is a house of stories and light.

 

—from Poets Respond

March 26, 2023

The earth is a house of stories and light.

Finally, to revisit a snippet from There Is Only Fascinating Mystery,

And beyond all we can see

and measure

and know . . . 

might that be infinity?

Infinity filled

with

every

possibility?

Perhaps even other universes?

So here we are

on a medium-sized planet

circling an average star

in an ordinary galaxy

in an unimaginably

vast universe,

a universe that is mostly dark,

that seems mostly empty.

More nothingness

than we know how to imagine.

We,

dust

on a planet made of dust.

How do we love such a story?

How do we live such a story? . . .  

"Yet if our universe is, indeed, infinite,

we do, once more, stand at the center,

even of all that leaving.

Wherever we are is the center.

Yes," they say, "yes,

we are made of dust.

But it is the dust of stars.

Yes," they say, "yes,

most of the universe

is dark,

dark,

dark."

"But there is no nothingness.

Only mystery.

Fascinating mystery."

― Marion Dane Bauer, We, the Curious Ones

Embrace the absurdity but don't let it embrace you. Trying too hard to understand everything, in the big, universal sense, can only end in frustration; the key is to focus on improving your context, on "bettering the self and society." And having fun with it.