Lovecraft
A diary entry
It is in a state of resigned acceptance that I come to you today. This new realization brings with it a sense of relief and puts to rest the egotistical notions I had been wrestling with over the last few days — that this cancer was somehow a manifestation of the misdeeds that I had committed in my life. I accede now that it was indeed my union with Sonia, a well assimilated American but a Jew nonetheless that resulted in these malignant tumours that plague me. And it is her sins that I bear grief for as I wistfully continue down the road that this life takes me on, projecting my mental idolatries on what is but an inconsequential page in someone else’s manuscript. And yet, despite fully knowing her responsible for my current state of distress, I cannot help but feel love for her as she watches over me in this sickly state, comforting me with the sound of her voice.
All those years ago, my moving to New York on her insistence had been a mistake; for whereas I had looked for poignant wonder and inspiration, I had found instead only a sense of horror and oppression which threatened to master, paralyze, and annihilate me. We stayed in her apartment and I frequented the Kalem Club where I met the people I had considered my friends at the time. All we usually spoke about at these meetings was our writing, and in the blind pursuit of excellence, we naively led ourselves to believe that what we did served a larger purpose — that our writing would leave a mark on this world that would allow us to be remembered long after our time had come and gone. My days were spent in the pursuit of magazines that would part with their money and let my stories achieve a modicum of readership. Although initially fruitful, these trips became increasingly pointless, with the arrival of Farnsworth Wright as Editor ensuring that most of my cherished work never reached the audience it was intended for. It was uncharacteristically obtuse of me to believe for a prolonged period of time that Wright would eventually develop the perspicacity to decipher what I as a Nietzschean Ubermensch was conveying through my work.
By then, Sonia had moved to Cleveland and in what was a deeply emasculating experience, I subsisted in a tiny apartment on a weekly allowance she sent me. My mother would often visit me there and talk about what she was going through at Butler’s. She was often forgetful but I liked listening to her talk and refrained from telling her that she had already recounted these experiences to me in the letters she had sent me years ago. She urged me to not lose control to Sonia, and insisted I return to Providence — advice I finally heeded.
Providence had always held a special place in my heart. It was here that I had grown up. I often walked past the home we used to live in. I remember Grandpa reading me stories of Aladdin, Illiad and the Odyssey. But those weren’t the tales I was interested in. Every night, I silently hoped he would recount his other tales, the ones that I would get admonished for if I asked him explicitly to tell them. When he did tell them of his own volition however, there was a certain glint in his eyes that only the occult could evoke. These stories evoked in me terrors that would keep me up screaming in the darkness of the night, but I loved them nonetheless, not for the tales or the characters themselves but because eventually each story comes true. Father had been labelled psychotic by the folk at Barton’s, but Grandpa had ensured I knew what the real cause of his death was — Dad had caved in to nervous exhaustion, after years of struggle against the evil spirit that had possessed his mind. Years later, Ma went the same way. As did my sweet Sonia. Just like in the stories, each of them came back however, revealing themselves only to the Ubermensch. To them, life and death were but mere illusions — humanity’s way of fooling itself into believing that our existence serves a purpose simply because it isn’t infinite.
And like them, I too will die soon. The human race will disappear. Other races will appear and disappear in turn. The sky will become icy and void, pierced by the feeble light of half-dead stars. Which will also disappear. Everything will disappear. And what human beings do is just as free of sense as the free motion of elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, feelings? Pure ‘Victorian fictions’. Only egotism exists.
I am just the beginning. I am Providence.
