Volume 7, Entry 29: Nothlits

I saw a hawk on my walk last week.

Oh yeah?

Yeah. He was prowling the creek, floating on thermals before swooping down after potential prey.

Pretty standard hawk stuff, yeah?

For sure. But then he landed on the bark a few feet away from me.

Oh. That’s kinda weird.

It was. It surprised me because I see hawks all the time, but they typically perch in the trees. And even then, when I get close, they fly off quickly. Most of them seem pretty skittish to me.

So this one didn’t fly away?

No. I was right there with him, not even ten feet away, and he didn’t move. And he stared at me. We made eye contact. We literally held eye contact for a few seconds.

What did you do?

At first? I held his gaze. I couldn’t read his expression because I don’t spend a lot of time with birds.

Fair enough.

Yeah. But then I pulled out my phone to take a picture, expecting my movement to send him off, but he stayed put. He looked directly into the camera, and then he kept looking at me after I lowered the thing and put it in my pocket.

Sounds almost like he was watching. Afraid you were going to make a move or something.

Maybe. That wasn’t what I had in my head at the moment.

What were you thinking about instead?

Tobias.

Who?

Tobias. The character from Animorphs.

Is that the series with the kids turning into animals? With the cool covers?

Basically. A dying alien gives five kids the power to acquire the DNA of other living creatures and transform into them.

Why would a dying alien do that?

Because the Yeerks, a race of alien brain slugs, were already on Earth and taking human hosts. No one would stop them if the kids didn’t.

By turning into animals.

Yes.

Instead of alerting the police or something? Wouldn’t the collective firepower of, say, the US government be preferable to a group of children?

No. Reporting it would put everyone in danger.

Why?

Well, brain slugs are basically invisible. You can never tell which person is being controlled by one. If you go to the authorities, and Yeerks have already infiltrated that department, then the kids will be at risk—

Oh.

—which is to say, the planet’s last line of defense will be toast. Better to have a small guerrilla team than none at all.

A guerrilla team that changes into gorillas.

Only Marco changed into a gorilla. The others had different preferential morphs.

I see. But you weren’t thinking about Marco with the hawk.

I wasn’t. I thought about Tobias.

What was his shape-shift of choice?

A hawk.

That would make sense.

Yeah. Granted, my hawk was a Cooper’s Hawk, which is smaller than Tobias. He was a Red-Tailed Hawk.

You mean morphed into, right? Tobias was a kid, not a hawk, right?

Eh…it’s complicated.

C’mon. Kid or hawk can’t be a hard question.

But it is. Tobias was different from the other Animorphs.

Because he was a bird?

Pretty much. Tobias chose to be a hawk. Rather than a kid.

He chose it? How?

It was a quirk of the morphing power. The kids could turn into any animal they touched, people included, but there was a limit: they could only stay in a morph for two hours before the morph became permanent.

Whoa. So, like, if I morphed into a squirrel, and I stayed that way for 121 minutes, I would become a squirrel.

Yes and no. You’d be a squirrel physically. Your physiology would be that of a squirrel, including lifespan. But your consciousness would remain your own, and you could still communicate telepathically with other people.

So Tobias got trapped inside a hawk. But you said chose.

Again, it’s complicated.

Try me.

Tobias was a miserable kid. He’d lost both parents young, and his relatives shuffled him lovelessly back and forth. At school, he was a magnet for bullies, and outside, he didn’t have any friends on account of that shuffling.

Not even the other Animorphs?

Later, sure. But at first? No. He simply1 ran into them on that fateful night with the alien. Tobias had nobody.

Okay. So he decided to stay a hawk?

Again, not exactly. The team’s first big mission took them underground, and they only barely escaped. Tobias didn’t get out in time, and he couldn’t demorph because then he would have been caught by the Yeerks and turned into a weapon. So yes, he did get trapped in his hawk morph, technically, but I always believed it was what he actually wanted.

A new life, I suppose. Albeit a short one.

True. A Red-Tailed Hawk in captivity can live almost thirty years2.

Ouch. Cuts his life in half then.

Yeah, but I doubt that would have swayed him. Tobias’ life was miserable. Less life appealed to him.

True. But didn’t Tobias’ choice totally fuck the team? A hawk wouldn’t have much use on the water levels.

A hawk can be pretty useful, though. He’s a perfect lookout; he’s small, agile, and quick, too.

I guess.

Really, it didn’t matter, though. Because Tobias could still morph.

Huh? But isn’t he trapped as a hawk?

Yes, but the Ellimist gave him the morphing power.

What’s an Ellimist?

Basically, an immortal, time-twisting god playing chess with the universe. There was a whole one-off about him.

Animorphs was a lot, huh?

Yep. But that wasn’t my point with thinking about Tobias. That happened a few books in anyway. He didn’t know he’d get morphing powers when he became a nothlit.

What’s a nothlit?

Someone who gets trapped in their morph for whatever reason. Tobias is a nothlit.

I see. So the hawk you ran into made you think about Tobias the nothlit?

It did. Seeing that hawk regard me so…comfortably…was like meeting Tobias, in a way.

Sure.

And that got me thinking about him and how much better I understand him and his choice now than I did in middle school.

Why? Are you a secret bird boy? You can tell me. I’m not a Yeerk, I swear.

No. I can’t morph. As long as brain slug conquerors aren’t involved, I would love to morph, though. And I thought a lot about morphing when I watched that It’s What’s Inside movie last year. Morphing into other humans could be an incredible empathy exercise.

Super creepy, too. And violating.

Oh yeah. The movie covers that pretty thoroughly.

I see. But I don’t get it. Why do you understand Tobias more now?

Because I feel like a nothlit.

That…doesn’t make any sense. Explain please.

I feel like a nothlit because, like Tobias, I’ve morphed into something totally different from what I ever intended to be. I’m living a life that simply does not compute with the person I was before.

In what way?

In almost every way. I’m alone all the time, which was probably the deepest fear of my former self. I work all the time, or at least think about work all the time, which I swore I would never do, and I conduct myself like this totally different person all the time. I filter everything through that lens, even when I’m thousands of miles away and know nobody. I don’t enjoy almost anything because it feels like it’s happening in a different body entirely.

That sounds more like a Yeerk, dude. Like you’re controlled by some brain slug.

Yeah, and I get that, but it doesn’t work as an analogy because nobody3 chose to be a controller with a Yeerk in their skull. The Yeerks took people by force. Those missions in the Yeerk pools were—

Wait. Stop.

—harrowing. What?

You said you feel like you’re in a different body, but also that you aren’t in it against your will?

Yes.

So you chose to feel this way?

Yes.

Why?

The same reason Tobias did.

Which is.

It’s better this way.

How do you mean?

Well, the morph I’ve assumed is…well, better is the right word. He is better. Infinitely better. He’s disciplined, he’s self-sufficient, and he’s prolific. He’s also intentional and stable and self-aware. He understands himself so well that he can use his former self as a tool to great effect, and he talks about emotion with the same clarity he does u-substitution. He is better in every conceivable way.

So what’s the problem then?

It doesn’t feel right. It feels like a performance, like I’m a method actor who forgot to drop the character when the production wrapped. I feel like a kid in a hawk’s body, operating wings that aren’t mine and moving a beak I wasn’t born with. But also, I know that, strategically, being a hawk is ultimately advantageous to the team. That I can do far more as a hawk than as a stupid, unwanted kid. Nobody misses Tobias the kid when he apparently vanishes without a trace. Nobody misses that old me, either.

Except you?

No. Not even I miss him. I’d rather be this guy. I’d rather stay in morph. But the old me, the real me, he’s still in there. His consciousness remains. And it’s hard to concentrate sometimes because he knows it’s wrong to want what he wants. He knows it’s best for everyone if he surrenders to the hawk body and accepts his relegation.

But he still wants what he always wanted.

Exactly. It’s always there, always in his ear, always under the surface. It’s quiet sometimes because damn, it’s great to be a hawk and soar around the open sky with perfect vision and bird-of-prey power, but Tobias is not gone. And the tricky thing is that being alone is a necessary part of my morph, but when I’m alone, that’s when it gets the loudest. When the betrayal of my previous form is hardest to ignore.

I guess that makes sense. But have you chosen to be trapped in a morph or simply evolved? Everybody leaves their former selves behind eventually, right? They drop some old aspirations and replace them with new ones. All of us are nothlits in that way—we can’t go back to who we were before. We reach a point where we’re nowhere close to where we wanted to be, but since we can’t go back, we adjust our expectations and continue moving forward from there. Couldn’t it be more like that?

No.

Why not?

Because I’m not actually a nothlit. Not yet, anyway. I’m becoming one, though. I’m chaining 1:59 sessions in morph at this point, daring the transformation to become permanent, daring myself to lose track of the clock as the two-hour mark approaches, but I haven’t crossed the threshold yet—and that means everything’s still on the table. I could change everything tomorrow. I could become Tobias the kid right now if I so chose.

Do you want that? Do you want what you wanted before?

No.

See?

But also, yes.

Ah.

Which is to say I don’t know what’s right. I don’t know where Tobias starts and the hawk ends. I don’t. I’m miserable all the time—all the time—but the misery is that voice in my head that I morphed away from, and when I’m in morph, I forget that I wasn’t always this beautiful bird. It would be better to be a nothlit and stay in the form that people like that makes a positive impact. I should abandon what I was before, but I wasn’t born a hawk. Deep down, I know I’m not a bird, that taking flight permanently doesn’t actually fix the wounds inside my consciousness.

Yeah. Okay. I get that.

Really?

I think so. Since you’re not yet a nothlit, there’s still time to pivot away from being a full-time hawk.

Yes.

So that voice you’d rather ignore still holds sway.

It does.

But: you’re running out of time. You’re inching closer to the two-hour barrier—

Yep.

—but unlike Tobias, you don’t have an Ellimist who can save you.

Not that I’m aware of.

Got it.

Cool.

That’s tricky.

It’s been on my mind for months. Every week, I cycle through metaphors trying to articulate it, but then it gets dark, and sunny-new-me dumps what I’ve written to pen something more optimistic and earnest. What I write is honest, but only to everybody else. They hear a hawk’s truth, but I’m lying to myself by pretending this huge thing isn’t loudly on my Tobias mind.

I see.

So what do you think?

Geez. I dunno.

That’s okay.

I have no idea what to say. Birds, slugs, nothlits, old selves—it’s a lot.

I know. I’m sorry.

But.

Oh?

Can you give me a few minutes?

Sure. Take all the time you need.

Thanks.

*****

Oh, hey. You’re back.

I am. I appreciate the patience.

And I appreciate you listening in the first place.

Of course. That’s what I do.

So what were you up to?

I was reading.

Reading what?

Seerowpeedia.

Really? You were reading the Animorphs wiki?

I was.

Which topic?

I read about Tobias.

That’s a meaty page, dude.

You can say that again. You left out a lot of details.

I had to. How was I going to concisely explain his parentage? It would’ve muddled everything about their origins to the point of incomprehensibility.

Yes. It would have. That Animorphs series was batshit.

In the best way.

I’ll take your word for it.

As well you should.

Yeah. But back to my point—

Sorry.

—I read about Tobias to see if there was anything I could add to help you through your conflict.

That was generous. Thank you.

You’re welcome.

Did you find anything?

Other than Palpatine being Rey’s father?

It was more clever than that.

I know. But yes, I did. Wanna hear it?

Sure. Shoot.

Okay, but you’re gonna have to bear with me. I didn’t organize my thoughts or anything. I’m going off memory here. Please grant me some leeway, counselor.

Will do.

So the first thing wasn’t exactly on the page, but I’m gonna start there.

No problem.

Tobias was wrong.

How do you mean?

Tobias felt unloved as a human, so he basically chose to be a Red-Tailed Hawk.

That’s true.

But he was loved as a human. Deeply loved by his actual parents, whoever they were. He didn’t know that, and his aunt and uncle did a shitty job of channeling affection his way, but if Tobias’ thesis was “I am unlovable as a person”, he was 100% wrong. When you really think about it, he was so loved as a person that the love for him ultimately saves the world.

Okay.

Tobias made an inductive reasoning error. He assumed that because he couldn’t see love in the present, he was permanently incapable of being loved. That wasn’t true, and it wasn’t even true within Animorphs because Rachel basically had a thing for him, right?

As much as Rachel could.

Yeah. And maybe this is neither here nor there, but I think it’s a relevant point to make. Tobias brought some things to the table as a hawk, and he did escape rough circumstances by taking flight more permanently, but that doesn’t erase his original self’s potential for love. Let’s just get that straight first.

I see what you’re doing, and I disagree.

It’s not illegal to be wrong.

But I’ll set those objections aside. For now. Go on.

Thanks. So the biggest takeaway I had is about a detail you omitted. Involving Tobias the Hawk’s ability to morph.

I told you about that. I definitely did.

You did, yes. But you never mentioned that he can morph into his former human self.

That would’ve complicated everything.

Sure. But it also would’ve changed everything.

How?

Tobias is a nothlit, whether by choice or otherwise, but the difference between him and every other nothlit in the galaxy is that Ellimist magic means Tobias can continue to morph.

Yes…

Including into his former self.

So what?

Well, it means that Tobias isn’t a nothlit! He’s assumed a new base form, but he’s still able to become his former self for a few hours anytime he wants. He isn’t a Red-Tailed Hawk forever. He still gets to stretch his human muscles once in a while. He can eat a Cinnabon with Ax—

Wow. You read a ton.

—or walk into a store or kiss Rachel. Whatever. The fact is, Tobias chose to become a nothlit instead of living as he was, but he didn’t leave his humanity behind. The Ellimist, who is basically God in these books, deems it necessary that Tobias be able to morph back on occasion. When a divine being says, “Yeah, cool, you’re a hawk, but also, don’t completely lose who you were, kid”, that seems pretty important to me.

…

It seems like a pretty clear Animorphs-coded imperative. The solution for Tobias isn’t to be a hawk 100% of the time. 98%, sure, that’ll do, but that leaves 2%. And I know I’m making up these numbers and reasoning off a site called Seerowpedia that has thorough pages about massive murder millipedes—

Taxxons.

—but there’s something profound in that construction for your bird-boy. It’s okay to be a hawk because life actually might be better as a hawk, but he can’t let go of the person he was before.

Okay.

You can change into someone better and leave your old hopes and hangups behind, but you’ve gotta find ways to engage that former self. Small though they might be.

You sound like Hank Green.

You say that with a sneer, but I’m pretty sure it’s a compliment.

Why can’t it be both?

Why can’t you?

…

See what I did there?

…

Who’s the clever one now, huh?

But you’re missing the point.

Am I?

You are. Tobias has too many powers. He’s a bad metaphor.

He’s your metaphor!

Yeah, but when you really look at everything, he’s not a nothlit. He doesn’t have to decide. Tobias gets the best of both worlds: he can soar all day and all night, roosting and feasting alone to his heart’s content, and when he wants to hang out at the mall or talk to Rachel, he can morph and do that. Tobias, uniquely, can live two lives. But I am not Tobias. There are contradictions between the two versions of myself. They’re mutually exclusive, not like K.A. Applegate presents kid Hawkeye. I can’t be both what I am and what that dormant part of me wants. I’m not Schröedinger’s cat.

Schröedinger’s hawk?

I’m being serious! Look, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, and I know you’ve made some valid points within my own chosen metaphor—

You’re welcome.

—but it doesn’t change that some conflicts can’t be snapped away. Some situations can’t be resolved in a week’s worth of writing and reflecting. Some stories don’t end in a happy place of persuasive clarity. Sometimes, you feel shitty about yourself, like you’ve made a bad trade, like you’ve ruined your chance at happiness to safeguard other people’s happiness, and you can’t reason your way out with a thirty-year-old sci-fi series metaphor. Those are impossible expectations. Why do you think I abandoned all those other pieces? There was no way to resolve the conflicts they posed, and hawk-me always finds a way through. Always. But I can’t with this one. I can’t tie a bow around it. Not around who I am.

Then don’t tie a bow around it.

What?

Don’t try to resolve it.

I can’t do that.

Why not?

Then…what was the point of writing about it?

To express it. To examine it. To riff on your little moment with a hawk and address something eating at you with a vocabulary that’s special to you.

And what does that accomplish?

Nothing, probably. But at least you said it. At least you stopped perching in trees and hiding, right?

I…guess.

It’s not what your better-self morph would come up with, right?

That’s true.

Then see? By talking about Tobias, you’ve managed to present a problem you can’t solve, which is what you’ve been dealing with below the surface. That means you successfully went under the surface. That’s a victory.

Yeah, but then wouldn’t that mean that I did arrive at a resolution of sorts? If the answer is There is no answer, isn’t There is no answer therefore itself an answer?

Damn, dude. Schröedinger’s hawk returns.

Or perhaps it…doesn’t?

Ha.

My turn to be funny.

Well, we’re laughing now. That’s gotta count for something, right?

True.

That’s probably a good place to stop, then, right?

Probably.

I’m not sure it will make sense when I say it, but writing this felt a lot like writing a math lesson. There’s all this vocabulary to establish in order to progress to the problems we ultimately aim to solve. Nothing gets solved here, but that structure helped.

In addition to the piece you’re reading, I wrote several free-verse sonnets this week. I don’t know what to do with them, but one of them addressed the same themes as this essay. I’m sharing it here:

betrayal

If the Dursleys actually locked their
Nephew in a cabinet under the stairs
They would be criminals, guilty of gross
Neglect. So what does that make me, who keeps
His former self at the bottom of a
Well? Does it make any difference that
The guy sealing him in is a better
Dude than the one splashing in stale water?

I think I’m supposed to say, No, it’s wrong
To hold him there, but there ain’t nobody
Racing to remove the lid, you know? We
All agree it’s better he stay in the
Dark. It’s just that they don’t hear him crying
At night like I do, and that makes me think.

I think the artwork this week is among my best ever. There are AI generators out there to achieve this effect, but I did this 100% by hand. Credit to My Edmond News for the hawk image I used (since mine was low resolution) and to the Sierra Club for the cloud image that created that awesome Animorphs aesthetic for the background.