Heaven Is Sad

What is the purpose of life? The Author has been struggling to answer this question. Conan the Barbarian had it figured out. It was “to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.” (This makes the Author laugh and laugh.) Sometimes the Author seems to long for the rugged and difficult simplicity of a more animal existence, one in which “purpose” ceded to “necessity,” in which life was simply an ongoing attempt to remain alive.

Years ago the Author read the groundbreaking Richard Dawkins book, The Selfish Gene, in which Dawkins argues that life is selfish, that what it wants is its own continuance at the expense of everything else, and that the original and smallest unit of selfishness is the gene. Among this book’s many excellent leave-behinds (which continue, even 40 years later, to influence the way we talk about things) is the term “meme,” which was coined here of all places, in this philosophico-scientific tome. For Dawkins, a “meme” was a unit of cultural transmission (a song melody, or a clothing style, for instance) that proliferated in the same way that the “gene” proliferated physically. He is surely horrified to see his smartypants term co-opted for stupid-cat videos and other lowest common denominator internet nonsense.

In the brutally dark and excellent novella Miss Lonelyhearts, by Nathanael West, the cynical/nihilistic newspaper features editor named Shrike destroys all of Miss Lonelyhearts’ possible sources of meaning — love, religion, humanism, art, work, etc. — in a scathing speech that the Author will remember until the day he dies, which day is fast approaching, as if the Author were hauling it toward himself on the hook-end of a winch.

In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus wants to make the argument that even though life is inherently meaningless, we do not have to kill ourselves. (Again, much laughter from the Author. It is especially funny that Camus seems really annoyed that he has to first “prove” to the reader that life is meaningless before arguing that we don’t have to commit suicide; it seems so patently obvious to him. Of course, the only part of the book that is not entirely convincing is the argument for our continuing-to-live; the meaninglessness proof is airtight.)

The Author has often fallen back on the Hindu proverb: “Everything you do is completely meaningless, but it is very important that you do it.” (Gandhi seems to have stolen this from the Bhagavad Gita.) The idea that duty is itself a weird counterbalance to meaninglessness is appealing. And the proverb captures something about the Author’s constant toggling back and forth between nihilism and reverence. The Author can look up at the night sky, feel the smallness and randomness of everything, and realize not only his own but his entire species’ total insignificance and ephemerality. Then he steps into the room where his children are sleeping and feels an overwhelming tide of love and duty. “Completely meaningless.” “Very important.” Some days, the idea that his own nihilism is not all that there is can be enough, or almost enough, for the Author to put this Problematic down.

But it won’t go down. Why not?

Even as the world literally and metaphorically burns, the Author is desperate for more life, eternal life!, and not — as one would imagine he should be — giddy with satisfaction because the end he has always said was near is, in fact, very clearly near. Why? (Oh, but his children! The Author wants a good world for them! A fruitful and meaningful world! The terribleness of everything is more than an Author can bear!)

Also, what is consciousness? The Author is trying to author something that would take this question on, grab it by the throat and make it gasp and sing. But for some reason every time he tries to get started he decides that his characters should all be dolphins.

This is all to say that the publication of the Author’s ANTHROPICA roughly one week ago has done little to dissolve these conundrums. Artistic “success” (which of course is always a moving target), something the Author has chased for decades with a buffoonery we here at Poets & Suicides have come to know and love, turns out to have very little to offer the Camusian debate over whether or not we should continue to live. The Author is wondering, that is, why (and whether) he should go on like this. Pain is funny, so perhaps the Author is just sticking around for the jokes. (Beckett has never felt more apt: I can’t go on; I’ll go on.)

Also, as the Author’s literary hero László Krasznahorkai once put it in an epigram, “Heaven is sad.” (The editors hope to explore those three words at length in another entry.)

For those (non)readers encountering this desultory entry in the Poets & Suicides compendium, fear not: the Author will be with you for some time yet. There is no need to dial the emergency numbers or alert the (non)media or contact the mental-health professionals. Like heaven, the Author is sad. But do not fire your flaming arrows, or if you do, be sure (not) to aim them at the highly flammable tent that contains… well, you know damned well what it contains.

As it is written, so shall it be done.