Even death may die

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Even death may die

Postby Jerky » Tue Aug 16, 2005 8:39 pm

Upon encountering three news stories about the sorry state of the world's oceans this week, yer old pal Jerky's thoughts turned to old Howard Phillips Lovecraft, the prodigy of Providence, living anachronism, gentleman nihilist. <br><br>In his lifetime, Lovecraft barely eked out a living as an author of weird fiction for pulpy journals of ill repute. Sickly since birth, he died a pauper in his early 40s, just before the World War II really got rolling. <br><br>Fortunately, he left behind a devoted circle of correspondents and admirers who refused to let his visions of cosmic dread be relegated to the recycle bin of literary history. Today, nearly seventy years since his death, many consider Lovecraft the 20th century's most important author of fantastic fiction, a Poe for the nineteen-hundreds.<br><br>Make no mistake, he remains a cult commodity; multiple cults in fact, including a number of literalists who've made fetishes of the master's McGuffins. Among these, the reality of a blasphemous grimmoire entitled Al Azif, or the Necronomicon, remains the most persistent rumor. For some delusional chill-seekers and Death Metal nerds, the idea of a book containing knowledge so unutterably awful that anyone attempting to read it risks going insane is simply too good not to be true. <br><br>Occasionally, academics eager to bolster their "geek cred" with a certain phenotype of student will invoke the name of H.P. Lovecraft, but in the world of learned elites, his work largely remains a guilty pleasure. <br><br>Lovecraft is not without his champions, however. Jacques Bergier, nuclear chemist and World War II hero, introduced Lovecraft's work to the European continent. There, his adjectival excesses were more easily forgiven -- even appreciated -- and his resonance with Nietzsche, Spengler, Freud and Einstein were more readily detected. <br><br>Not a few who lived through the dawn of this terrible age of death camps and atomic annihilation sensed the tremor of prophecy in Lovecraft's words. It's not for his style, but for his substance -- or, perhaps more accurately, his subtext -- that Lovecraft's reputation grows more formidable with every passing year.<br><br>France's most current and notable enfant terrible, Michel Houellebecq, counts himself an unabashed fan. Recalling his youthful first encounter with Lovecraft's work, he writes: "To call it a shock would be an understatement. I had not known literature was capable of this. And, what's more, I'm still not sure it is. There is something not really literary about Lovecraft's work."<br><br>Reading The Colour Out of Space provides clues as to Houellebecq's meaning. Besides being Lovecraft's most authentically unnerving work -- and a rip-roaring yarn -- this is a story that captures with skin-crawling accuracy the arcane befoulment wrought by radioactivity. That the story was written decades before man first tried to split the atom only adds to the frisson one feels when reading it.<br><br>Which brings us, in a roundabout way, to the subject at hand. Though he seldom strayed far from his coastal hometown, Lovecraft loathed the ocean. In its depths, he saw a reflection of the boundless void irreversibly exposed when reason ripped away the comforting veil of superstition. It seems oddly fitting, therefore, that the world's oceans are rapidly deliquescing into a zone of Lovecraftian ruin. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the septic sea we call the Gulf of Mexico.<br><br>Along the shores of Englewood Beech this week, seekers of sun and fun bore witness to an astonishing phenomenon; an abyssal procession, flopping and wiggling and slithering in their thousands. All manner of fish, crustaceans, mollusks and eels were observed traveling south in a narrow band stretching for miles, hugging close to shore. Predator swam alongside prey, ignoring the easy pickings in favor of beating the hastiest possible retreat. <br><br>"I've lived her for 10 years," one onlooker marveled, "and I've never seen anything like this. It's incredible." <br><br>Another witness averred: "You name the species of fish and they were there. I have never seen anything like that in my life. This was not a fish kill."<br><br>As is so frequently the case in Lovecraft's fiction, the scientific community is at a loss. The explanations offered up by academics, all of whom admit to having never encountered such behavior, range from "stealth" Red Tide to predator avoidance. <br><br>"We just don't know what's happening," declared one researcher. "That's a lot of maybes and what-ifs. I know the state is working on that and some other reports, so maybe by next week we'll have some answers."<br><br>Elsewhere in the Gulf, some have come face to face with a phenomenon so terrible in scope and portent that it makes the above story seem almost quaint. SCUBA divers are returning to shore with hair-raising descriptions of an unprecedentedly vast dead zone a few miles out. <br><br>"I'm talking zero things are alive out there", said witness Mike Miller, grimly adding: "The only way to describe it is a nuclear bomb." <br><br>Another diver shared his impression: "Normally when we get a Red Tide, you can go a little north or a little west or south or someplace else and dive. Usually it doesn't kill every single thing."<br><br>Red Tide, a so-called "natural" phenomenon bearing more than a passing resemblance to the Old Testament plague, is an otherworldly terror in its own right. When the algae that thrive on human, livestock and industrial waste begin to multiply unchecked, it has a necrotizing effect on vast swaths of ocean. The booming flora gives the water a murky crimson taint, but that's the least of it. After a while, the darkness begins to spread, choking out all the oxygen and killing everything in its path. It produces potent, neurotoxic by-products that have been known to kill human beings unlucky enough to ingest the foul corruption. That which the Red Tide kills sinks to the bottom and rots, providing further fuel to make the Red Tide grow… and the feast goes on. <br><br>Need your humble narrator point out that this year's Red Tide is the worst on record?<br><br>On the global scale, the news isn't much cheerier. In what scientists warn might be a tilting point in the acceleration of Global Warming, an expanse of Siberian permafrost the size of Western Europe is beginning to thaw for the first time since the Ice Age ended. <br><br>But this Global Defrosting could lead to things far worse than just the world's biggest muck-pit. The region consists mostly of a vast peat bog, with billions of tons of methane -- a greenhouse gas 20 times more destructive than carbon dioxide -- trapped in its frozen depths. If unleashed, this methane could double or triple the already accelerating rate of global temperature increase, leading to consequences that can only be described as Apocalyptic. <br><br>Russian scientist D. Kirpotin described the situation as an "ecological landslide that is probably irreversible, and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming."<br><br>And so it's come to this. The oceans are choking to death. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. The toxic effluvium of our waste-based society threatens to make our bloody bickering as meaningless as our very lives. <br><br>We know the consequences, but we can't seem to stop ourselves. At some level, most of us understand that the human species is going through an unprecedented metaphysical crisis. And most of us understand that this crisis will likely be terminal. <br><br>Like the cultists and malcontents who populate Lovecraft's fiction -- who know that if their incantations succeed, the best they can hope for is a quick death -- we are hastening our own obliteration. We collectively rush to be folded up into the formless tentacles of the boiling chaos that birthed us, and be devoured whole. <br><br>In other words, we rush to embrace the ultimate doom that is the destiny of all living things, no matter what.<br> <p></p><i></i>
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Excellent!

Postby lilorphant » Tue Aug 16, 2005 9:38 pm

This was wonderfully written, I cannot help but notice you did not provide a link, are you the talented author?<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Thanks for your kind words!

Postby Jerky » Tue Aug 16, 2005 11:23 pm

Yes, I wrote it for my website, www.dirtfiles.com. Considering the subject matter, I decided to share it with Jeff's worthy crew, i.e. you guys! <p></p><i></i>
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Loved the post!

Postby sparkinthedark » Tue Aug 16, 2005 11:34 pm

Love the Lovecraft tone. Truely scared me. You should look into the crash of plankton levels off the Oregon coast which has caused a huge die off of adult sea birds. They are just the visible sign of the disaster that is the chain breaking. If the plankton don't come back the salmon will be gone and the rest will follow. <p></p><i></i>
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Agreed... great piece!

Postby psyop samurai » Wed Aug 17, 2005 12:32 am

I love it: "The Dirt Files - All the Muck that's Fit to Rake" <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :lol --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/laugh.gif ALT=":lol"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <br><br>*sigh*... yet <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>another</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> good blog bookmarked. Pretty soon I'm gonna have to hire somebody to help me read.<br> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p097.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=psyopsamurai@rigorousintuition>psyop samurai</A> at: 8/16/05 10:34 pm<br></i>
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Superb essay, horrifying subject matter

Postby Peg C » Wed Aug 17, 2005 12:54 am

You've nailed the feelings I've been having for many years now, which, unfortunately, are only increasing in doomfulness. I was a childhood reader of Lovecraft, since my father was an afficianado - back in the days when terrifying myself was still a deliciously thrilling.<br><br>National Geographic did a documentary on the increasing hostility of elephants to humans that produced a harmonic rumble, too. Elephants are attacking humans worldwide in record numbers and coordinated ways. And not just the "wild" ones. Handlers in zoos everywhere are being killed. The wondrous beasts are highly intelligent, greatly feeling, and deeply intuitive. We can only hope that their despair isn't an omen of the irreversible.<br><br>I read somewhere in the past few days that Russian scientists are proposing to employ a methane-consuming bacterium to help mitigate the methane pollution. That might work. But then again, when has introducing a species to solve a problem EVER not led to more problems? <p></p><i></i>
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Bravo

Postby Qutb » Wed Aug 17, 2005 10:20 am

Very well written. Though scary and depressing. <p></p><i></i>
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Thanks everybody for your kind words.

Postby Jerky » Wed Aug 17, 2005 3:36 pm

I appreciate it. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Even death may die

Postby heath7 » Wed Aug 17, 2005 5:54 pm

Great work! <br><br>I'm not greatly familiar with Lovecraft's writing:<br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>And most of us understand that this crisis will likely be terminal.</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--><br><br>Is it all so hopeless? <p></p><i></i>
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Thomas Ligotti

Postby enkidu » Wed Aug 17, 2005 6:39 pm

"Nothing ever known has ended in glory;<br>all which ends does so in exhaustion, in<br>confusion, and debris."<br><br>If you ever just want to wallow in it, read Thomas Ligotti <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Even death may die

Postby slimmouse » Wed Aug 17, 2005 9:43 pm

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>In other words, we rush to embrace the ultimate doom that is the destiny of all living things, no matter what.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br><br> Well just call me the eternal optimist, but Im an "energy is forever" man. Be that any form of energy,- that of which we the earth, the universe etc is essentially made. I will willingly stand corrected of course, if "science" could even possibly begin to adress my beliefs with any kind of barely credible hypothesis or experimental proof.<br><br> This mortal coil is eternal in some form or another, and will manifest itself again and again ad infinitum IMO.<br><br> Lets just hope the collective consciousness fashioned by divinity learns from this, and in an eternity of free choice we dont screw it up so horribly next time around - cos we sure as hell have made a mess of everything on this planet. <p></p><i></i>
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