On Books

God is something risky to release.
Lock God in a box
With only a tiny pinprick hole for breath
And it will take only seconds -
Of course, when God chooses -
For the air to be full of God,
You yourself filling your lungs with God,
God throughout you so that you too are God:
For God to assert omnipresence.
God menaces because God matters.
God imposes the will of God.
When you are imbued by God,
When the world becomes God,
God takes precedence -
Nothing else trumps God.
God is dominant -
But God is dominant both around and within you.
You walk surrounded by God,
Seeing and hearing and touching and knowing only God,
While breathing in God, God pulsing in every heartbeat,
Your mind permeated by God,
Each thought: God.
This is why we worship God:
What else can we do when faced with something like this?
Let God out - let God let God out -
And that is it.
There will be nothing else but God.
This, this is why, when I am drowning in God's ocean,
A tumult which overwhelms me, controls me,
And then some looming tsunami lulls the water for a moment,
Lifts my head above the tossing waves of God,
Thrusts it confused and disoriented into the thin air
In a brief instant of respite,
I rush to seal the ocean into confinement,
Keyless, holeless.
How else can I avoid a life of staring
At a shut eyelid larger than the universe
With the constant uncertainty,
Never knowing when the vast eye will open,
And I will once again be immobilized
By the transfixing gaze of the divine eye,
Yet no confidence that this time at last
Will finally be the time it never closes again?

If Only In My Beginning Weren't My End!

Imagine tying up all of the strings
Into one tight rope -some scattered ones
Would hang loose of the bundle,
The waving flags of imperfection,
But the rope remains more important.
This is the season to sow and not to reap.
Perfection is a star sometimes hidden by a cloud.
The light is dimmed, and then the cloud passes.
It shines again, and, like starlight,
Something very far away illuminates what is present.
We are submerged in a bath from a source
We can never reach; the tap switches on and off
Of its own accord.  We have no power
But must accept the light and the shadow.
Tie up the rope in a season of darkness;
Trim all the threads only when the stars appear.

Linked Links

Thomas Mann

Jenna Moran
Jenna Moran Addendum
Jenna Moran Part 3
Jenna Moran - Another Take

Something about judgement being founded on the presence of the very emotions that get in the way of the ideal that lies behind the judgement.  Judgement as self-defeating paradox.

I Confuse Myself

I was so happy just now to find that Martin has finally shown up in the new novel version of Hitherby.

I really don't understand my reactions to Martin.  Consciously, I'm not at all aware of liking him.  In fact, I find him really frightening.  But I'm fascinated by him.  But not for reasons as obvious as to why I have similar feelings about Ben Linus.

What Hitherby Does to Me

I adore Satanic Panic in the Attic. It is an amazing album that I want to listen to whenever I feel happy, and sometimes when I'm not particularly happy, because it is just so full of happy, amazing songs. That having been said, there are a few songs on the album that I don't particularly care for, and among that number is "City Bird." I just find it kind of dull. Nonetheless, I have had it inexplicably stuck in my head for the past few weeks. I really can't understand it; I have no conscious reason for that particular song to be constantly stuck in my head.

Then yesterday there was this. And today, on one of those occasions when I have to stand around for an hour doing nothing, I was thinking about that, and had "City Bird" stuck in my head, and it suddenly occurred to me, Oh, "City Bird" is a song about a bodhisattva. It simultaneously makes so much sense and is so completely over-interpreting, but I just know I'm never going to unsee it now. From now on, I'm always going to just assume it's a song about a bodhisattva.

We Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

Mind. Blown.

Now That I'm Not Manic Anymore

Okay, I think this has already been kind of stated outright, and I don't know quite why this appeals to me so much, but where I'm really hoping the Hitherby canon is going, with even more explicitness than there is now, is that Melanie joined the monster's organization and accepted her birthright as a monster and is all monstrous purely with the intent of saving her best friend partially, Liril, from her horrible fate, even though she has to do it obliquely and subtly, and even though other than this one act of rebellion she must genuinely be a monster, and that she doesn't see what's wrong with it, and that she in fact refuses redemption and experiences her awful foretold fate, and that's the story.

I really have no idea why this is the kind of story I like. And it kind of is a bit too close to Max and Sid, maybe? But still, I am happier and happier that this is really where we seem to be going! She sacrifices herself, not physically but morally, for friendship! She sacrifices her morality for friendship! Please may it be so!

The Universe Loathes Me, and It Is Destroying Me Always

No, seriously, I am not even kidding. This is just not fair. This is really the product of active malevolence. There isn't any other explanation. There is something out there that just wants me to die. It's not okay. There is a vast and intricate design out there, and its objective is an end to Grace.

Except of course I should note that my choice of pseudonym is also not particularly helping right now, hello!?!?!!?

The Real Place

You know, 2011 is a quarter over, and I have posted a grand total of one post on this blog this year that is not about Hitherby. Yeah.

New _Hitherby_ Canon: A Cost-Benefit Analysis

Benefits: A world with new Hitherby canon is a very different place from a world without it. I keep on thinking of "Your Song," of all things - how wonderful life is now it's in the world. Everything seems exciting and shiny and new; there's a fundamental source of rightness in the universe that lies deep below everything. When things go wrong, you don't have to worry quite so much because you know that beauty and truth and love are still in the process of trickling into reality - you know that something is going to be amazing.

Costs: How do you think about anything else? Hitherby has this awkward Homeward Bounders effect for me - it tends to look like the Real Place, even though I know perfectly well that it isn't. Luckily it's been only one time in my life that I had the really serious problem with Hitherby and spent a night feeling like I was going to fade out of the world, but it's still very hard to pay attention to the world when there is Hitherby calling to me - even when Hitherby is the child of the world and the arm of the world and the eye of the world, a part of the world itself, not something different and separate and alien. Even despite that, it tends to sever me.

Words of Wisdom from Jenna

"A grape is a purple fruit that is not particularly responsible for the pervasive universal characteristic of suffering. Anybody attempting to blame this characteristic on the grapes has not completely thought through their theodicy."

---"What’s Purple and Incarnated in Human Form to Save Us All From Suffering? (III/VII)"

Aaaah! Aaaaaaah! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG I am too excited for life!

The newest Hitherby canon entry's title is a reference to one of my favorite legends EVER in the history of the UNIVERSE!

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!

New Hitherby canon is too much the best thing ever that it is kind of scary.

Wait

Dude, what?

Relatedly, Hitherby needs a better Melanie tag. Although I do find the phrase, "Cunning Melanie, beloved of the gods," extremely memorable.

All the Best People Have to Be Ghosts

For a long time now, I have wondered why it is that I like Utena without loving it. On paper, Utena seems like something I should love. I've described Angel Sanctuary as "all these people who don't fully understand each other always hurting each other inadvertently" with Gnostic overtones implying that "the physical world is evil because it separates us, divides us up into these beings that can't touch and careen about and hurt each other" and, of course, weird gender and incest issues. Given this description, there's almost no distinction between AS and Utena. So, given that Utena is obviously the more intellectual of the two, and AS is clearly sillier by far, why is AS the one I adore and Utena the one I coldly admire?

While I was walking around doing nothing for an hour today, I came up, for the first time, with an answer that makes sense - if it is clearly not the content, then it must be the structure! This is slightly hard for me to accept because the structures do seem superficially similar (well, those aspects of the structure that seem relevant - I do not think the reason I don't love Utena is because of the Rose Bride duels). Both of them feature a main plot in the present and a lot of backstory, which is revealed gradually during the course of the main plot, up until the final, most important, extremely Gnostic backstory that gets revealed at the end. However, the difference between the two of them is, I think, in the balance of the backstory and the main story. It's true that in Utena the backstory is the motivation for the entire present story. It's also true that almost every important individual character has his or her own different backstory, and even that the backstories connect (to some degree - Utena's, Saionji's, Touga's, Akio's, and Anthy's obviously do). However, first of all I feel that less time is devoted to backstory in Utena and the focus is more clearly on the present. Even if I'm wrong about this (and I haven't measured it to find out for sure), I think that it's still true in the sense that people in AS spend a huge amount of time talking about the backstory with each other even in the present, whereas although we see a lot of the backstory in Utena, it seems less common for characters to be discussing it with each other in the present, such that it still makes for a time differential. Secondly, the backstory in AS is far more convoluted and interconnected; all of the characters have motivations that stem from the motivations of other characters who are connected to still other characters, whereas the backstory of Utena seems (if you don't mind my saying so) far less incestuous (as for whether or not this is literally true. . . ummm. . . that's a hard one). These two features contribute to my sense that, despite the many similarities between the two works, the backstory plays a more significant role in my experience of AS than my experience of Utena.

And of course it's very likely that this would, in fact, be a reason for me to love one far more than the other. Because I love stories where a lot of the story time is devoted to figuring out what went on in the past - in fact, that's among my favorite things. If you look at the works of art I have fallen in love with, whether it's Hexwood, Lost, Xenogears, PSME, or Hitherby - these are all stories where a lot of the narrative drive and suspense comes from trying to figure out what's already happened rather than momentum forwards. The big climactic moment of Utena isn't finding out the truth about Anthy and Akio, it's Utena's duel with Akio and the aftermath. It's something that happens in the present. But, although it is the end of the series, it would seem odd to say that the big climactic moment of AS is in fact Setsuna killing God; it seems to be more something along the lines of discovering the true relationship between Alexiel, Lucifiel, and Rosiel and the catharsis for Alexiel and Rosiel of Rosiel's death. So the climax is the reveal of the ultimate truth behind the plot; the death of God is more like a necessary afterthought (as part of the climactic reveal is the revelation that God is to blame for EVERYTHING!). This is the kind of story I love, where the whole point is to discover the truth about the past - it's the reason I fell madly in love with Absalom, Absalom! the moment I read it - because it's a book where the entire plot is laid out in the first chapter, and the rest of the book is just characters researching and then making up an explanation for it.

I don't know why this kind of narrative appeals to me more than other structures when the content is so close - but there you have it, it does. And I think that's a very helpful explanation of my heretofore inexplicable reactions.

Yay walking around doing nothing for an hour!

A Thin, Weak Thinker

I don't particularly like fairy tales, and I can't remember ever having liked them. This apparently makes me anathema to Tom Lynn from Fire and Hemlock, but I can't help it. They don't seem interesting to me. They don't involve interesting characterization or plot or themes. I'm perfectly happy with some stories that don't fit the typical character-driven templates (Borges or even Hitherby probably qualify in this respect), but fairy tales never seem to offer interesting or thought-provoking themes to make up for it. What's more, if you know one fairy tale, you know them all. It's no wonder someone just made a template of all the different fairy tales; the differences between them really are that minor, that you can just mix and match a countable number of elements, and BOOM, you'll have a fairy tale.

On the other hand, I do really like, and can't remember ever having not liked, mythology. I suppose the difference between fairy tales and mythology is that, even if mythology also has elements of redundancy, even if mythology also doesn't tend to have the deepest characterization, it's epic. And I like epic. Stories on a large scale, with myriad characters in complicated relationships that you have to keep track of, where the redundancy almost manages to substitute for characterization because it's the same characters involved each time - that always appeals to me, whether it's a fantasy epic, a mythological saga, or, heck, even the history of the Roman or British royal houses.

I was thinking about how I tend to like stories based on fairy tales, even if I don't like the tales themselves, but the more I think about this the more I wonder if it's true. I am a huge fan of intertextuality - I like all sorts of stories that refer to each other, again, because they make the story more complicated, they grant it hidden meanings - actually, I suppose I like intertextuality for the same reason I like epic, or even sitcoms - they're all storytelling forms which involve the possibility that is kind of pointless or even unnoticeable on first glance becomes meaningful and even fascinating once you know all the context - but I wouldn't say that fairy tales as referent are a particularly important focus for my interest. It's more mythology, I think, that I really appreciate the references to - it's the mythological scale that always seems to hit me when I encounter it in a story, and make the story seem more numinous. All of the children's books that hit me that way as a child - I think of DWJ, of course, but also of Susan Cooper - are drawing on myths and legends, epic cycles. Perhaps "Tam Lin" counts as a fairy tale - it's closer to that than to an epic, anyway - but even Fire and Hemlock is secretly referring to the Odyssey and even T. S. Eliot as well, plus I think the stories of actual fairies/elves are broader than simply "Tam Lin" and add additional resonance that bring them closer to the mythological level.

Not to Mention the Cloud Whales

You know, normally, if I don't love something, I'm fairly clear on why I like it or dislike it. I dislike it because it's boring, or I like it because it has that cool stuff that I like.

But when I'm obsessed with something else, it's a little different. When I'm busy being obsessed with The Homeward Bounders, The Homeward Bounders strikes me as the perfect book, and nothing else is even remotely as appealing, because nothing else is perfect. When I'm obsessed with Hitherby, even DWJ books seem wordy and simplistic in comparison to the sparse thematic complexity that is ideal. But, you know, being obsessed with DWJ or Hitherby is kind of okay, given that the things I love them for aren't actually absurd OTT-ness.

And then there's being obsessed with Angel Sanctuary. A friend of mine mentioned on her personal blog that she is really into the new ABC Family TV show Huge and that it has an asexual character, and I was intrigued enough to start watching it. And I am finding it entertaining enough. It's nice to have been motivated to watch TV again (I really have trouble staying motivated to watch TV unless other people are there watching it with me). But. . . I keep on finding myself thinking, Wouldn't this friendship be so much interesting if that guy was actually possessed by an evil sword that has been chasing the other guy's reincarnations for centuries because it's in love with his original identity as a female angel and is actually, unbeknownst even to itself, Lucifer? or, Wouldn't that scene be strongly improved if there was a giant aborted angelic fetus with lots of eyeballs floating above?, or, The best solution for any weird problems with your father-figure is letting him eat you when he turns into a cannibal zombie, and then he can temporarily regain his sanity just in time to save Lucifer from being killed by the reincarnated angel with himself, because he's blind, and then his blindness will be miraculously lifted and he'll suddenly realize that you're not just his surrogate child but actually his real child that he left for dead after cutting you out of the womb of your mother when he was set up into killing her, so that he can save your life and get you to kill him as the real ultimate act of love.

I also find myself thinking very nostalgically of Gardens of the Moon, which is one of the few narratives I've encountered that seems even to approach AS for OTT-ness. I mean, the epic battle at the end is a good house (as in a building) versus an evil tree! I will never get over that!

If anyone reading this happens to have other recommendations of completely OTT narratives, drop them here. I can't promise to read them, but I would like a list! Basically I am looking for things like the good house (as in a building) versus an evil tree, where it doesn't come off as intentionally funny, and the thing is, it is, unavoidably, funny, but somehow it actually manages to work despite that.

Oh, Also

Jenna Moran just posted up stats for Martin and Jane as if they were characters in her tabletop RPG, Nobilis. I know nothing about Nobilis, but TSOR suggests that what she has written strongly supports my contention that Martin is extremely creepy. So I am feeling kind of justified in that one, even if I think we're not meant to take it entirely literally.

Also - when it says that Jane is an angel, is that purely a Nobilis term? Because. . . it's a thought-provoking word choice.

I wish you would all read Hitherby so that you could comment on this!

ETA: Aww, the people who actually read Hitherby went and commented on it and answered my question in such a boring way that it no longer says that Jane is an angel! Oh, well. Nothing about Martin's creepiness has changed. It is difficult to imagine any circumstance in which Martin's creepiness will change.

Perhaps it is so obvious that I don't actually need to state it, but I'm worried that some readers may think that my theodicy explorations have only worked themselves all the way around to where they began. Therefore, I'd like to point out why this is not so.

It is true that the position I suggested Stanley Fish was at least hinting at (a recent reread suggests that it's actually the Devil's position in the Hitherby serial "An Unclean Legacy", which does not speak all that highly for it) is that fiction is theodicy - I also say fiction is theodicy.

Nevertheless, it seems clear to me that there is a difference. The Devil's position is that suffering is morally justifiable because it makes for drama. This is true even if people are genuinely experiencing suffering. My position is that suffering is morally justifiable if people are not genuinely experiencing it, and that this is possible if people see their suffering as fictional, as somehow less real than other things that are more valid. In other words, the Devil is happy to hurt people and thinks they should like it because of the intrinsic value of drama. He doesn't care if the intrinsic value of drama doesn't outweigh the suffering for those experiencing it. My hypothetical God (who does not seem to exist) wouldn't be happy to hurt people, and would ensure that people experience their suffering in the same way we experience suffering of others in a story or suffering of ourselves in the best kind of dream, rather than the pain and misery and unjustifiability of suffering in real life. The reason why this God (as opposed to any others) clearly doesn't exist is because we don't all experience our suffering this way, even if some people might.

A Theodicy I Find Acceptable! (Just Not in Our Universe)

I've been thinking about God and fiction again all weekend. I think my previous post on this topic had the issue of jumping between my perspective and my characters' perspective too much. I don't think it's fair to mix these up. From my perspective, we can say, I am obviously not God. However, I still might be God from my characters' perspectives, and this is the point that counts. So let's try to look at the issue from my characters' perspectives, then.

Okay. So, from my perspective, I created their universe. There then remain two possibilities. Either they could meaningfully "transcend" their universe and come to interact with me and other people in my universe, or they couldn't. If the former is true, then, by definition, I can't be God, because, by definition, God is the "uncaused cause" or the "unmoved mover." If my characters have the capacity of transcendence, then they clearly would realize that I am far from being an uncaused cause or unmoved mover. Thus, if my characters can transcend, I cannot be God, not only from my perspective but also from theirs! However, it seems obvious that, even if they can't transcend their universe from my perspective, from their perspective, they can. This is because they are capable of knowing that they are fictional characters. If I create them that way, they will be aware of their own fictionality. Since I have created such characters, I know that this is clearly possible. A character who is conscious of her own fictionality is clearly one who realizes the limitations and boundaries on her author, since that character is aware of the existence of a "real world" that subsumes her own and that provides limitations on the mindset of the author. So that character might be mad at the author, but cannot place ultimate blame on him and cannot think of him as God.

One might argue - but you are still creating some characters who aren't aware of their own fictionality; thus, those characters cannot make any such argument. I think in order to deal with this argument we really have to place ourselves into the perspective of one of these characters. So, switching gears for a moment and imagining myself as a character in a text by a transcendent, sufficiently-advanced alien (a hypothesis which may well be true): I certainly have no knowledge of my fictionality. However, I can safely believe there are three possibilities. Either my universe was created by no one, or it was created by an imminent God, or it was created by a sufficiently advanced alien. Note that these possibilities are not, in fact, mutually exclusive. The universe in Paradise Lost, for example, was created by both an imminent God (the God that appears in the text) AND a sufficiently advanced alien (John Milton). If the universe was created by no one, then it is meaningless to call God evil. If the universe was created by an imminent God, then I call that God evil. If the universe was created by a sufficiently advanced alien, then I do not call her evil, because she is not ultimately to blame for suffering - suffering was presumably part of the very cause that led her, a deeply moved mover, to create the universe. I believe that is meaningful to distinguish universes created by no one from those created by John Milton, in the sense that, while it's never possible to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that your universe wasn't created by John Milton, it is, as mentioned above, possible to prove that your universe is. If John Milton makes you aware of the fact that your universe was created by John Milton, then you will know that your universe was created by John Milton (it is a justified true belief); this is something that is very unlikely to happen if your universe was not created by John Milton, and so, were I to be granted this belief, I would be pretty likely to take it at face value and not be skeptical about it. Thus, regardless of whether or not I know for sure that the universe was created by John Milton, as long as the possibility of knowing this is open to me (which it clearly is), John Milton is not evil from my perspective.

But this opens up a rather odd corollary that has useful and, I think, extremely satisfying implications for theodicy. The thing is, my third possibility is that the universe was in fact created by an immanent God (a possibility which I can clearly imagine, given the existence of, say, Paradise Lost. The immanent God Itself may be, in fact, a fictional character created by a sufficiently advanced alien, but, as long as the God believes Itself to be immanent, it still counts (I would want to say that, despite the fact that Milton created Paradise Lost's God, this is still justifiably a representation of God, not a sufficiently advanced alien. If we can say that fictional characters have properties, and obviously we can, then in the world of the fiction it is completely true that God is God.). I would like to say that this God is evil, a villainous character - and I'm not the only one, if you look at the kind of arguments people have about Paradise Lost. This God, which is, from Its own perspective, an uncaused cause (even if from our perspective It is not), deliberately chose to create the universe and be the cause of a great deal of suffering, for no good reason.

However, the immanent God is also, by definition, omnipotent within the realm of its universe, which means that, among the other things It can do, It can most certainly cause the people of the universe to believe, with full conviction, that they are fictional characters. This may or may not be true; from God's perspective, it certainly isn't true. But God can make them believe it, anyway. Which means that there is in fact a way for an immanent God to create a universe and yet not be evil - It just has to have Its people believe that they are fictional characters.

Is it enough for this to be possible? I was already saying that I am not evil if I create a fictional universe, even if I don't let all my characters know that they are fictional. But I am not within the fictional universe and therefore don't have to admit to the reality of my characters, and, in order for my characters to be talking and thinking about me and not a fictional immanent God in their world, I have to be not God. I am not the God of their world because I am not immanent and don't believe myself to be God; my moral decisions thus are made on that basis (and they will be able to come to understand if my moral decisions are made on that basis). But God really is God and believes Itself to be God; God's moral decisions thus have to be based on a genuine belief in the importance and reality of Its subjects (since God is not aware of any limitations on Its powers, and, in fact, within Its own universe, there are no limitations). Thus, God's responsibilities are different from mine. God is less evil and more good, even if It is fully immanent, to the extent that It lets Its conscious creations believe (even if falsely) that they are fictional characters.

So God, the source of all goodness, is in fact morally justifiable only if It lies? But I don't think this is as bad a result as it might sound. Because the whole point is that it isn't really a lie - if you believe you are a fictional character, then you are, or there is no meaningful difference between believing yourself to be a fictional character and actually being a fictional character (how can you prove that you're not a fictional character? Is this even a meaningful concept?). And being a fictional character seems to be the one thing that could justify suffering to me. Because if your suffering is purely fiction, then you are aware that it is not real, not important - you have perspective. My suffering seems real to me and that is why I hate it; were I to not experience my suffering as real, I would not have this reaction. In fact, this is precisely the point of the dream I relate here. One of the most exciting, pleasurable dreams I ever had, which involved suffering, but that was okay, because the suffering in the dream was known by the character experiencing the suffering to be only fake suffering, in service of a larger goal of creating suspense. That suffering is okay, because it is justified in the mind of the character who knows that she is really only a smaller part of a larger mind.

So, I can actually see an immanent God as non-evil! If you happen to be omnipotent and omniscient and want to create a universe, I will now give you permission! However, our universe is still not that universe, because we DO NOT KNOW that we are merely ideas in the mind of God. Or perhaps some people do know that, but I don't. And if an immanent God created me, then there was no need to create me without this belief.

I also really like this theodicy a lot because I think it fits with my love of Hitherby. I've often thought about how, even though there is just as much suffering and pain in Hitherby as there is in the real world, I always feel like I'd rather live in the Hitherby universe. I've never been quite sure why, except for the very vague thought that I liked the metaphysics better than the metaphysics of our universe. But now I think I have a better sense of why - the reason is because, even if Hitherby doesn't quite fit the ideal of having everyone know that they are a fictional character (and, in fact, part of the point of Hitherby is that even fictional characters can become real characters who feel real pain), it seems to come much closer to that ideal than our world. I still wouldn't quite call the God of Hitherby omnibenevolent, but It seems to be far less evil than the theoretical immanent God of our world. More like the level of evil of a regular human being or a sufficiently advanced alien than the level of brazen evil I see in that idea.

Should Jenna Happen to Read This, it Doesn't Have to be a Rhetorical Question!

It is a testament to the match between Jenna Moran's talents and my own taste that I am quite enjoying Wisher, Theurgist, Fatalist despite my profound inexperience with formal RPGs with rules (LARPs without rules, OTOH. . .). The digression that begins at the end of page 67 is a thing of sheer beauty. It is not new Hitherby, of course, but then, what is?