There's an episode of Six Feet Under, in which the character Nate has a vision in which his dead wife tells him, "From now on only bad things will happen to you."
I felt I knew exactly what it meant, with an almost mystic recognition.
What is it that is so fascinating and 'true' about such a statement? I think there would not be such fascination about it without the beginning clause, "From now on". This suggests that once upon a time it had been possible for good things to happen. I seem to remember such a world, too. And now I find myself in a world in which it is no longer possible for good things to happen. It is this contrast, of things going wrong, that seems to constitute the nightmare quality of human existence, because it is a nightmare. What could be better calculated to torture consciousness than to suspend it between two realms of infinite void – void in the sense of the unknown, since that is what they are – without memory of where it came from, knowledge of what it is or means of guessing what will become of it?
And yet I once knew life as something other than nightmare. How did the transition occur?
I have noticed that on the occasions – not that frequent, since I tend to downplay the nightmarish quality of existence in conversation and social interaction generally – that I have mentioned to people that it's actually impossible for good things to happen, they have either never admitted that it was true, or they have not understood what I was talking about (perhaps both). I can't really blame them for the latter if their experience is different to mine, since my attempts to explain this impossibility have usually ended with me uselessly opening my mouth like a goldfish, and finding no words. I'm sure it must sound like a very stubborn, emotional insistence. But it's not really like that at all. It's not something stubborn. It's something so fine that it slips through my fingers. It is something that, having permeated everything, is now no longer susceptible to the categories and divisions of language that would be needed to adequately describe it.
I was walking home earlier today and a mother was walking along with her children. Her little girl was saying something like, "Where's my sticker? I've lost my sticker." And it sounded as if she were about to cry if she did not find her sticker. Does human happiness really depend on the presence or absence of a piece of paper with adhesive on its back? You may think I'm only talking about children, but really adults are just the same. What's a job apart from a sticker that says, 'useful member of society'? What's a lover apart from a sticker that says, 'attractive, worthwhile human being'? Does the sticker really make a difference? However many stickers you stick on yourself, does it ever constitute something good happening? No, it's just a sticker, and you're going to lose it, anyway. And then you'll cry, probably. What else can you do? Because you suddenly know that from now on only bad things will happen to you.
(Well, I've just been interrupted by a phonecall from Mr. Wu, still suffering the ravages of a sore throat, I noticed, so I've probably lost my train of thought now. The last thing we were talking about before ending the phone conversation was Daisy Pulls It Off, but that doesn't help me now.)
Ah yes, I was going to say that, I have really got to the point in my life where I wonder how people are even able to have children. I like children, actually. Well, in a general sense. When I'm not forced to be at all responsible or that kind of thing. But it's because I like children that I don't understand really how people can continue to have children.
When I was a child, the world certainly seemed like a place where… I'm not sure how to finish that sentence. It didn't seem, anyway, like a place where only bad things happened. I think it must be something to do with the onset of the sense of time. Time destroys EVERYTHING.
I don't think there's really one point at which the transition occurred. Its conquest was stealthy and inexorable. I remember, for instance, that by the age of about thirty I was definitely aware that I had for some considerable time been living a nightmare. Horror, I reflected, as a literary or cinematic genre, is often seen as something that presents you with 'another world'; you are invited to enter in, to stray from the 'normal world', if you dare. But I realised now that, for instance, the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft, was merely daily life. Normality was horror, or horror was normal.
Last night was Hallowe'en. I attended a reading at a branch of Waterstones in London. This was, specifically, a reading from authors anthologised in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror #18. After the five authors present read, there was some discussion, chaired by the editor, Stephen Jones. I can't remember now exactly who said what or repeat it verbatim, but there was a question as to why the writers assembled were drawn to horror in particular, and at least two of the authors responded to the effect that no other genre is really adequate to dealing with how people actually feel about their lives any more. "Science fiction has missed predicting the future again," I seem to recall someone saying. And someone else said, I believe, "Well, it predicted the future, but it failed to get past, to leap over the two million corpses we're now heading towards." (I think that figure is a significant underestimate.)
If everyone waited until they were old enough for disillusionment with life finally to set in, for that transition to horror to take hold, before having children, I wonder whether that would do the trick. And yet, there are people who have children later in life. Presumably they have never been disillusioned. Or perhaps they never had illusions to begin with. Perhaps they always considered life as the cruel spiritual torture it is, but never saw this as a reason to refrain from procreation, because they never had anything else with which to contrast it. I don't know. It truly baffles me. You would think that now, in the 21st century, when it is becoming apparent to human beings collectively that we are vile and life is vile and there is no future but suffering, disappointment, death, mayhem etcetera, that the population would start to dwindle significantly. But no, it continues to grow.
I am mystified.
I don't really know why I write this, except that I'm here now, anyway, so I might as well. Sometimes I worry that I might be insane. I don't mean in any interesting way. I just mean in some way that will cause me unbearable anguish as my soul gradually unravels towards extinction or some psychic doom worse than extinction.
I suppose I shouldn't worry on other people's account, though, since if I am insane, then no one's likely to notice, anyway. Perhaps I should be more worried that I might be sane. That would surely be a much more terrible possibility.
There does seem to be a flaw in my thinking somewhere… I am perplexed.
Justin Isis writes:All of the Chomu stories to date should be published in book form and given the title “Only Bad Things Will Happen to You From Now On, Life is Limitless Horror, Etc.” The cover would have to be neon pink or neon green, maybe, and it would be a picture of Thomas Ligotti surrounded by like thirty young girls, probably Korean teenagers, and he’s holding up a sign that says “STOP CHILDREN WHILE YOU STILL CAN”
Let’s do it. I think there’s only one photograph of Ligotti in existence (circulation), so it will have to be heavily photoshopped.I once had a conversation a bit like this post with a Canadian girl in the Irish pub The Hill of Tara in Kyoto. I said something like, since the world is obviously designed for bastards we might as well let them have it and just stop procreating. She disagreed. She said something like, “I think people like you and me should have children.” (Sadly, she didn’t mean together.) “The world needs more depressives like us,” she said. Hmmmm. Interesting, but I’m afraid that I can’t really see what the source of her hope was that depressives might change anything for the better.
Leyman writes:
Why Children? hmmmmmm is it because its about:
*Proof of a mother or father that they exist?
*Something to carry on the name, blood or tradition of the family? (I don’t meant some”thing” but i think you get the pic).
*Something to mould, to destroy or build?
*A second chance?
*Random chance?
*Peer pressure?
*Because its natural?
*Because we can?
*A what if?
*A roof over your head?
*Benefits?
Well whatever it is about 3 weeks ago I was having a conversation with my work colleague about kids and stuff(neither of us have any), and she said to be that by next year, not this year that she’ll have one. She said so with the precision of someone who says by next year the will travel to Tunisia or something. Like it was something calculated. I was a bit uneasy. See I used to think that calculated births were natural, and sound, but now it kind of makes me a bit uneasy at the thought that someone’s coming into this world or not is reliant on the will of us earthlings choices. So when I see one of my age mates pushing a pram I tell myself that knowing the cost (financial & emotional) of having kids it was probably something that wasn’t planned as such, it just happened or something.
Isn’t good things happening to us about feeling good or fulfilled about ourselves? If it was that simple then you could see why many children are always happy for simple or no reasons at all. And so if good things don’t really happen to us but yet when we were new to the world we felt good about ourselves then I must ask should it be a quest to make us find out what made us feel good about ourselves while we can? To find and live off the effects of having our own internal stickers? The cause may have to be internal, completely internal for each person. And so yeah identifiable stickers are kind of useless in that light because one sticker for one person should mean nothing to another for their happiness.
I felt the Movie matrix though Sci-Fi had a lot to say about our present.
Hello.I think you’re right about some of the reasons people have children. Not that I’d know, but I’m guessing. I suppose what I was trying to express when I said that I am mystified is that I think having children must require a worldview that is so different to my own that I don’t know how I would ever even visit such a perspective. This does, necessarily, fascinate me. I mean, it fascinates me because, apparently for the majority of people, a family is just something that happens (though there might be calculation with regard to timing, as you mention). With me, it could never simply ‘just happen’. It’s unimaginable, really. So, I wonder how life feels with that very different perspective, and, narcissistically, I try to picture myself from that other perspective (impossible, of course). There must be a serious discrepancy in my levels of ‘life affirmation’ and those of people around me, because to me, if I had somehow caused a child to be born (however that happens), I don’t think I could live with the guilt. To me, that would be absolutely the worst thing I could do, and the surest way to destroy any integrity I might have. Even worse than doing an advert for Coca Cola, say. But, as I said, I like children. They’re usually the least boring guests at dinner parties – that kind of thing.In terms of happiness, and what can make us happy, I’d also guess that you’re right that it has to be internal and not contingent upon external things. I have no idea how to characterise my own emotional state directly. I sometimes think that I don’t feel bad, but I have never really got as far as believing that existing is better than not existing. I suppose it doesn’t really matter what I feel. The whole question of happiness to me is lost in imponderables, somehow. Maybe the easiest reference I can provide – a bit lazy, I’m afraid – is to say that it’s a bit like the existentialist idea of the absurdity of existence. When all life is absurd, talking about happiness can seem irrelevent. By which I mean, the pursuit of happiness seems to assume rationality, but I think that the moment you actually exist, you really have to discard rationality. Matter – or whatever you want to call the basic ‘stuff’ of existence – is not rational. If it was, it wouldn’t exist in the first place. The sex drive is not rational, procreation is not rational. Why should we expect to be able to conduct something as rational as the pursuit of happiness in the midst of all this?I should point out that I don’t think of myself as an existentialist, but I do feel resonance with the idea of absurdity. In fact, everything I write in this blog (for starters) is completely absurd. I was just thinking that, before I logged on just now. And I remembered a quote from the other Quentin Crisp, with regard to John Hurt, who played him in the film of his life. I can’t find the quote online, but it is something like, “I wished him luck playing me; he would probably do a better job than I had. I had tried to play the role of Quentin Crisp my entire life without any success.”
Funny, I once had a conversation with an Irishman in a Mexican cantina. (Although I can’t remember the name of the establishment, I don’t think it had one). I asked him why he had so many siblings, and he said,” To out breed the Protestants”. Now, I have nothing against anyone’s religion, I have something against smug people. I kind of agree with the girl in the pub, there are legions of brilliant people on this planet who are not procreating, that’s a shame. And well, those brilliant people are sometimes depressives, and that’s okay too.Or you could title your book, “Why is the world designed for Smug Unconscious Bastards?”Death is the price we pay for being IN TIME. I read that somewhere recently.Cheers!
I recall one of Shakespeare’s sonnets in which he’s telling someone off for not having children, because it means their beauty will disappear from the world, but I can’t remember any specific lines in order to Google it now.1. Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend2. Upon thy self thy beauty’s legacy?3. Nature’s bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,4. And being frank she lends to those are free:5. Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse6. The bounteous largess given thee to give?7. Profitless usurer, why dost thou use8. So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?9. For having traffic with thy self alone,10. Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive:11. Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,12. What acceptable audit canst thou leave?13. Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,14. Which, used, lives th’ executor to be.That’s not the one I was thinking of, though. No, I can’t seem to find it. Maybe that is the one, but if so it’s nothing like I remember it.Anyway, no one’s ever said that to me. Probably with good reason.Talking of time and unconsciousness, I’ve been watching Eckhart Tolle on Youtube recently:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6m1jEVpAxMIt does make me feel a bit bad about my own judgemental ways. I suppose I have this constant struggle in which I want to change, but know that I can’t force myself to be something other than I am. It’s a quandary for me.
No one’s ever said what to you before? I think you hit it right on the nose with your choice of sonnet for your example. II, and III say almost the same thing, right? Of course all that first bunch, I believe is a plea, or a suggestion on the part of the poet to the youth to do just that: plow the earth, sew the seed, don’t ‘traffic with thy self”. Really, it’s far better when there’s two trafficking, and so on with that.Tolle made me feel like a tool,and that’s okay. Things to ponder. Again, thanks for sharing.