Not Really Cthulhu

So. . . people with guns stormed the capitol building in Michigan to try and intimidate legislators into voting to end the general "not doing things" thing.

I think they were wrong to carry guns, and wrong to protest, but they had to do something. People are losing jobs and food is becoming more scarce, and things are scary, and people are dying, and they're saying, "just sit at home and bake sourdough!" which begins to sound a lot like, "let them eat cake" after a few weeks, and we've been doing this for. . . more than a month?

We should be able to expect our government to intervene, to have plans in place, to be organized and encouraging. But we can't because we have very little say over where our tax money actually goes. If we don't have government, whom can we depend on?

Well, there's Cthulhu.

So I've been listening to lots of stories of H.P. Lovecraft and laughing and thinking and being repulsed for reasons he absolutely did NOT intend. Lovecraft was a gifted writer, but an absolutely abysmal human, and many of the things he abhors (people of color, non-euclidean geometry, air conditioning, Pluto) have become beloved and vice versa. Lovecraft did not invent bigotry or eugenics, but he did invent Cthulhu and the somewhat Freudian mythos surrounding him.

How can we depend on a fictional grotesque?

In "The Call of Cthulhu" published in 1928 (just a year before the Great Depression, or Large Crater as I sometimes call it) Lovecraft wrote a physical description of a statuette of Cthulhu: 

It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with undecipherable characters. The tips of the wings touched the back edge of the block, the seat occupied the center, whilst the long, curved claws of the doubled-up, crouching hind legs gripped the front edge and extended a quarter of the way down toward the bottom of the pedestal. The cephalopod head was bent forward, so that the ends of the facial feelers brushed the backs of huge forepaws which clasped the croucher’s elevated knees. (Weird Tales Vol. 11.2, 165)

The part of this description which particularly interests me is the "octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers." Clearly Lovecraft means the reader to be disgusted by the image (he adds enough descriptors to that effect), but in our age of political sensibilities, it just seems so judgy. Like, who are you, a person who grows hair from your skin, to criticize somebody who can grow something much more useful? Also, "bloated corpulence"? EXCUSE me!? Fat is not evil. Fat isn't even an insult.

From the image of the tentacled one Cthulhu, I actually feel a useful metaphor. The world is terrifying and dangerous right now, but if we can emulate Cthulhu and send out tentacles. . . feelers. . . we not only have the capacity to feel what is happening in our neighborhoods and cities, but to influence it. We all have small means and things we have lots of while there are those who are without. And I'm not just talking TP. We know who is hiring remote workers, who is overwhelmed right now, and we can find out who is struggling. We can be a sort of Cthulhu/Dolly Levi.

I don't think the government is going to be able to solve everything: it never could (I mean, it could do better than it is doing, but won't). We as individuals can and DO reach out to the people closest to us. We extend a little further. I want to extend a little further. I want longer tentacles.

And now, I'm going to go feed my gnawing hunger and leave you with this:

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