The Gravity of Astonishment

 

A Defence of Baby-Worship

The two facts which attract almost every normal person to children are, first, that they are very serious, and, secondly, that they are in consequence very happy. They are jolly with the completeness which is possible only in the absence of humour. The most unfathomable schools and sages have never attained to the gravity which dwells in the eyes of a baby of three months old. It is the gravity of astonishment at the universe, and astonishment at the universe is not mysticism, but a transcendent common-sense. The fascination of children lies in this: that with each of them all things are remade, and the universe is put again upon its trial. As we walk the streets and see below us those delightful bulbous heads, three times too big for the body, which mark these human mushrooms, we ought always primarily to remember that within every one of these heads there is a new universe, as new as it was on the seventh day of creation. In each of those orbs there is a new system of stars, new grass, new cities, a new sea.

There is always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything. Similarly, we have the sentiment that if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. This is the great truth which has always lain at the back of baby-worship, and which will support it to the end. Maturity, with its endless energies and aspirations, may easily be convinced that it will find new things to appreciate; but it will never be convinced, at bottom, that it has properly appreciated what it has got. We may scale the heavens and find new stars innumerable, but there is still the new star we have not found—that on which we were born.

But the influence of children goes further than its first trifling effort of remaking heaven and earth. It forces us actually to remodel our conduct in accordance with this revolutionary theory of the marvellousness of all things. We do (even when we are perfectly simple or ignorant)—we do actually treat talking in children as marvellous, walking in children as marvellous, common intelligence in children as marvellous. The cynical philosopher fancies he has a victory in this matter—that he can laugh when he shows that the words or antics of the child, so much admired by its worshippers, are common enough. The fact is that this is precisely where baby-worship is so profoundly right. Any words and any antics in a lump of clay are wonderful, the child's words and antics are wonderful, and it is only fair to say that the philosopher's words and antics are equally wonderful.

The truth is that it is our attitude towards children that is right, and our attitude towards grown-up people that is wrong. Our attitude towards our equals in age consists in a servile solemnity, overlying a considerable degree of indifference or disdain. Our attitude towards children consists in a condescending indulgence, overlying an unfathomable respect. We bow to grown people, take off our hats to them, refrain from contradicting them flatly, but we do not appreciate them properly. We make puppets of children, lecture them, pull their hair, and reverence, love, and fear them. When we reverence anything in the mature, it is their virtues or their wisdom, and this is an easy matter. But we reverence the faults and follies of children.

We should probably come considerably nearer to the true conception of things if we treated all grown-up persons, of all titles and types, with precisely that dark affection and dazed respect with which we treat the infantile limitations. A child has a difficulty in achieving the miracle of speech, consequently we find his blunders almost as marvellous as his accuracy. If we only adopted the same attitude towards Premiers and Chancellors of the Exchequer, if we genially encouraged their stammering and delightful attempts at human speech, we should be in a far more wise and tolerant temper. A child has a knack of making experiments in life, generally healthy in motive, but often intolerable in a domestic commonwealth. If we only treated all commercial buccaneers and bumptious tyrants on the same terms, if we gently chided their brutalities as rather quaint mistakes in the conduct of life, if we simply told them that they would 'understand when they were older,' we should probably be adopting the best and most crushing attitude towards the weaknesses of humanity. In our relations to children we prove that the paradox is entirely true, that it is possible to combine an amnesty that verges on contempt with a worship that verges upon terror. We forgive children with the same kind of blasphemous gentleness with which Omar Khayyam forgave the Omnipotent.

The essential rectitude of our view of children lies in the fact that we feel them and their ways to be supernatural while, for some mysterious reason, we do not feel ourselves or our own ways to be supernatural. The very smallness of children makes it possible to regard them as marvels; we seem to be dealing with a new race, only to be seen through a microscope. I doubt if anyone of any tenderness or imagination can see the hand of a child and not be a little frightened of it. It is awful to think of the essential human energy moving so tiny a thing; it is like imagining that human nature could live in the wing of a butterfly or the leaf of a tree. When we look upon lives so human and yet so small, we feel as if we ourselves were enlarged to an embarrassing bigness of stature. We feel the same kind of obligation to these creatures that a deity might feel if he had created something that he could not understand.

But the humorous look of children is perhaps the most endearing of all the bonds that hold the Cosmos together. Their top-heavy dignity is more touching than any humility; their solemnity gives us more hope for all things than a thousand carnivals of optimism; their large and lustrous eyes seem to hold all the stars in their astonishment; their fascinating absence of nose seems to give to us the most perfect hint of the humour that awaits us in the kingdom of heaven.

~G.K. Chesterton: from The Defendant

March 2020 Diary: Slow the Spread

3/22/2020: Up very early (4:30 AM?) to write down dream. Then started a new document to mark down new terms for the Morgish Lexicon. Then prayers, Bible, and partook in a Mass on EWTN. The sound was off, but subtitles on, which I read aloud, and I had a very moving experience at the elevation of the Host. Then worked more on Lexicon, trying to mark the Seven Beards and reconcile what I’ve said about them already, then went in and baked cake [For Andy’s birthday]. Had Kam’s leftover tacos for breakfast. Went in at 1 PM to ice cake, and a little later we had a piece and sang Happy Birthday. Finished Lexicon, mailed John a copy, and had some ramen with leftover mushrooms for lunch. Saw some old Electric Company animations – “Happy Birthday Miss Jones”. Not rainy today, but very muddy, and cloudy and cool. Ready for a nap, I think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIK11lzM35Y Miss Jones

Had a nap. Rosary. For supper we had leftover Chicken Express, and I had to eat up the chicken salad from Tuesday. About 8:30 PM Yen started reading AGODP [A Grave on Deacon’s Peak] and got through three chapters. He’s using a Kindle version, which I am not sure got all the corrections and updates it should have, and it followed his reading of “Treasure Island’, which is a hard act to follow. In the wake I went back and read the whole book again, which I haven’t even looked at in months. It is now exactly midnight, and I think I shall hit the hay.

 

3/23/2020: Up at 6 AM, prayers, Bible. Straighten up the house. Another day of quarantine, or, as I should day, another day quite as usual for me, as the only place I ever went in a week was usually church. And I do miss that. Susan and Andy provide for me my daily wants; they bear the brunt of the burdens of these times, and I pray daily for them, and thank God for their charity. Now that KK is ‘finished’, I must consider my next move: to work on rewrites or finish the next chapter of BB2. I could do both, a little at a time I suppose. Get the machine cranked up and going. Hopefully things will dry up today. We sit in the shadow of doom, and there is some good in it: whether we believe, as the Chinese claim, that COVID-19 is somehow an American plant or plot, or whether it started naturally in China with some people eating bats, the universal encounter with suffering gives us a common cause and experience, and, paradoxically enough, while it physically separates us it can actually remind us of our shared humanity, our connectedness, and make us thirst for human contact. In the shadow of death, we show whether we are a light or simply another part of the darkness. ‘All that can be shaken will be shaken, and what cannot be shaken will remain.’ And that’s my thoughts on that.

Watched a lot of Electric Company animations and skits today, recalling old catchphrases that entered our Babellian speech.

Ramen (with eggs and bread) for breakfast, a turkey and cheese sandwich for lunch, and then broccoli salad and ramen with couscous for supper. Laid down and napped, then up and washed up, and then Kenny was already reading AGODP. He read FIVE chapters, and I can’t believe how quickly they went by, when they took so long to write. There was one listener that seemed very enthusiastic about it. [Ann Bellinger]. Afterwards Yen said Isabel had read KK and loves the Morg civilization, and Morgs in general, and that fills me up with happiness. Now almost 11 PM, and I must to my Rosary.

To John: Not a whole lot going on; that is to say, no writing, yet, as such. Just my normal Monday tasks of doing the wash, making a broccoli salad - it takes over an hour! - for the week, and today I forced Kameron to get out of his pajamas and dress in REAL CLOTHES, so at the end of this quarantine he won't have devolved into wearing a diaper. I can't believe I actually welcomed the sun after the moosh of the last few days. I feel myself wondering is it hot or do I have a fever, the sneaking fears that plague you during a plague. I'm doing a little devolving myself, watching old "Electric Company" episodes - not completely, but zipping forward to animations and familiar skits. Of course, the ubiquitous Bill Cosby is all over it, as he was on Captain Kangaroo and other kids shows, which makes it a little odd. It's weird to see little bits and pieces that recall old phrases. "My Brother's Mother is My Mother Too (or Nosferatu)" or "Happy Birthday Miss Jones, You Sure have Nice Bones" (or Steve Jones).  Also started again on Marcus Aurelius "Meditations"; his style is mellifluous, but almost too fast, you have to really slow down to analyze what he's saying - but that could be the translation. More of Kenny's performance of AGODP tonight. I told him R.L. Stevenson was a hard act to follow. He told me a friend of his had ordered a copy last night. 

 

3/24/2020: Up about 7 AM. Dressed, prayers. To spare our bottled water supply (which is suddenly at a premium) I am switching my Lenten fast object from tea to candy. Let me explain. I make my tea from hot tap water, which does not tax our bottled water (out of the tap it tastes foul, but with tea and sweetener it’s – tolerable). Given my physical disabilities and the present situation, I understand it is allowable – but it still makes me uncomfortable. Now 9 AM.

To John: I should tell you that Kenny read 3 chapters Sunday night, 5 chapters Monday night, and I reckon he'll finish the last 3 chapters tonight. It's a bit humbling to hear what took me so long to compose finished in three nights. But it ain't LOTR - and that took years to write. 

Breakfast: Leftover boiled eggs. Lunch: ramen with an egg and bread. Supper: corn on the cob (but not for me – no teethshes), turkey chili, and rotini noodles.

Cooking supper was a hot business, especially since I started a little late (I had just turned a page of ‘script’ into ‘prose’ for KK), and Kam wanted ‘grill cheeses’, and I couldn’t figure out the key to the outside freezer (but now I know). Rosary. The evening was spent listening to Yen read Treasure Island, and then the last 3 chapters of AGODP, which he ended by praising the rest of my BoS tales. So I end the evening on a high note here a little after 10 PM.

 

3/25/2020: Up about 6 AM. Showered. Prayers, Bible.  At 9 AM made my ramen, and chicken salad (a mistake on my part, but forgiven); had a sammich for lunch and made cornbread, then at 2 PM started the stew. Pork stew, with onions, celery, carrots, and potatoes. Lovely. Rosary. Went in at 8 PM and made Kam Tx toast and taquitos and cleaned up. Opened the outside freezer for the first time. Came back in, then started watching Yen read Treasure Island.

Today I wrote about Mora Madra, Mog’s wife, then a small history of Gorb, a Morg mentioned as an epithet in KK. Happy with these compositions but haven’t heard any feedback yet (9 PM). The night is basically done.

An old memory: us brothers taking a bath together, ‘drinking’ bathwater out of a blue plastic whale and calling for Darby M’graw.

 

3/26/2020: Up, and prayers, Bible, dressed. At 9 AM made Kam bacon and eggs and had my ramen. A little after noon, more ramen, and a chicken salad sandwich. Rearranged my room for the Rotts, as the exterminators are coming. Grassed the Chis at 3 PM, penned the Rotts up in the Guest house by 4 PM, Andy and the exterminators came, then I let the Rotts (after combing huge hanks of fur from their coats) out about 5:20 PM. Susan was home. I heated up the leftover pork stew. I wrote one little poem (They Say Swans) and translated about half a page of KK. With the couch moved I fixed up the shelf behind it, moving books and cleaning up. Kenny started Jungle Book tonight and continued Carmilla. Rosary. Shower. Now 10 PM and ready to sleep. But shall I? The room is in a new configuration.

[SWANS, THEY SAY

Swans, they say, before they die,

Intone one last melodious cry.

Even so, when Death comes winging,

I hope that it shall find me singing. 

3/26/2020] 

3/27/2020: Woke up about 2:30 AM, and when it became clear I wasn’t getting back to sleep, got up, did some more straightening and rearranging, and said my prayers, read my Bible, and said my Rosary for Friday. The Rotts seem to be barking outside – or is it the neighbor’s dog? Why am I so restless? Now the big couch is in a very good spot to watch TV, and the loveseat is facing it – which covers up a few books, but not entirely. Maybe I should translate the other half of that page. The germ of a story idea: Korm and Roth somehow get through the Domain of Doors and visit Earth. Muzzles disguised by safety masks? Ancient Bob (expy of me) encounters them and gets them home? Did some calculations: if I live to June 7, I will be exactly Mom’s age when she passed away.

E-mail to John, which pretty much sums up the day to 2 PM:  Yesterday we had a visit from the exterminators, which necessitated me having to host the Rottweilers for a while, which meant I had to move some furniture to corral them off from more sensitive areas. This led to them shedding copious amounts of fur with all the scratchings I had to apply to calm them down, which led to a great sweep-down when they left. This led to a re-arrangement of furniture, which put my couches both in a better line of fire for the window fan and a better distance to watch the TV from, and more access to some shelves. THAT led to a better propping and clean-up of those shelves, and THAT led to a sudden ambition to straighten up the Archives, which had gotten shuffled around a bit through the months. Also striking me in the middle of the night was an idea for a bit of fun; a new short story which I wrote on most of the morning, which I think YOU might be the only proper audience for, so Babellian it be. I can't say the Archives are in perfect shape yet, but - and I can't stress this enough - they are better than they were. This sort of thing usually takes a pass or two before I'm completely satisfied. This going through the Archives reminds me of my nagging ambition to get a printer and make clean physical copies of all my work, both new and old.

For supper made Gorton’s fish in butter, fried potatoes (a tedious process, since I made them here in the guest house on the hotplate), and broccoli salad. We all ate together for a change; it was nice. Worked on the Archives and got things closer to some kind of order. Especially on my “real life business” file and a file bringing the BoS materials together. Found a few stray fortune cookie fortunes. Dead Ready!

 

3/28/2020: Woke up about 2:30 AM. Caught up on Diary. Perhaps this will be a new schedule: up at night to work, then about 11 AM nap, then afternoon family concerns until after supper, then entertainment until about 11 PM, then another nap (for I cannot call it sleep). Dreaming about the clean, orderly, physical heft of my writing, printed out in neat binders. New ambition: get the files on the computer into a neat, print-ready form. Laid down again about 5 AM.
Up at about 8 AM. Looked in my shoebox pictures and found cache of “Last Picture of the Year” drawings and put them with the others. I think I need to borrow one of those garage sale tables for a while to make a really thorough sorting. Wrote more on “A Stranger You Haven’t Met”, incorporating much Seguinite lore. After a brief ransack of the kitchen closet (which ended up in better order) I found I had put the fortunes up in a tin in the cabinet over the sink, so I was able to add those 3 I found. Try to remember this! No omelet this morning so I made myself some ramen (with a bun – those buns Susan gave me Thursday). Looking in the shoebox of drawings in the Archive I found more Last Drawings and put them together with the others. When I ran a couple of bags of trash out, I found it was dripping with rain, but not too bad, and cooler. Now it’s almost 11 AM, and what shall I do? I feel like organizing; maybe I don’t need the table. And there’s always computer files.

So I went to the clothes closet, took out the bin, and found enough space for the shirts from Pop’s little dresser, which freed up 3 drawers – put cards from the Archives into the Christmas Card Box – and put tote bags into the little fridge drawer. Makes everything look neater if nothing else. Just rescued a toad out of the kiddie pool at 11:30 AM and got him out of the Rotts’ reach.

Rosary by 12 noon.

About 3 PM called in to make tacos, and we ate at 4 PM. Andy’s been mowing most of the afternoon (the rain having cleared up). Now 8 PM and I wonder if they’ll want anything for supper or just eat leftovers. Making tiny obsessive straightenings all day.

So, no cooking supper. Dithered a bit, and then went to bed.

Notes

I've been rather jealous of the 'moosh' of five years ago: this has been an uncomfortably dry year so far. We just had another German chocolate cake for Andy's birthday; some traditions persist. 'Dead Ready' was an old goal: to have everything in place and organized in case I dropped dead.

I was really on fire with new ideas at the time and the will to implement them; no doubt on a high from getting AGODP published and anxiety over the Covid situation. 'When a man is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.' - Samuel Johnson.

There are two seasons that always move me to cleaning and 'straightening'; Fall and Spring. That's when I'm prone to an overhaul of things that have grown rather slipshod over time.

Just found out that my grand-niece Julia has been born, at 12:50 AM, weighing 7 pounds 9 ounces and 20 and 1/4 inches long. Huzzah!