#Postman Photon

[mewezzy]

This is Photon, who runs the post office in Brightburg! They've been struggling with their letters and packages disappearing as of late...

[o-link]

Dark Space Galaxy

"Space. The final frontier." The way Patrick Stewart says those words in the intro to Star Trek: The Next Generation is almost ominous, making the journey of the Enterprise seem like a venture into an impenetrable void. That voice will always give you chills.

Between the planets and stars that come out at night, space may look like a vast expanse of darkness, but it is still lit up by a background glow from stars and galaxies. This is the cosmic optical background (COB). As opposed to the invisible cosmic microwave background or CMB (leftovers from the Big Bang), the COB tells us about all the galaxies that have formed from the moment after the Big Bang to 450,000 later. These galaxies keep the universe from experiencing a total blackout.

Faraway stars and galaxies could also give us an idea of how many galaxies possibly exist—something that may tell us how dark it really is out there.

Because new research using data New Horizons spacecraft has found far fewer of these galaxies than were thought to exist, space may be darker than we thought. Unlike Hubble, which for all its far-out vision, still orbits Earth, The New Horizons Spacecraft is far away enough to really gauge the darkness of space. If it could observe Arrokoth, it can see things Hubble (which imaged distant stars above) can’t even dream of. New Horizons data has suggested the darkest reaches of space are ten times darker than the darkest areas Hubble can see. Instead of trillions of unseen galaxies, think in the realm of hundreds of billions.

“The cosmic optical background (COB) is the average flux of visible light photons averaged over the volume of the observable Universe,” said astronomer Marc Postman, who coauthored a study recently published in The Astrophysical Journal. “It reflects, at least in part, an integral over the cosmological history of star formation occur- ring in recognizable galaxies, proto-galaxies, and star clusters, as well as mass accretion by black holes.”

Even black holes keep the lights on—or at least their accretion discs, which are made mostly of glowing star stuff, do. Photons, or particles of light, swirl around the accretion disc of a black hole until they finally make it past its event horizon. This is the point of no return. There is thought to be true blackness beyond that danger zone, because not even light can escape.

The COB can be difficult to observe. Hubble’s vision is often distorted by light pollution around Earth. Either sunlight or artificial light can reflect off particles of space dust (mostly the remnants of smashed comets and asteroids), causing a glare that gets in the way of its observations, and telescopes obviously can’t squint. For something orbiting our planet, zodiacal light, or the unearthly white light that comes from between planets and emerges about an hour before dawn or after sunset, is also a nuisance. New Horizons is not as distracted by that. Any telescope or spacecraft is going to have issues with measuring the COB.

If you really want to know how bright the COB is, you have to factor out all these distractions. Doing that requires going further out from the inner solar system. This is where New Horizons is particularly useful, because it is over 4 billion miles away, where the sky can get much darker. Getting an accurate read on the COB also meant leaving out any light from galaxies thought to exist but are too faint for their existence to be confirmed. Light pollution from stars in our own galaxy was the most annoying issue for the astronomers, who had to keep it from messing with the real brightness of the COB.

It turned out that once all the other noise was cancelled out, the COB was actually pretty faint. So what actually is that light? Maybe galactic refuse. Maybe rogue stars. Maybe neither. When NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope finally takes off, it could finally give more insight into the darkness of the final frontier.

[comickergirl]

Alright. Let’s give this a shot.

SPOILER-Y DISCUSSION OF CAPTAIN MARVEL, INCOMING:

I figure the best way to do this is chronological; my prior attempts have not been chronological, which might account for their feeling a little...all over the place and unorganized.

This will also be a good test to see how much of the film I remember.

RIGHT THEN: First and foremost, (and we gleaned this from the trailers, obviously) MEMORY-LOSS PLOT. Which is Classic Carol™. She’s lost her memory like. Four times.

(her poor brain D:)

All of this to say: The premise of the movie, a kind of reverse origin story in which Carol figures out who she is, in a very literal but also figurative sense, was a great way to go, IMO.

Love all the moments from Carol’s past. I was admittedly surprised that we didn’t get more of that? But what was there was effective and given the amount of ground the movie had to cover, I think it was sufficient.

So after the dreams** we get the early morning fight with Yon-Rogg (who I was absolutely certain was Yon-Rogg, in spite of all the back and forth speculation and Marvel attempting to ‘hide’ his identity) and there’s exposition, obviously, and the set up of Carol’s struggle with Yon-Rogg’s forced Kree values clashing with Carol’s humanity but MORE importantly...

PHOTON BLASTS.

Love the way they render the energy pulsing just below the surface of her skin. Looks so cool. 

Then: Chit Chat Time with The Great Intelligence!

I thought for sure it was gonna be Helen Cobb.

BOY WAS I MISTAKEN. (More on that in a sec.)

Favorite Visual #1: The slow pan of Starforce and the excellent shot of Carol’s helmet as they swim to shore on Torfa.

The whole rescue mission sequence/Carol’s kidnapping is...Truly a Highlight, in my opinion.

I mean!

She’s running around the enemy ship! Without her boots! Pummeling the Skrulls with unwieldy metal shackles! And growling in their faces!

#BOSSOFSPACE

Also, comic connection alert: Carol was kidnapped and experimented on by the Brood, which resulted in her stint as Binary.

So, back to the movie:

Talos man.

TALOS.

We’ll get to him later.

Okay what month of 1995 does Captain Marvel take place in? Because I was honestly offended that no one, and I mean NO ONE made a Buzz Lightyear joke re: Carol’s outfit and being a member of STARCOMMANDFORCE who checks her wrist communicator to try and make contact.

(Toy Story came out in November so if this takes place in the summer I GUESS I will let it slide.)

But otherwise dug all of the 90s references.

The little Gameboy sound when she calls Yon-Rogg!

(Also, train chase was great but I’m trying to save time though I do feel inclined to mention Kelly Sue DeConnick! Bringing some quality side eye! Very nice.)

Young Fury + Carol = excellent buddy cop combo, 14/10 would take an entire spinoff of their wacky 90s road trip adventures.

‘You look like someone’s disaffected niece’ might be favorite line in the film.

Let’s pause for a moment and appreciate the score, shall we? Pinar Toprak CRUSHES IT; the Captain Marvel theme feels like something out of The Rocketeer but with about 400% more sci-fi synth and I LOVE IT.

**Love the piece of score played when Carol wakes up. (Appropriately titled “Waking Up” I think, on the soundtrack.)

I also like the songs they picked for the movie? This is probably the complaint I’ve seen most often, that they feel obvious and easy, but. I dunno. I was never expecting something like Guardians of the Galaxy? So I wasn’t mad about it. 

(In related news, I’ve been listening to “Connection” on repeat ever since the special look trailer dropped.) 

Anyways.

GOOSE.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSE.

MY GOOD FLERKEN GIRL.

(So, yes, breezing past the bar interrogation--though I do like the ghostly images of Carol’s past that crop up--as well as the trip to Pegasus, again in the interest of time.)

(WAIT. NO. THE TAPE JOKE.)

(Okay for real. Moving on.)

So then. THEN.

The Rambeaus. And the feelings.

Unpopular(?) opinion: I love that this big budget action movie focuses on female friendships and platonic relationships instead of romance THERE I SAID IT

ALSO LIEUTENANT TROUBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I spelled Lieutenant right on the first try. Just sayin’.

But in all seriousness, I love the time we spend in Louisiana. We get a lot of good stuff. Carol getting answers from Maria, Talos arriving with his soda (milkshake?) The standoff with Goose.

(Oh, and how could I forget Maria bidding farewell to the neighbor, shutting the front door as Carol continues to glower???)

‘What’s happening?’ ‘It’s loading.’ XD

Favorite Visual #2 (Chronologically, but actually the one I like best in the movie) The Pysche-Magnitron Light Speed Engine explosion.

(Thank you, Marvel, for changing it to ‘light speed engine,’ which is much easier to spell than Psyche-Magnitron)

But yeah, that was the visual that sold me, in the earliest trailer. I wish I had some profound reason for that, but the truth is I just love blue-glow-y stuff.

BUT ALSO

(And, okay, an additional spoiler- warning because this is a big one. Like. Big.)

...................................................................

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Seriously, go away if you haven’t seen the movie yet.

................................................................................................................................

MAR-VELL iS A WOMAN

LIKE THIS WHOLE TIME. EVERYONE WAS SO FOCUSED ON JUDE LAW. And then there was that blip, right before the release, when Annette Bening revealed she was the Great Intelligence, again after months of secrecy so we were all like, HA we know the TWIST.

BUT NO. NO WE DID NOT.

Well played, Marvel. Well played.

This was something I was thinking about before the film came out; I just kind of assumed, because of the lack of an apparent ‘Mar-Vell,’ that Carol would be the first and only Captain Marvel in the MCU. And she basically is, b/c we have no indication that Dr. Larson was moonlighting as a superhero, but regardless this is SO COOL. SUCH A GOOD TWIST.

(A quick Google search on how many ‘L’s are in Mar-Vell led to a serendipitous discovery: an article on the gender swap decision, and apparently it came very late in the game. Like. ‘Already looking at guys to play Mar-Vell’ late in the game. *insert themoreyouknow.gif here*) 

Right, okay, back to Feelings:

When Carol’s like: You don’t know who I am! I don’t know who I am!

I was. Emotional.

(Brie Larson is perfectly cast and does a wonderful job.)

Maria’s pep talk? Also caused emotions.

And Maria got to come on the mission! I was pleasantly surprised, and really glad that the visit there wasn’t like. Just a pit stop, you know?

RIP Science Guy, we hardly knew ye.

Again, jumping ahead, but may I just say: It was truly an Experience, watching this movie with folks who had no idea what a ‘Flerken’ was.

Both my friends at the first screening I attended, and then like. Half the theater at the second one. XD

The whole row was like: WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT when the tentacles came out.  

So yeah, Talos and the 180 on the REAL villains: Nice. The enduring complaint leveled at the MCU is a lack of compelling villains. (I guess Talos technically doesn’t count as a villain by the end of this, but. We’re going with it.) And Carol’s commitment to helping the Skrull refugees lifts plot elements from my favorite portion of the DeConnick run, so. YEP. LOVED IT.

(I was also trying to determine if Talos’ daughter was perhaps meant to be like. a Tic expy. Did it say ‘Tic’ on the pinball machine? Or ‘Tig’? Or something else entirely?)

Loved the...mind prison? sequence. All of it. “Come as You Are,” the Great Intelligence rockin’ out in the jacket, Carol’s Big Damn Hero moment. Brilliant. Spectacular. Amazing.

“My name is Carol.” 

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSS

(Or does she say her full name? I can’t remember.)

And then the subsequent fight scene where Carol’s like. Simultaneously kicking butt but also enjoying all this newfound power/strength? A+++++

Favorite Visual #3: Carol sitting on the railing with the lunchbox.

Sad to see Minn-Erva go, but. Was so cool that Maria gets her own hero moment.

And then this big ol’ fight scene where Carol DESTROYS SPACESHIPS WITH HER BARE HANDS. 

Favorite Visual #4: Carol going Binary in the red, blue, and yellow suit with the helmet FLYING THROUGH SPACE, LOVING EVERY MINUTE OF IT.

All of the visuals from this portion are so on point it’s like they’re pulled straight from the comics.

Favorite Visual #5: When Carol’s staring down Ronan and she like. Does that thing, where you hit your palm with your fist? (IDK the technical term there) And there’s this awesome energy burst and AGAIN, BLUE GLOW-Y THINGS. I love.

I’m pretty sure there’s an interview where Brie Larson talked about watching Indiana Jones? And wanting to be the female equivalent of that.

WELL, that’s the movie I immediately thought of when Carol blasted Yon-Rogg into a boulder, mid-goading.

(Y’know, like the scene in Raiders where Harrison Ford was too sick/tired to do the fight choreography, so he just. Shot the bad guy.)

ALSO, when she drags his sorry butt across the desert? I was IMMEDIATELY reminded of Kara dragging Astra into the DEO.

DANVERS GIIIIRRRRRRRRRRLLLLLS

*ahem*

THE FAMILY DINNER AT THE END?????

LITERAL FOUND FAMILY OF ALIENS AND SOLDIERS AND SUPERHEROES JUST. HAVING DINNER. PLAYING UNO. WASHING DISHES AND SINGING "PLEASE MR. POSTMAN”?

Thank you, Marvel, for this beautiful gen fic material.

 WHOOPS I forgot the costume colors bit. (Admittedly confused it with the ending wherein Monica gives Carol her jacket back. Sans ketchup stain.)

So backtracking ever-so-slightly...

Let’s see if I remember this right: We get

Red and gold (Binary send-up, possibly? Or maybe the original Ms. Marvel costume?)

IDK what to call it....Lite-Brite? (♪ makin’ thi-ings with lii-iii-ight ♫) 

Black and Gold (bathing suit costume?)

White and Green (original Mar-Vel/Kree colors) 

That last one’s the only one that’s like. Obvious and deliberate. I’m just guessing with the others.

BUT CLEARLY I am ABSOLUTELY ONTO SOMETHING with the Lite-Brite.

BACK TO THE ENDING Lt. Trouble gives Carol her jacket and that’s my fav look, out of all the costume variations we see in the movie. I mean. I love the black and green, admittedly, and the helmet looks SO GOOD for being something that should be ridiculous, but my go-to answer for superhero costume design is: add a leather jacket.

Favorite Visual #6: Carol in the suit and flight jacket, floating above Earth, ready to go save the day.

AND THEN SHE’S OFF.

Ooooh, ooooooooh, but we can’t forget the scene. The scene that I’m certain ticked off The Continuity Police. (You know the types.)

See, remember when Marvel was like, ‘Carol’s the first Avenger!’ and haters were like, ‘UH HELLO IT’S STEVE????!????’ 

And then Marvel was like, oh ho ho ho, we meant LITERALLY the ENTIRE INITIATIVE IS NAMED AFTER HER CALL SIGN AND SHIELD STARTS LOOKING FOR SUPERHEROES BECAUSE OF HER ERGO SHE IS THE FIRST die mad about it.

That was so very, very satisfying to see.

(Also I guess she’s a literal Captain in the air force? If the rank on the jet is legit. Pretty sure she’s a Major in the comics, though. But I assume this change is to help sell the ‘Captain Marvel’ name.)

And then, friends. And then.

I was fully prepared to leave the theater, uncertain of when we’d next see Carol.

EVEN AS THE MID CREDITS SCENE PLAYED. I was like. ‘Well, they’re gonna cut it off before we can see anythINOHMaNTHERESHEIS!!!!!!’

‘Where’s Fury.’

*insert aesthetically pleasing keyboard smash here*

BRING ON ENDGAME.

And before we wrap up here, one final note:

The Space Stone, sought after by Trickster Gods and Mad Titans alike, was for a brief time, nothing more than a glorified furball.

FIN

(Nope, wait. One little anecdote before we go: of my core group of buddies, I am the Comics Nerd, and thus I am often consulted after we’ve watched a Marvel movie. So I had to explain that YES, Kara Danvers had the last name Danvers first, but she was adopted, and her GIVEN fake name was Linda Lee, so in all fairness, the same-name thing is a little less plagiarize-y, b/c ‘Linda Lee Danvers’ does not necessarily match up as well as ‘Kara Danvers’--which wasn’t even used until really recently--to ‘Carol Danvers’. ...Honestly, I was just really happy they called out the connection MY WORK HAS NOT BEEN IN VAIN XD )

Also, I sometimes get replies on posts like this which is totally fine BUT, I would ask that folks keep really spoiler-y stuff out of ‘em. At least for a little while.

[dollsulli]

we all lost.

Here is the long version of who Carol lost:

The only person she ever considered a real friend.

The woman she loved more than herself.

The girl she considered a daughter.

Here is a shortened version of who Carol lost:

Her entire world.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

When Carol gets an alert from the pager she'd given to Fury, she can only assume there's something major happening. Something world threatening.

And to be fair, she wasn't exactly wrong.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

On her way to Earth, Carol runs into a ship. Two people (one more a robot than person, though) by the name of Tony Stark and Nebula inhabit it. Stark seemed close to death. Nebula seemed a bit better.

She flies them home.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

After she drops them off where Stark instructed, she makes a short trip to Louisiana.

If the world is being threatened, she needs to make sure they're okay.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

Louisiana. Carol can't help but smile as she approaches the all too familiar house.

The lights are on despite the hour, it's showing signs of life.

She enters without knocking.

It takes her exactly three minutes to realize something's wrong.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

Carol flew back to the place Stark was at in record timing.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

Carol decides, the moment that she reads Fury had died, that she would kill Thanos.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

After that, she fights. For the next five years, she fights. She fights because she knows full well it's what Maria and Fury and Monica would've wanted from her.

Carol fights like she never has before, because that's all she can do now.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

Sometimes, sometimes she remembers.

This is when it hurts the most.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

She remembers Fury and how much he loved that damned cat. When she remembers that, she sits beside Goose for hours. It's as close to Fury that she can get.

Sometimes she remembers how utterly unimpressed Fury was by her photon blast and she just laughs because that's all she can do.

Sometimes she remembers the song he'd sang to her- Mr. Postman- and she laughs even harder. Sometimes she'll play it just to remember.

This is when it hurts the most.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

Sometimes Carol remembers the nights of dancing and drinking with Maria, and she smiles to herself. She'll play old songs she could recall and just listen to them.

Sometimes she'll remember the feeling of being wrapped in Maria's arms and she'll feel so empty afterwords.

Sometimes- sometimes she'll remember the feeling of Maria's lips against her own, and that always manages to stop her in her tracks.

This is when it hurts the most.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

Sometimes Carol remembers Monica and her bright smile, and that always manages to make her smile just as bright as Monica once had.

Sometimes she remembers the time when Monica helped Carol pick out her new uniform colors, and Monica's laugh when she chose the bright neon colors. (Sometimes she'll change the uniform to those neon colors. She doesn't go out with those colors, she just remembers.)

Sometimes she remembers Monica's sassy remarks and comments and she just laughs.

This is when is hurts the most.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

Now, here is the long version of who Carol lost- of who Carol fought for:

The only person she ever considered a real friend.

The woman she loved more than herself.

The girl she considered a daughter.

Here is a shortened version of who Carol lost- of who she fought for:

Her entire world.

[tseneipgam]

“What a lack of imagination it is to have official first names and surnames. No one ever remembers them, they’re so divorced from the Person, and so banal that they don’t remind us of them at all. What’s more, each generation has its own trends, and suddenly everyone’s called Magdalena, Patryk- or, God forbid- Janina. That’s why I try my best never to use first names and surnames, but prefer epithets that come to mind of their own accord the first time I see a Person. I’m sure this is the right way to use language, rather than tossing about words stripped of all meaning.”

“Here the sky hangs over us dark and low, like a dirty screen, on which the clouds are fighting fierce battles. That’s what our houses are for- to protect us from the sky, otherwise it would pervade the very inside of our bodies, where, like a little ball of glass, our Soul is sitting. If such a thing exists”

“In fact I only watch the weather channel. Since finding it, I’m happy to say I have everything I need, and I have no idea where the remote control has gone... I particularly love it when they show maps of pressure, which explain a sudden resistance to getting out of bed or an ache in the knees, or something else again – an inexplicable sorrow that has just the same character as an atmospheric front, a moody figura serpentinata within the Earth’s atmosphere. I find the satellite pictures and the curvature of the Earth very moving. So is it true that we live on the surface of a sphere, exposed to the gaze of the planets, left in a great void, where after the Fall the light was smashed to smithereens and blown apart? It is true. We should remember that every day, for we do tend to forget.  We believe we are free, and that God will forgive us. Personally I think otherwise. Finally, transformed into tiny quivering photons, each of our deeds will set off into Outer Space, where the planets will keep watching it like a film until the end of the world. As I make myself coffee, they are usually reading the weather forecast for skiers. They show a bumpy world of mountains, slopes and valleys, with a capricious layer of snow – the Earth’s rough skin is only whitened here and there by snowfields. In spring the skiers are replaced by allergy sufferers, and the picture takes on colour. Soft lines establish the danger zones. Where there is red, nature’s attack is the fiercest. All winter it has been dormant, waiting to assail Mankind’s immune system, fragile as filigree. One day it will get rid of us entirely in this way. Before the weekend, weather forecasts for drivers appear, but their world is reduced to the few rare lines marking this country’s motorways. I find this division of people into three groups – skiers, allergy sufferers and drivers – very convincing. It is a good, straightforward typology. Skiers are hedonists. They are carried down the slopes. Whereas drivers prefer to take their fate in their hands, although their spines often suffer as a result; we all know life is hard. Whereas the allergy sufferers are always at war. I must surely be an allergy sufferer. I wish there was a channel about the stars and planets as well. The Cosmic Impact Channel. This sort of viewing would also consist of maps; it would show lines of influence and fields of planetary strikes. ‘Mars is starting to rise above the ecliptic, and this evening it will cross the belt of Pluto’s influence. Please leave your car in the garage or a covered parking lot, please put away the knives, be careful going down into the cellar, and until the planet passes through the sign of Cancer, we appeal to you to avoid bathing and chickening out of family quarrels,’ the slender, ethereal presenter would say. We would know why the trains were late today, why the postman’s Fiat Cinquecento got stuck in the snow, why the mayonnaise didn’t come out right, or why the headache suddenly went of its own accord, without any pills, as unexpectedly as it came. We would know the right time to start dyeing our hair, and when to hold a wedding.”

“ If I hadn’t known her so well, I’m sure I would have read her books. But as I did know her, I was afraid to open them. What if I found myself described in them in a way that I couldn’t fathom? Or my favourite places, which for her are something completely different from what they are to me? In a way, people like her, those who wield a pen, can be dangerous. At once a suspicion of fakery springs to mind – that such a Person is not him or herself, but an eye that’s constantly watching, and whatever it sees it changes into sentences; in the process it strips reality of its most essential quality – its inexpressibility.”

“ At the end of my tour, I would take a final look around, and I should have felt happy that everything was there. After all, it could just as well not have been. There could have been nothing but grass here – large clumps of wind-lashed steppe grass and the rosettes of thistles. That’s what it could have been like. Or there could have been nothing at all – a total void in outer space. Perhaps that would have been the best option for all concerned”

“One will soon notice that similar astrological patterns describe similar incidents. That’s when one’s initiation occurs – oh yes, order does exist, and it is within reach. The stars and planets establish it, while the sky is the template that sets the pattern of our lives. Extensive study will make it possible to guess the arrangement of the planets in the sky from tiny details here on Earth. An afternoon storm, a letter that the postman has pressed into a crack in the door, a broken lightbulb in the bathroom. Nothing is capable of eluding this order. It works on me like alcohol, or one of those new drugs that, so I imagine, fill a person with pure delight.”

“Nowadays no one still has the courage to think up anything new. All they ever talk about, round the clock, is how things already are, they just keep rolling out the same old ideas. Reality has grown old and gone senile; after all, it is definitely subject to the same laws as every living organism – it ages. Just like the cells of the body, its tiniest components, the senses, succumb to apoptosis. Apoptosis is natural death, brought about by the tiredness and exhaustion of matter. In Greek this word means ‘the dropping of petals’. The world has dropped its petals.”

“I have a Theory. It’s that an awful thing has happened – our cerebellum has not been correctly connected to our brain. This could be the worst mistake in our programming. Someone has made us badly. This is why our model ought to be replaced. If our cerebellum were connected to our brain, we would possess full knowledge of our own anatomy, of what was happening inside our bodies. Oh, we’d say to ourselves, the level of potassium in my blood has fallen. My third cervical vertebra is feeling tension. My blood pressure is low today, I must move about. Yesterday’s egg mayonnaise has sent my cholesterol level too high so I must watch what I eat today. We have this body of ours, a troublesome piece of luggage, we don’t really know anything about it and we need all sorts of Tools to find out about its most natural processes. Isn’t it scandalous that the last time a doctor wanted to check what was happening in my stomach he made me have a gastroscopy? I had to swallow a thick tube, and it took a camera to reveal the inside of my stomach to us. The only coarse and primitive Tool gifted us for consolation is pain. The angels, if they really do exist, must be splitting their sides laughing at us. Fancy being given a body and not knowing anything about it. There’s no instruction manual.”

“That’s what I dislike most of all in people – cold irony. It’s a very cowardly attitude to mock or belittle everything, never be committed to anything, not feel tied to anything. Like an impotent man who can’t experience pleasure himself, but will do all he can to ruin it for others”

“ ‘You’ll say it’s just one Boar,’ I continued. ‘But what about the deluge of butchered meat that falls on our cities day by day like never-ending, apocalyptic rain? This rain heralds slaughter, disease, collective madness, the obfuscation and contamination of the Mind. For no human heart is capable of bearing so much pain. The whole, complex human psyche has evolved to prevent Man from understanding what he is really seeing. To stop the truth from reaching him by wrapping it in illusion, in idle chatter. The world is a prison full of suffering, so constructed that in order to survive one must inflict pain on others. Do you hear me?’ I said. But now even the cleaner, disappointed by my speech, had set about his work, so I was only talking to the Poodle.    ‘What sort of a world is this? Someone’s body is made into shoes, into meatballs, sausages, a bedside rug, someone’s bones are boiled to make broth… Shoes, sofas, a shoulder bag made of someone’s belly, keeping warm with someone else’s fur, eating someone’s body, cutting it into bits and frying it in oil… Can it really be true? Is this nightmare really happening? This mass killing, cruel, impassive, automatic, without any pangs of conscience, without the slightest pause for thought, though plenty of thought is applied to ingenious philosophies and theologies. What sort of a world is this, where killing and pain are the norm? What on earth is wrong with us?’”

“The old method for dealing with bad dreams is to tell them aloud above the toilet bowl, and then flush them away.”

“    I felt deeply moved by all this human hustle and bustle. Sometimes an emotional mood of this kind assails me – I think it’s to do with my Ailments – and my resistance weakens. I stopped in the sloping market square, and gradually I felt flooded by a powerful sense of communion with the people passing by. Each man was my brother and each woman my sister. We were so very much alike. So fragile, impermanent and easily destroyed. We trustingly went to and fro beneath the sky, which had nothing good in store for us.    Spring is just a short interlude, after which the mighty armies of death advance; they’re already besieging the city walls. We live in a state of siege. If one takes a close look at each fragment of a moment, one might choke with terror. Within our bodies disintegration inexorably advances; soon we shall fall sick and die. Our loved ones will leave us, the memory of them will dissolve in the tumult; nothing will remain. Just a few clothes in the wardrobe and someone in a photograph, no longer recognised. The most precious memories will dissipate. Everything will sink into darkness and vanish.    I noticed a pregnant girl sitting on a bench, reading a newspaper, and suddenly it occurred to me what a blessing it is to be ignorant. How could one possibly know all this and not miscarry? My eyes began to stream again; by now it was becoming truly awkward and problematic”

“ Perhaps tiny signs reveal this sort of cosmic event to us, but we don’t notice them either – someone has stepped on a twig lying on the path, a bottle of beer has cracked in the freezer when someone forgot to remove it in time, or two red fruits have fallen from a wild rose bush. How could we possibly understand it all? It’s clear that the largest things are contained in the smallest. There can be no doubt about it. At this very moment, as I write, there’s a planetary configuration on this table, the entire Cosmos, if you like: a thermometer, a coin, an aluminium spoon and a porcelain cup. A key, a mobile phone, a piece of paper and a pen. And one of my grey hairs, whose atoms preserve the memory of the origins of life, of the cosmic Catastrophe that gave the world its beginning.”

“   ‘What have you done in life?’ Boros suddenly asked.    This question was so unexpected that I instantly let myself be carried away by memories. They began to sail past my eyes, and typically for memories, everything in them seemed better, finer and happier than in reality. It’s strange, but we didn’t say a word.For people of my age, the places that they truly loved and to which they once belonged are no longer there. The places of their childhood and youth have ceased to exist, the villages where they went on holiday, the parks with uncomfortable benches where their first loves blossomed, the cities, cafes and houses of their past. And if their outer form has been preserved, it’s all the more painful, like a shell with nothing inside it any more. I have nowhere to return to. It’s like a state of imprisonment. The walls of the cell are the horizon of what I can see. Beyond them exists a world that’s alien to me and doesn’t belong to me. So for people like me the only thing possible is here and now, for every future is doubtful, everything yet to come is barely sketched and uncertain, like a mirage that can be destroyed by the slightest twitch of the air. That’s what was going through my mind as we sat there in silence. It was better than a conversation. I have no idea what either of the men was thinking about. Perhaps about the same thing.”

“After the rain Sirius had appeared, and the shaft of the Plough had risen… I wondered whether the stars can see us. And if they can, what might they think of us? Do they really know our future? Do they feel sorry for us? For being stuck in the present time, with no chance to move? But it also crossed my mind that in spite of all, in spite of our fragility and ignorance, we have an incredible advantage over the stars – it is for us that time works, giving us a major opportunity to transform the suffering, aching world into a happy and peaceful one. It’s the stars that are imprisoned in their own power, and they cannot really help us. They merely design the nets, and on cosmic looms they weave the warp thread that we must complete with our own weft. And then a curious Hypothesis occurred to me – maybe the stars see us in the same way as we see our Dogs, for example – having greater awareness than they do, at some points in time we know better what’s good for them; we walk them on leads so they won’t get lost, we sterilise them so they won’t senselessly reproduce, we take them to the vet for medical treatment. They don’t understand where this comes from, why it happens, for what purpose. Yet they yield to us. So maybe we too should yield to the influence of the stars, but in the process we should arouse our human sensitivity. That’s what I was pondering as I sat on those steps in the dark.”

“life is a fleeting incident, followed by death, which will one day let the spark escape from the trap; there’s no other way out. Life is like an extremely demanding testing ground. From now on everything you do will count, every thought and every deed, but not for you to be punished or rewarded afterwards, but because it is they that build your world. This is how the machine works.”

“  I happen to have occasionally entered a church and sat there in peace a while with the people. I’ve always liked the fact that people can be together in there, without having to talk to one another. If they could chat, they’d instantly start telling each other nonsense, or gossip, they’d start making things up and showing off. But here they sit in the pews, each one deep in thought, mentally reviewing what has happened lately and imagining what’s going to happen soon. Like this, they monitor their own lives. Just like everyone else, I would sit in a pew and sink into a sort of semi-conscious state. My thoughts would move idly, as if coming from outside me, from other people’s heads, or maybe from the heads of the wooden angels positioned nearby. Every time, something new occurred to me, something different than if I were doing my thinking at home. In this way the church is a good place.Sometimes I have felt as if I could read the minds of the other people in here if I wanted to. On several occasions I seemed to hear other people’s thoughts: ‘What pattern should we have for the new wallpaper in the bedroom? Is the smooth kind better, or the kind that’s stamped with a subtle design? The money in my account is earning too little interest, other banks give better rates, first thing on Monday I must check their offers and transfer the cash. Where does she get her money from? How can she afford the things she’s wearing? Maybe they don’t eat, they just spend all their income on her clothes… How much he’s aged, how grey he’s gone! To think he was once the best-looking man in the village. But now he’s a wreck… I’ll tell the doctor straight – I want a sick note… No way, I shall never agree to anything of the kind, I won’t be treated like a child…’”

“And how will I cope? After all, I’m like them too. My life’s harvest is not the building material for anything, neither in my time, now, or in any other, never.    But why should we have to be useful, and for what reason? Who divided the world into useless and useful, and by what right? Does a thistle have no right to life, or a Mouse that eats the grain in a warehouse? What about Bees and Drones, weeds and roses? Whose intellect can have had the audacity to judge who is better, and who worse? A large tree, crooked and full of holes, survives for centuries without being cut down, because nothing could possibly be made out of it. This example should raise the spirits of people like us. Everyone knows the profit to be reaped from the useful, but nobody knows the benefit to be gained from the useless.”

“ The fact that we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future is a terrible mistake in the programming of the world. It should be fixed at the first opportunity.”