I Want the World to Be My Sad Dream
Everything dies. But only humans feel so goddamn bad about it.
We feel bad about death, about decay, about endings. Despite religion. Despite philosophy. Despite our enlightened minds and all the scientific knowledge we possess. We fear death, for ourselves and the others we love. In the same vein, we fear the lesser forms of death: pain, loneliness, anxiety over being. After all, we invented existentialism.
We are depressing, sad creatures, us humans, so no wonder we want to bring everything else down, too. Well, maybe you don’t. But I do. I’m a writer and a neurotic–and an agnostic, too. I don’t have the faith of the religious in an afterlife–the world for me is only here and now and all my stakes are tied down here, and all my love and loss lives here. So maybe that’s why I want trees to long for the past, balloons to suffer crises of faith, the sun to feel sorry for itself because it always misses the moon.
I keep reading reviews lately–in journals, on Amazon, online, most recently, I think, in the Georgia Review–where some writer bashes some other writer for excessive use of the pathetic fallacy (the gifting of human attributes, actions, and emotions to animals, plants, and objects), but I think it’s all a matter of taste and desire. I want the universe to be as crazed and miserable as me, so of course I’m going to love Calvino’s Cosmicomics. Others may find it too cute by half, but I say why not find solace in the fanciful thought that even ions can wander and weep and want, just like us humans? If existence has made me a melting mass of nerves and depression, then why can’t I define that existence any way I want to? Why can’t I mold it, box it in, expand it, frame it, give it the ability to share my pain and maybe my joy, too?
Some of us want to feel less alone in the world; we want the world to live and be as we are. Some of us like to dream the world the way the world will never be. Some of us just want the world to be a dream.
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I, too, like the idea that ions can wander and weep, and I don’t see anything wrong with writing that way sometimes. But it frustrates me that so often we ONLY write about the rest of the universe as if it is “just like us,” particularly its other living inhabitants. I’d like to see more literature acknowledge that animals live real lives with real drives and desires, on their own terms, as well as the literary, anthropomorphized ones we imagine for them. That doesn’t mean we can’t humanize bears for creative purposes – said the guy who writes about bears more than anything else – but we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that there are real, live, red-in-tooth-and-claw bears in the world, too. Because I’m worried that if we learn to think of bears as symbols and literary devices first and creatures second, we might be less likely to care when the real bears are at risk. And at the very least we miss the remarkable “stories” and lives we might discover if we try to observe the world on its own terms.
But I’m not sure how much this applies to humanizing inanimate objects, as you also mention.
PS Sorry to hijack your comments for my ursamaniacal ranting.
Ha! No worries–I feel the same way, actually. I’m an insane animal-lover, and as someone who belongs to two cats, I completely get that these beasts are not *actually* human, nor motivated by human desires. And when idiot humans antagonize dangerous animals that then have to be destroyed because they’ve done what’s natural and attacked a stupid human, I get so angry I scream at my television or internet for hours minutes without letup. I don’t know that a tiny fragment of literature really makes any difference in that regard–but yes, we should also be writing about less-fanciful, red-in-tooth-and-claw animals and nature, too. And appreciating that wildness. Well, maybe not me–but there are a lot of amazing writers who can and do.
Also, I love the word ursamaniacal. I don’t know if it’s a real word, but if it isn’t, I think you just invented it.
I like this post, Amber. We are sad, self-centered little creatures, aren’t we? I think [g]od is the result of the very pathetic fallacy, or personification/anthropomorphism you mention, attributing human characteristics onto abstractions we translate from concrete reality but can’t comprehend and so, to make things easier, we pretend [g]od did it. It’s all pretend, our whole civilization, how we view ourselves, what we believe and how we reinforce our ridiculous ideologies, everything we’ve done or ‘achieved’ — we’ve made it all up (at the expense of so many people). Doing things, ‘achieving’ things according to arbitrarily determined customs or traditions, is our way of distracting ourselves from thinking about how truly alone and afraid we are. I like this post…
Thanks, Eric! I like the idea very much of god as the ultimate pathetic fallacy. I realize the use of “pathetic” is entirely different and related to empathy and all that, root-wise–but it’s sort of beautiful to call it the pathetic fallacy when you like at how small and sad we are here.
Indeed…
Thanks for posting, Amber. I’ve been pondering my love of ruins lately, and as I’m an architect, that may seem counterintuitive to some, but I think you have a likely answer here. Don’t we have an affinity for all things temporary because we humans appreciate a little company in our fearing? People, animals, ruined structures, all cousins of imperminence. So why not write about each other in honest and familiar terms? If a ruin could write about me, wouldn’t it beset me with dry-rot, termites, uncontrollable foundation cracks?
Funny I should stumble upon this today. I just finished two flash pieces about A) God and B) fears. Go figure.
All too true. I think there’s also something extra beautiful and poignant about endings, even if you’re interested in the beginnings of things, too. Imperfection, impermanance, are so much more interesting to look at. I love Sergio Leone’s movies for that reason–almost none of his characters are beautiful, or perfect-looking. They’re old, craggy, have weird faces, wrinkles, lines, warts, etc. It’s all so interesting to look at. Thanks for reading the piece!