Stella Maris (The Passenger #2)

by Cormac McCarthy

The more naive your life the more frightening your dreams. Your unconscious will keep trying to wake you. In every sense. Imperilment is bottomless. As long as you are breathing you can always be more scared. But

The world has created no living thing that it does not intend to destroy.

You’re pretty much obliged to reckon that at the last suspiration the dying become not only acceptant of death but dedicated to it. That there must be some epiphany that makes it possible for even the dullest and most deluded of us to accept not only what is unacceptable but unimaginable. The absolute terminus of the world. Which will not wonder even for the briefest second what might have become of us.

But I sat in the floor and I read A New Theory of Vision. And it changed my life. I understood for the first time that the visual world was inside your head.

All of this until the first living creature possessed of vision agreed to imprint the universe upon its primitive and trembling sensorium and then to touch it with color and movement and memory. It made of me an overnight solipsist and to some extent I am yet.

The ugly truth is that other than Feynman’s sum-over theories there is no believable explanation of quantum mechanics that does not involve human consciousness. Of course this raises the question as to how it managed to get along without us before we were invented. But it’s not that simple.

I think what is being pointed out is that human consciousness and reality are not the same thing.

The docs dont seem to consider the care with which the world of the mad is assembled. A world which they imagine themselves questioning when of course they are not. The alienist skirts the edges of lunacy as the priest does sin. Stalled at the door of his own mandate. Studying with twisted lip a reality that has no standing. Alien nation. Ask another question. Devise a theory. The enemy of your undertaking is despair. Death. Just like in the real world. You’re not buying this.

I dont think so. The electromagnetic separation process is a very simple mechanical operation. You could explain it to a ten year old. Topology is about the mathematics of shapes. I could say that Poincaré’s conjecture has to do with the inherently spherical nature of shapes that appear to be otherwise. Almost. But that may not even be a good example. Particularly if the conjecture is wrong. Well. For Poincaré it wasnt even a conjecture. It was more a query.

I tried to puzzle out the paper but it was hard. I loved the equations. I loved the big sigma signs with the codes for the summations. I loved the narrative that was unfolding. My father came in and found me there and I thought I was in trouble and I jumped up but he took me by the hand and led me back to the chair and sat me down and went over the paper with me. His explanations were clear. Simple. But it was more than that. They were filled with metaphor. He drew a couple of Feynman diagrams and I thought they were pretty cool. They mapped the world of the subatomic particles he was attempting to explain. The collisions. The weighted routes. I understood—really understood—that the equations were not a supposition of the form whose life was confined to the symbols on the page which described them but that they were there before my eyes. In actuality. They were in the paper, the ink, in me. The universe. Their invisibility could never speak against them or their being. Their age. Which was the age of reality itself. Which was itself invisible and always had been. He never let go of my hand.

Its general vacuity aside there seems to be a ceiling to well-being. My guess is that you can only be so happy. While there seems to be no floor to sorrow. Each deeper misery being a state heretofore unimagined. Each suggestive of worse to come.

I thought there had to be more to it. Animals might whimper if they’re hungry or cold. But they dont start screaming. It’s a bad idea. The more noise you make the more likely you are to be eaten. If you’ve no way to escape you keep silent. If birds couldnt fly they wouldnt sing. When you’re defenseless you keep your opinions to yourself.

At what age in a child’s life does rage become sorrow? I dont know. I dont think Piaget addresses the question. Or why. I think I know why. The injustice over which they are so distraught is irremediable. And rage is only for what you believe can be fixed. All the rest is grief. At some point they get this.

Mathematics is just sweat and toil. I wish it were romantic. It isnt. At its worst there are audible suggestions. It’s hard to keep up. You dont dare sleep and you may have been up for two days but that’s too bad. You find yourself making a decision and finding two more decisions waiting and then four and then eight. You have to force yourself to just stop and go back. Begin again. You’re not seeking beauty, you’re seeking simplicity. The beauty comes later. After you’ve made a wreck of yourself. Is it worth it? Like nothing else on earth.

If the world itself is a horror then there is nothing to fix and the only thing you could be protected from would be the contemplation of it.

It’s just another mystery to add to the roster. Leonardo cant be explained. Or Newton, or Shakespeare. Or endless others. Well. Probably not endless. But at least we know their names. But unless you’re willing to concede that God invented the violin there is a figure who will never be known. A small man who went with his son into the stunted forests of the little iceage of fifteenth century Italy and sawed and split the maple trees and put the flitches to dry for seven years and then stood in the slant light of his shop one morning and said a brief prayer of thanks to his creator and then—knowing this perfect thing—took up his tools and turned to its construction. Saying now we begin. I’m sorry. This gentleman is very close to your heart. Sorry. Yes. Very close. Time’s up.

knew that in order to do what she’d done you would first have to believe it. But this seemed different. Intuition is a tough nut to crack. The cool thing about topology is that the problems you are working on are not about something else. Your hope is that in solving them they will explain to you why you were asking them. You’re tracking down the affine. Can you really stretch a surface any way you like? What if you stretched it to infinity? The width would narrow infinitely. Can the limits of the infinitesimal be approached forever? The mathematics may say yes but you dont believe it. Infinite extension is just more of the same but infinite contraction seems to present a different set of problems. In the classical understanding. You’re in Zeno land. Begin again and concentrate.

Yes. If you’re drowning then at some point you’re going to have to make the decision to breathe in the water and die. You may think that the decision will be made for you, but even if you cant hold your breath for another second you can hold it another millisecond. And of course it’s not a choice but a decision. You have to make the decision to kill yourself. There’s nothing like that in falling to your death. The movies dont get that right either. There’s no kicking and screaming. You’re absolved of all responsibility. You’re quits. Are you sure about these morbid conversations?

thought about David Bohm. He wrote a really good book on quantum mechanics—largely because Einstein had half convinced him that the theory was faulty. He wanted to get his thoughts down on paper. By the time he’d finished the book he didnt believe in the theory.

know. It ultimately descended into such questions as what it was that you were even talking about when you inquired into the nature of shape and form. The final section was called “The Prestige.” There was no QED at the end of it. Is that a mathematical term? Prestige? No. It’s a term for the third part of a magic act. It describes the moment when the woman you’ve just seen sawn in half steps out and bows to the crowd.

I think our time is up. I know. Hold my hand. Hold your hand? Yes. I want you to. All right. Why? Because that’s what people do when they’re waiting for the end of something.