Son of Ares

Laszlo Kubinyi, “The Jealous Vampire”

illustration from “Ghosts, Vampires, and Werewolves: Eerie Tales from Transylvania” by Mihai I. Spariosu and Dezső Benedek, 1994

Camus believed morality begins when justification ends. You don't do good because it saves you, or earns approval. You do it because suffering exists and you refuse to add to it.

He called this ‘the modest heroism of the absurd.’ In a meaningless world, the only meaning left is what we create through compassion, courage, and presence.

Camus saw that people want cosmic justice, rewards, closure, divine order. But decency doesn't need a witness. True morality, he said, is doing what's right when no one's watching.

In an age obsessed with saving the world, Camus reminds us that goodness isn't grand. It's quiet. It's the everyday rebellion of kindness in a world that's indifferent.

You can't fix chaos. You can't end suffering. But you can refuse cruelty. You can choose integrity. You can make one small corner of existence less unbearable.

Maybe that's enough. Maybe the most moral life isn't one that saves the world but one that quietly refuses to make it worse.”

Thank you @isakvaltersnake and @crackerjacksman

Hugo Simberg (1873–1917), “The Black Death in Finland 1350”

Eugene “Doc” Roe, Band of Brothers (2001) / Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost (1922)

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‘It is no good trying to escape you. But I’m glad Sam. I cannot tell you how glad. Come along! It is plain we were meant to go together.’

On one of these days, he finds a farmhouse of a very jittery couple who agree to let him sleep in the barn, with the conditions that he sleeps in the barn loft and if he's found, they disavow all knowledge that he was there. He agrees, because he's exhausted and will sleep in a hay pile if he has to. My grandpa manages to fit all six foot three inches of himself into a feed trough stored upstairs and tries to get some sleep.

However, right when he's half-snoozing, he hears motors outside and sure enough, here are some very angry officers of mixed Nazi and Vichy make confronting the couple saying someone up the road spotted an American soldier walking this way. They wouldn't know anything about that, would they? No, of course not.

All the while, my grandpa—now trying to figure out how to either escape the barn unseen or how to fight off six? seven? eight? people at once—freezes up and waits for the inevitable. While he does, a HUGE spider crawls next to his head and onto the loft railing. For one second, he thinks about swatting it away, but that would risk him being seen and killed.

So, instead, he lays there and waits to either fight to the death or get executed in a feed trough. And while he lays there, the spider starts making a huge web on the railing. My grandpa's transfixed by this thing. He watches her go around and around, building a solid web before plopping herself off to one side and waiting for breakfast. At the same time, the officers finally go into the barn.

My grandpa can hear them searching around, turning over crates and checking animal pens. Then, he hears one say to check the loft.

And then another say, "Don't bother. Look at the spiderwebs up there. No one's been there in a while."

And they leave.

Because my grandpa didn't swat the spider away and let her build her web, the officers thought no one was there and left him alone. They drive off and my grandpa immediately thanks the farmer couple and hauls ass out of there as soon as he can.

Buttonwood Farm

N. C. Wyeth