It’s Only Cryptic If You Don’t Know Crap

Bug Stu, feeling a little sassy, as the kids were saying, or a little cheeky as the Brits do still I think. Anyway…

This poem, that is. It’s cryptic if you don’t know crap about Stralfs, Star Eyes, and the meaning of the meaning of life, that is. But at least it’s short.

(From Leaves of Bug Stu)

Hey…Wait A Minute

Consider changing the subject
and trying a different track,
facing the object
of the Stralfian attack,
the cancer of the “The Answer”
to “The Meaning of Life,”
a strawman romancer
of Star Eyes that brings strife.

(5-6 minute read time)

There’s some magic all around this very moment of my transmission, if you’re into that sort of thing. I’m going to explain the magic before I go on with Stu’s explanation.

Actually, neither Stu nor I are all that into magic, as you may know, or any of the woo-woo ways to success, or to power, or to personal peace, or to interpreting the infinite and indeterminant intricacies of quantum physics, despite the assuring social proof that substitutes for understanding in times of complexity coupled with Want. (Which is about all of the times.) Just because we’re herd animals doesn’t mean we have to go over that cliff, a lemming once told Stu.

On the other hand, it doesn’t mean a little magic doesn’t do us some genuine good. That is, maybe it’s not always just for keeping our inner aquarium of sea monkeys healthy so they can justify our strivings and connivings when there’s no one or nowhere else to turn in order to get the flood of neurotransmitters we have a taste for, thanks to some other neurotransmitters, not that it’s neurotransmitters all the way down—you eventually reach a turtle, or at least the shell. But I don’t digress.

Back to the magic here though, like I promised. This is kind of special to me, I admit.

Or maybe I should explain that poem first, so you don’t think I’m both anti-woo-woo and anti-meaning-of-life. Maybe I just prefer qualified-woo-woo and qualified-meaning-of-life. I’m one of the co-founders of The Fellowship of The Dimly Lit after all, which was officially (unofficially) inaugurated or at least commemorated this month in 2020 at Purdue University, pretty much. It’s hard to be too sure of anything in this position, acknowledging the dim light we all have, that is, not to get too political in positing that general condition. (Isn’t that a weird thing to have to say? That we all have only dim light? But life comes down to action, which comes from information, partly, and actions affect others and futures, so I kind of get the political pushback there.)

Here’s Stu’s explanation of that poem up at the top, Hey…Wait a Minute. He did not write it—he found it, written on a leaf, just like he does himself sometimes. I’ll have to explain that later.

About the poem he says, “This gets a little complicated and even touchy for some. It has to do with the impossibleness of the question for you humies, the Meaning of Life, but the Star Eye inside you is attracted to it and could actually understand the answer—if it were in the sky. It can’t understand it while in an atom suit, but it’s still attracted, and it has just enough influence within some people to bring the whole person towards it. But the futility in finding or understanding the answer as a humie with an atom suit leads to frustration, mocking, and well, the Stralfian strategy at its core.”

So that’s what it means by “the cancer of The Answer to The Meaning of Life...” and the “strawman Romancer.”

It’s a romancing of the inner Star Eye, but then the answer is ineffable, at least, and so the whole idea of meaning is mocked as it then seems like it should be. Then he said, “But it’s a deliberate strawman tactic used by the Stralfs, that is, it’s fostered by them. It’s obviously not the only thing they do to you, but it’s really at the core. I don’t know, maybe that’s even related to why you guys want to go to space all the time, in a subconscious way, vaguely thinking you’ll be able to understand the question there. I really don’t know. And remember, I didn’t write this. I think I know who did.”

I don’t want to spoil anything here, so let me go back to my own magic. Maybe you will suspect some magic in this, too.

When the Star Eye idea was “born”, not to say conceived (I really don’t remember that right now), in the Glew Room at MatchBOX, part of the idea was that our “souls” appear as bright spots in the night sky. They’re actually two bright dots, but they’re so close together that it looks like one. There are two groups, young ones and old ones. The young ones haven’t been to Earth to receive an atom suit covering. The old ones have returned after having shed their atom suit, meaning when we die.

Both groups look down on earth with interest, love, anticipation, regret, hope, and other emotions there probably aren’t words for. The old ones know they happened to the earth and to the other people—those present and those yet to come. Now they exist without the power to change anything they did while in their atom suit. To an extent, they were along for the ride in the suit. To another extent, they were not just along for the ride, not entirely. They made their dent in the universe, some would say, or maybe they repaired one. Ambiguity lurks.

But anyway, here’s why this day, this moment, is special and maybe magic.

Sometimes a young Star Eye wants to come to Earth so badly that it brings two people together before things are really ready, so it can get its atom suit and go to work. They have a little bit of influence on who the parents are, but things don’t always work out great. Sometimes they do, and that’s good for the impatient Star Eye. There are never guarantees about Star Eyes in atom suits, only probabilities, just like us. Well, they are us, so that makes sense.

I hesitated to bring the Star Eye story into This Project when it appeared in the Glew Room, but it got here and has stayed. I hadn’t thought about the beginnings of this part of the story until I thought about today’s date, which is when our oldest atom-suited Star Eye arrived, and bonded us together for good, and for better and for worse, and it, and he, have been such a blessing (in a meaning that seems to have become okay again as those who can notice notice).

I will not digress, per my 2022 resolution, but I am a very fortunate atom-suited Star Eye, I know, and I’m so glad his got the three of us together, and that we added a fourth that thought we were suitable, so to speak, and it’s been truly wonderful. My digressions on this would never end once I started, so I won’t.

I’m also very fortunate to work at MatchBOX and to have made friends or something with some other special humies hosting Star Eyes in their transition from young ones to old ones, as we all are, according to Stu.

Weirdly, the plans today are to meet up with one of them at The Black Sparrow, of course, in The Star City. Her oldest atom-suited Star Eye also happens to have arrived on a February 9th, but a couple of decades later than ours.

Maybe we’ll be lucky enough to get a table under the Is Train. Maybe we’ll talk about the call of Bug Stu and Star Eyes, or maybe I’ll be more quiet than usual and let her tell me about the meaning of the meaning of life from her atom suit, which is sort of what we’re all always talking about, whether we know it our not, according to Stu.

I believe this is officially titled Hobo Ghost Train, by Anna Rae Gilbert, now in Chicago. She’s okay with our calling it the Is Train for this story, which is a long story.

That’s not all I’d like to say, but I have some window work to do at The Cracker Factory in The Star City. Oh, today is also George Ade’s birthday, and yesterday was Jules Verne’s, so that’s pretty magical, or at least timely, too.

Thanks for reading.

Tim