Stella Maris

“When you get to topos theory you are at the edge of another universe. You have found a place to stand where you can look back at the world from nowhere. It’s not just some gestalt. It’s fundamental.”

Topos theory, the focal point of her doctoral research in mathematics, revolves around the examination of geometric shapes. In her explanation, Alicia characterizes topos as a revolutionary approach to scrutinizing the composition of reality. However, labeling it as “nowhere” implies that, as explored elsewhere in the book, topos introduces more questions than answers. This realization leaves her feeling unsettled and directionless, recognizing that only perception—not objective fact—serves as the true governing element of reality.

“The factual and the suspect are both subject to the same dimming with time. There is a fusion in the memory of events which is at loose ends where reality is concerned. You wake from a nightmare with a certain relief. But that doesn’t erase it. It’s always there. Even after it’s forgotten. The haunting sense that there is something you have not understood will remain long after.”

Alicia is justifying the presence of her hallucinations to the doctor by contending that the factual and the questionable are inextricably intertwined within the human consciousness. Drawing upon the analogy of memory, she posits that a memory is not a pristine, singular occurrence but rather a confluence of disparate subjective recollections at odds with objective reality. Additionally, she asserts that, akin to nightmares, her hallucinations function as subconscious revelations that persist within the mind even after waking from a dream, asserting their inherent connection to identity. This marks one of the initial hints in the text that Alicia suppresses the knowledge of traumatic memories from her past.

“The world has created no living thing that it does not intend to destroy.”

In this profoundly nihilistic declaration, Alicia reflects on the intrinsic destructive tendency of existence, emphasizing the inevitable mortality of all living beings. She personifies the world as an indifferent, domineering environment that holds sway over the life and death of every creature inhabiting its surface. This perspective mirrors her contemplation of suicide and her conviction in the fundamental purposelessness and meaninglessness of life.

“Well, I’ve never seen Satan. That doesn’t mean he might not show up. What Chesterton doesn’t comment on are the peculiarly material interests of God. If you were a wholly spiritual being, why would you dabble in the material at all? A judgment day that bodies rise? What is that all about? Spirits are disembodied, not unembodied? Christ ascends into heaven as presumably a corporeal being. Encumbering the godhead with a thing it had not previously to endure. It’s hard to know what to make of such lunacy.”

Alicia discerns a paradox within the Christian religious faith, contending that despite presenting itself as delving into the spiritual and cosmological aspects of existence, it extensively focuses on the material realm. She cites instances such as the final judgment, where the spirit is to reunite with the body and rise on earth, and the ascension of Christ as a spirit rather than a physical being. Such observations unveil her skepticism toward theological explanations of the world and highlight the dogmatic and contradictory nature of religious scriptures.

“Music seemed to stand as an exception to everything. It seemed sacrosanct. Autonomous. Completely self-referential and coherent in every part. If you wanted to describe it as transcendental we could talk about transcendence, but we probably wouldn’t get very far.”

Alicia expresses her reverence for the sacred essence of music, considering it the sole exception to the random meaninglessness of the universe that led her to Stella Maris. She employs religious language, describing it as transcendental, surpassing all other things as a self-contained system. As later elucidated, her perception of the beauty of music revolves around its unified set of rules, which, when combined, evoke emotional responses.

“One of the things I realized was that the universe has been evolving for countless billions of years in total darkness and total silence and that the way that we imagine it is not the way that it was. In the beginning always was nothing. The novae exploding silently. In total darkness. The stars, the passing comets. Everything at best of alleged being. Black fires. Like the fires of hell. Silence. Nothingness. Night. Black suns herding the planets through a universe where the concept of space was meaningless for want of any end to it. For want of any concept to stand it against. And the question once again of the nature of that reality to which there was no witness. All of this until the first living creature possessed of vision agreed to imprint the universe upon its primitive and trembling sensorium and then to touch it with color and movement and memory. It made of me an overnight solipsist and to some extent I am yet.”

Alicia intricately narrates the period before the advent of the first human, depicting a state devoid of space, time, or meaning outside the realm of human perception. In the void preceding the formation of the world, there was no tangible reality. However, with the arrival of humanity, human senses began to leave an indelible imprint upon the world. This understanding draws from her exploration of “An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision” by George Berkeley, whose philosophical ideas initiated solipsism, the belief that the only certain existence is one’s own mind, with everything external, such as the external world and other minds, deemed unknowable. This establishes Alicia’s worldview and justifies her departure from the conventions of reality, enabling her to imagine spectral beings as real entities through the power of her mind.

“The ugly truth is that other than Feynman’s sum-over theories there is no believable explanation of quantum mechanics that does not involve human consciousness. Of course, this raises the question as to how it managed to get along without us before we were invented. But it’s not that simple. I think what is being pointed out is that human consciousness and reality are not the same thing.”

Alicia endeavored to elucidate quantum mechanics to the Doctor, emphasizing its reliance on human perception. According to the theory, our perception captures only a fraction of the vast and inscrutable world. Alicia highlights an exception, Feynman’s sum-over histories, contending that particles lack a singular history. Instead, they traverse myriad directions and temporalities endlessly, with certain paths being more probable than others and subject to prediction. She argues that human consciousness and reality are completely separate from one another, revealing her sense of divorce from the world and retreat into her own mind.

“The problem with the unknowable absolute is that if you could actually say something about it wouldn’t be the unknowable absolute anymore. You can get from the noumenal to the phenomenal without stirring from your chair. In other words, nothing can be excerpted from the absolute without being rendered perceptual. Bearing in mind that to claim reality for what is unknowable is already to speak in tongues.”

Alicia articulates her sophisticated perspective by noting the contradiction that if we were to grasp eternal truths about the unknowable absolute, it would reduce to a mere interpretation—a perspective from the mind—contending that there is no genuine distinction between the nominal and phenomenal world, contrary to Kant’s proposed differentiation.

“There has never been a century so grim as this one. Does anyone seriously think that we’ve seen the last of its like? And yet what can the world’s troubles mean to someone unable to shoulder her own?”

Alicia expresses profound dismay at the destructiveness and inhumanity prevailing in the 20th century, contending that the situation will only deteriorate with time. At the same time, she acknowledges the paradoxical subjectivity of her own experience—overwhelmed by her own struggles, she cannot take proper account of general suffering.

“I kept thinking of the lines: what a piece of work is a man? I couldn’t stop crying. And I remember saying: What are we? Sitting there on the bed holding the Amati, which was so beautiful it hardly seemed real. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen and I couldn’t understand how such a thing could even be possible.”

Alicia recalls a moment when, having just acquired the Amati, a renowned type of Italian violin, she was unexpectedly overcome by an uncontrollable bout of tears, moved by the profound beauty of this musical instrument. In earlier conversations, Alicia characterizes music as a transcendental, cohesive system of meaning within a chaotic universe capable of evoking powerful emotions in humans. However, the sight of this exquisite object prompts Alicia to ponder the nature of mankind, leading her to question, “What is a man?” She reflects on the paradoxical human capacity to create such beauty while also bringing about so much cruelty and suffering.

“I don’t have politics. And I’m a pacifist to the bone. Only a nation can make war—in the modern sense—and I don’t like nations. I believe in running away. Much as you’d step out of the path of an oncoming bus.”

Alicia characterizes her pacifism as apolitical, a form of withdrawal from the world evidenced by her presence in the cloistered environment of Stella Maris. Her rejection of violence stands in contrast to her father, who, as part of the Manhattan Project, contributed to the creation of one of the most destructive weapons in recorded human history. She believes in running away from danger and not confronting the problems in her life.

“The complexity of mathematics has shifted it from a description of things and events to the power of abstract operators. At what point are the origins of systems no longer relevant to their description, their operation? No one, however inclined to platonism, actually believes that numbers are requisite to the operation of the universe. They’re only good to talk about it. Is that right?”

Alicia articulates her disenchantment with mathematics, asserting that it has shifted from a tool for comprehending the world to a system of abstract operators and descriptors devoid of relevance to the true essence of existence. She challenges the philosophy of Platonism, which posits that numbers are timeless, universal entities independent of the physical world. Instead, Alicia argues that numbers are mere fictional signs and symbols imagined by humanity, lacking an inherent connection to anything tangible.

“Of course, one might also add that intelligence is a basic component of evil. The more stupid you are the less capable you are of doing harm […] diabolical on the other hand is all but synonymous with ingenious. What Satan had for sale in the garden was knowledge.”

Alicia presents a general observation, suggesting that intelligence is associated with acts of evil. This recognition leads her to feel some ambivalence about her own extreme intelligence and about her core belief that the purpose of life is to understand it.

“The women look up from their washing and they understand at once that everything they have loved and nurtured has been put at naught. They have in an instant no past and no future. Everything they’ve taught their children has been stricken from the world without a trace and they are now widows and slaves.”

In Alicia’s fantasy, she envisions a village of women being massacred by an invading army. This vision is both horrifying and attractive to her, as she dreams of self-annihilation, of wiping out all traces of herself just as the invaders wipe out all traces of this imagined community.

“The rage of children seemed inexplicable other than as a breach of some deep and innate covenant having to do with how the world should be and wasn’t. I understand that their raw exposure to the world was the world.”

Alicia expresses her dismay at the sounds of children crying, seeing it as a manifestation of an overwhelming rage toward a world they didn’t choose to enter but are compelled to inhabit against their will. The harsh realities of existence compel these children to vocalize their own anguish, revealing Alicia’s perspective on life as relentless suffering.

“I told him once that he was wasting his time. That I wanted to be a warrior. Not a being of the spirit but of the flesh. I was a born classicist and my heroes were never saints but killers. He would look quite serious and then hold forth with a diatribe concerning the longheld strongholds of rugmold.”

During a conversation with her fictional apparition the Kid, Alicia becomes frustrated with his erratic and nonsensical behavior. She emphatically asserts that she is not like him; she sees herself as a warrior, a being of flesh, not entangled in the spiritual or make-believe. She indicates a preference for ruthless rather than benevolent heroes, possibly alluding to her father—a paradoxical figure whose efforts to create the atomic bomb and halt World War II prevented numerous deaths but also caused mass devastation.

“The dream wakes us to tell us to remember. Maybe there’s nothing to be done. Maybe the question is whether the terror is warning about the world or about ourselves. The night world from which you are brought upright in your bed gasping and sweating. Are you waking from something you have seen or from something that you are?”

Alicia delves into the interpretation of dreams, contending that when we awaken, it’s a prompt to recall a message the dream sought to convey. According to her, the fear experienced in dreams serves as a cautionary signal, likely about something within ourselves. She elaborates on how dreams serve as a direct confrontation with our innermost selves, and waking up becomes a jolting realization of this self-discovery. This introspective analysis is evident in the peculiar dreams she narrates in the story.

“The actual issue is that someone a hundred thousand years ago sat up in his robes and said Holy Shit. Sort of. He didn’t have a language yet. But what he had just understood is that one thing can be another thing. Not look like it or act upon it. Be it. Stand for it. Pebbles can be goats. Sounds can be things. The name for water is water. What seems inconsequential to us by reason of usage is in fact the founding notion of civilization. Language, art, mathematics, everything. Ultimately the world itself and all in it.”

Alicia paints a fictional scenario in which an ancient man recognizes that the subjective nature of meaning allows for comparisons between seemingly unrelated objects. In this narrative, the logic of abstraction emerges as the fundamental cornerstone of all civilization. Humans, through this cognitive process, conceive entire systems, worlds, spaces, ideas, and objects that may lack a tangible existence but possess real and potent influences. Alicia particularly emphasizes the tangible force of abstract constructs, such as the mathematical concepts she illustrates.

“Because I know what my brother did not. That there was an ill-contained horror beneath the surface of the world and there always had been. That at the core of reality lies a deep and eternal demonium. All religions understand this. And it wasn’t going away. And that to imagine that the grim eruptions of this century were in any way either singular or exhaustive was simply a folly.”

Alicia’s conviction in the malevolence and destructiveness of the world, embodied by her father’s involvement in the Manhattan Project, in which he helped create a weapon capable of annihilating cities, is a fundamental factor leading to her contemplation of suicide. She acknowledges that this perspective is not shared by her brother Bobby, who has a less pessimistic view of the world and chooses to continue living even as Alicia grows resigned to the idea of death.

“Yes. Bone of his bone. Too bad. We were like the last on earth. We could choose to join the beliefs and practices of the millions of dead beneath our feet or we could begin again. Did he really have to think about it? Why should I have no one? Why should he? I told him that I’d no way even to know if there was justice in my heart if I had no one to love and love me. You cannot credit yourself with a truth that has no resonance. Where is the reflection of your worth? And who will speak for you when you are dead?”

Alicia expresses a profound connection with her brother, echoing the biblical Book of Genesis in describing him as the “bone of her bone.” She argues that their familial relationship intensifies their bond. Alicia questions why societal norms oppose their closeness, pondering the loneliness she might face without him. She venerates her brother and asserts that he is the only individual who would remember her even after death.

“I know that you can make a good case that all of human sorrow is grounded in injustice. And that sorrow is what is left when rage is expended and found to be impotent.”

Alicia reflects on the roots of human sorrow and suffering, asserting that they often stem from a sense of injustice, the feeling that the world is inherently unfair and indifferent. She goes on to explain that rage is what one feels when one believes injustice can be fixed. When it becomes clear that nothing can be done, sorrow takes the place of rage. This pessimistic sentiment underscores her belief in the fundamentally unjust nature of the world, one that, in her view, has no inherent meaning.

“But you have to understand what the advent of language was like. The brain had done pretty well without it for quite a few million years. The arrival of language was like the invasion of a parasitic system. Co-opted those areas of the brain that were the least dedicated. The most susceptible to appropriation.”

Alicia characterizes the invention of language as a parasitic system that forcefully imposes itself on an unprepared and unwilling humanity. This intrusion compels people to restructure their entire communication system to accommodate this unwelcome imposition.

“In this case it was the realization that what you had long suspected was in fact true. That mathematics had no limits. That it was inexhaustible. There was no longer any question about that. And now you had to sit down and think about the universe […] you thought that your inquiry was going to labor under a shrinking availability of the empirical. Even while you worked the universe was receding.”

Alicia posits that through her exploration of mathematics, she came to the realization that it inherently lacks any transcendent meaning. Instead, it proves to be boundless, continually prompting more questions, thus deferring the attainment of truth and meaning indefinitely.