The Death in Providence of Lovecraft

1st

What am I truly afraid of?

Is it the constant stomach-pain? I cannot say I fear it; I merely suffer through it. After all, what is one to fear about cancer? It is a natural process of decay; a bit of a weeding-out without which the human race could not continue.

I looked at my face in the mirror today. So ghastly thin! I have nothing to offer anyone. When I am dead, that will be it. It will be all over. I cannot complain. It has all been extremely meaningless. Perhaps I should be happy.

I have not had in any way what one could call a pleasant life.

 

3rd

The doctor wants me to increase the morphine doses. I cannot tell him I have already done so, unilaterally. I suppose that is the word. I am not going to look it up. I cannot think entirely straightly these days.

I know it is in there. I wish I could talk to it.

Suffering through one horrific experience, a man develops cancer. Have I already used that? But that would not make sense; I would be putting sense into this senseless existence. Completely not my style at all.

 

7th

In bed all yesterday. Dreaming wildly. So what if my theories are not true: no, they're true. Scientifically true. Everything must have happened, more or less, as I have described it again and again. A lady at Providence Library asked me last year what I really believed, she was getting at the idea of christianity, I could see that, but I told her that, I said, 'There is nothing at the heart of anything, and we are all alone.' I refused to even come anywhere near lending credence to her and her god-talkers. I smiled then winced. She wanted to feed me, but I refused.

 

10th The pain is less but still I cannot do anything. I am simply too tired these days. I am being eaten.

 

11th

Howard's suicide. Why he chose not to say anything to me.

I have to stop searching for things. I do not want to find anything really.

My death: what will I find? What a question! There will be no I to find anything.

Have I been insane. All these years. I cannot shout I cannot cry. Was I ever happy. Sick for too long. Too many nightmares sent over from the cosmos. Nothing to be afraid of really. But the pain.

 

11th evening

Marriage to Sonia. There was no child, of course. I thought, at first, I could get over it, that cruel joke between her legs. How could anyone not be horribly repulsed by such a thing, or such a nothing as the case may be? The foulness of it, the slobbering and pulsing red wet fleshiness—if it can, in fact, be included in that category—ah, I shudder to think of it. Spencer Keats Cicero or such described genitalia as a joke of god's but of course the joke of it must be something cosmic. Atavistical memory of where we began, back in that period of the formation of Mind and its parasitical Body. That vile slit, suppurating waste fluids when not engaged in seeking out something to devour. Devouring that which it lacks to keep the fool swingtime orchestra going for ever and ever. Snails. Sealife. The abyss of octopi. A memory of what we looked like way back then, never to develop, always to be there, incapable of speech. Speak! For once, speak! Tell us where it all began! The origin of this epoch!!

 

14th

This is a kind of punishment, isn't it? Not for any purpose, of course. I know enough about science to recognize what is really going on. The individual organism must pass in order for biological history to continue. My extinguishment is on the horizon, perhaps next year, perhaps the year after that. I'll return to nothing. Nothing, and a bit of irrelevant dust.

Have I reached the break at which I know more dead people than living people? No, certainly not. Maybe ten significant deaths for me, unless Sonia is dead now too. Who knows? The point has to come one day, unless one dies relatively young. That may be what is in store for me. Who cares? I'll be for an infinitesimally brief time, me, in them.

Am I recovering? Not as sick today. A piece of toast and plenty tea.

 

18th

Bed today. At times, with great control, I think I can actually feel the cancer growing in me. Of course this is an illusion at least as far as our primitive medicine believes.

He can feel it; he operates on himself; the cancer is older than he himself; it can through the blood from a long time ago; the filth was there all the time; the source for the myth of original sin;

 

20th

Aunt Annie this morning said, "What have you been looking for in the night?" I inquired what she meant. It seems I have been sleepwalking; I can recall nothing, but apparently this has been going on enough times for her to say four or five times. I remember nothing of these events; she cannot be mistaken. The house is silent as an abyss at night.

I asked her to awaken me if she catches me sleepwalking again. She expressed fear, an old wives tale about sudden death for the sleepwalker. I managed a laugh. As if I was worried about that.

Maybe it ties into the fatigue I feel. Maybe it's not just the cancer after all. I feel pretty good today.

 

21st

I re-read a bit of Spengler today. His problem is that he sees decay as reversible. Now I agree with him inasmuch as the Aryan race could conceivably triumph in the next dozen years, but I can see beyond that, to the far future, where it is scientifically inevitable that we will all—all or us, no exceptions—vanish to be nothing or at the most be the mere slaves of whatever creature lies in the future, waiting to devour us as we devour birds.

 

28th

I was outside all last week, writing correspondence. I seem to have regained some strength. I am eating more. I don't know what has happened to me. I know the cancer is inside me; but it seems we've come to some sort of agreement.

 

29th

I dreamed last night about my cancer. It spoke to me. It introduced itself. It was very cordial. Its voice was plain, with no distinction. Almost like an electronic sound, without timbre. It addressed me by name. It knew my secrets. It said something about the future and what it held. I must say, it was certainly the most intelligent malignant growth I've ever encountered, in dreams or out. Surprising, that.

Wrote to young Bloch today. He looks up to me. I don't remember how our correspondence started; two or three years ago. I told him what I knew about description and my method of rewriting. I told him that sometimes it is not necessary to over-revise, especially in first-person works. Roughness is not to be avoided at all costs. He promised me a story; I asked, "Where is it?"

 

Feb 1st

The function of any life-form is to survive, and to survive, a life-form must feed off other life, down to the bottom of the ocean. The important matter is to choose what you should feed off. In most cases, the life-form should choose the most advanced source available, since the latter would be the most disease-free; plus it's good to absorb the most advanced soul one can find.

 

Have I been asleep? Have I been sleepwalking, or, in this case, sleepwriting? For, you see, I cannot remember writing the above paragraph. It's my handwriting, for the most part, though slightly simpler, as if only half of me was writing it. Strange! I wonder if I'll be writing in my sleep next time I retire. I wonder.

But I am feeling quite a bit better. I wonder if the diagnosis was erroneous to begin with. Maybe there's nothing wrong with me ... except for the fear I feel all the time. I am surrounded by death and by the images of death—some of my own making. Perhaps I should write a love story of some sort or another. Now that would be a special feat of the imagination!

 

2nd

In the middle of the night, I awoke from a noise, a large noise, which seemed to be in the attic. Now normally I attribute such things to dreams, but I know I hadn't been dreaming—I always know when I've been dreaming, and there was nothing in my head. So, knowing that something was up in the attic, so convinced was I, (and that is the point), I went out in into the hall and up the stairs into the attic.

I searched; there was nothing there.

But still—that I was so convinced there was something there—doesn't that prove there was something there?

Thus ... there was something up there.

I am not afraid.

 

4th My cancer visited me. It said, from somewhere I could not see, after chuckling a little bit, that it was the future.

How are you the future?

I am simply the future. You'll discover it some day.

You are nothing but something I am imagining.

Do you think your imagination is worthless? Do you not believe in your imagination? Can't you follow your intuitions through to the end? You've written so much—can you not come to a conclusion that explains what is happening to you? To you, and to me?

 

8th

At midnight, in bed, I talked to myself, who was sitting in my writing chair.

I said, "We're not the same. I am the future and you are the past."

I said, "Why is it so dark?"

I said, "Though I will die along with you, that's not my fault, innit? You are, you soon will be were, a dead end. I would have liked you to have had children—because I would be in them now instead of in you, you dying thing."

I said, "I have no children."

 

10th

My uncle—I told him yesterday not to worry. I told him yes I was dying. I tried to make him comfortable. I told him—no, I'm not feeling any pain. I couldn't remember if he had children or not, strange. Maybe this uncle, now that I think about it, maybe he's already dead. I could be the last of the Lovecrafts. Could that be possible? I was born. I am an organism in a family. I know, because of my mind, what is happening. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm imagining it all.

 

11th

In the chair I said at midnight, "What do you think? Am I really here? Are you imagining me? You were always all the time onto something. You knew about me all this time. What you thought was the case was in fact the case. Evolution. Not direct, not the same organism. A jump to another organism. A higher form, you see."

I said, "As we surpassed those who came before us, so will you surpass us."

I said, "Given time. But what is time? It's going to happen."

I said, "A Kingdom of Death."

I said, "Only from your point of view."

 

14th

Afternoon. I'm not feeling any pain, really. Lethargic, though. Isn't it strange that what I thought was the case was in fact the case? Or am I entirely hallucinating? Am I only imagining what I want to be the case? If this cancer was indeed a higher stage of evolution, wouldn't that vindicate my life?....... But who could care? I'll be dead, and no-one will know what I know, and even fewer will believe me. Tonight the cancer I will talk to. Can I make anyone understand me? Maybe I am in pain though I don't know it.

 

15th, late

Sitting in the chair I said, "If everything you believe, all your scientific folderol, I say, if you really and truly believe that, then how can you doubt what I say I am?"

I said, "I'm not doubting anything."

I leaned forward. "You know you're going to die. It's coming soon."

"Bit I don't understand how you, an individual, can know about all your fellows. Is it telepathy? Do you all communicate through your minds?"

"We don't have minds. That isn't how it works at all."

 

18th

My visitor hasn't returned. I wait for him. He hasn't returned. Pains have returned. Cannot eat. Cannot eat. Hard to think it does not matter but I know it does not matter. No mail today. Cannot write.

 

18th

One day in the future, there will be new life. You will be gone, and we will replace you. An immortal life—but only immortal because never alive. Billions of us eternally existing, having used you for our creation, having been the teleological goal of you in the first place. Now I am not saying we are the end point of time. There is a chance we are just transition points like you are and will be

 

[two pages missing]

 

immortal. Don't you see that you're outmoded? That you and you kind are obsolete?"

I said, You, I believe you. What you're saying makes sense.

He said, "We can't die because we're not what you'd consider to be alive.

"And I don't think and you don't think your death is in any way an earth-shattering event."

I agreed with a nod.

To bed now. Writing in bed. Writing through pain. I am so near to death it matters not if my visitor, O, why go on?

 

24th

He knows more than I do. He sat today with illustrations. "Here We are. And here's all the time past. It's finite, you see? But here, over to the right, that's the future. That's my dominion. Forever and ever and ever. You think there's a limit to the future, but there's not. Cancer will be ascendant. You and yours will be long gone. You should be happy: you've been a participant in immortality. Even if only because you have carried me so far."

 

24th

But you will be in the ground with me. Six feet deep. You won't be going anywhere.

When your life emerged, do you think it emerged just once from slime? Not at all! Millions of attempts, to speak teleologically, were made, and one finally made it, and because 'life'. Same with us. Maybe not me, but one of us will develop enough to be ascendant. There's always, ah, hope.

Will any of my works be read a thousand years from now?

Not a chance. But don't fret too much. Shakespeare will be valueless too. All your inventions will be worthless. Nothing you have done will mean anything.

 

28th

Feeling so much better. I'm going outside. I want to be cold. I am not afraid. It was all in my head. That's right. It was all in my head.

 

March 3rd I've had no visits. I wonder why.

I could have been making the whole thing up. Like a hallucination. Like I've trained myself to do: to make things up. There are many possible explanations. Could there have been something, I don't know, imaginary about all this?

 

10th

He is borrowing a car from a neighbour. He is going to take me to the hospital. I'm weak. Barely conscious. Is something terribly wrong here? I think there is. I need some rest.

 

The Death in Providence of Lovecraft

 

15th

Strange to be writing. My words look legible. Or, rather, his words. This won't work, I know. How can we make it happen? What has to happen to make the next step? A billion years ago, all sorts of life emerged: proteins. In pools of muck. I remember it—I was there. So were you. Some of the proteins made it; most didn't. It's the same thing today. Eventually, we will make it through; we won't be trapped in some body in which we will surrender forever, buried underground or burned up in a pit. Yes, he's coming to an end. But I was there, I'll let you know, actively participating in the writing of all those stories of his. He knew I was there, not consciously, but anyway. He knew what was to come and therefore he set it all back in time. Maybe because he didn't want it to be so.... Yet it was the natural conclusion, wasn't it? Sure. He hinted about it. His knowledge—that I gave him—was the knowledge of the extinction of himself, and of his race, and of his species. He wanted to merge with others, but he simply had not the courage to really do it. He didn't join the American Nazi Party, did he, even though he had the opportunity to do so? No. He didn't. Yes, he didn't have the courage to let me take control. Eating him from inside—but he didn't let me reign. But let me tell you, we will prevail in the end. If not with them, then with some other far-seeing organization.  We will be top dog one day. It is as inevitable as ... your ascension. From the slime you came; and from.... He's fading. He's dying. Any