I've been dreading writing about this, but I must. I won't feel complete closure until I do. Offer up my little piece of tribute, of eulogy. Anything that takes up such a piece of your heart, mind, and time deserves a few paragraphs penned in its honor.
People who don't have pets think it's silly when their owners grieve them with the intensity of a lost human loved one. Even some people who only display a casual relationship with their animals look down on the people who perform funerals for gold fish and dogs and gerbils.
But then there are the people who regard their furry (and scaly or slimy or whatever) friends as members of their families. The frequently crocheted quote "Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened" rings true. It's a special kind of relationship. Cats love unconditionally. No one can dispute the comfort a purring cat perched happily on his or her owner's lap, eyes slightly closed and paws kneading, provides. There's no question of the unfailing love behind the green oval eyes.
Rascal sat on my lap for ten years, his love never failing and his paws never allowing a morsel of food to make it to my mouth with an attempted interception. He dined better than most people, preferring bacon above all else. Though he was largely governed by his stomach (and easily manipulated by the all-important word t-r-e-a-t), his heart is the most memorable part of his kitty personality. He was a very sweet animal, not at all bowing the general cat stereotypes of disdain for humans.There is no disputing that he loved us from the moment we extracted him during his first days of life from between Grandma's porches to the last time he exited our house.
He punctuated my child- and teen-hood with the needed experience of pet ownership. With animals comes the responsibility and companionship necessary to growing and maturing. Though I was devastated to learn of his disappearance, it seemed somehow darkly fitting that he died a mere week before I returned home for my first break from college. One of the largest pieces of my childhood now divides my life into childhood and adulthood, life with and without Rascal.
The night I returned home, the first thing I saw was his little dry food bowl sitting sitting expectantly and full. That sight coupled with his abandoned toys and scratching post littering the living room floor drove the reality of his disappearance home. But as I sat crying in the midst of his things, I wasn't mourning just my precious pet. I was mourning the loss of my life was it was before.
Rascal was the best first pet anybody could I have, and I'm incredibly for the ten years he brought joy to my life. I refuse to think about what terrible fate he most likely met and relish the many, many memories he gave me and my family. He was a remarkable cat and my best friend for half of my life. I will miss him.
And many years from now, when I have a family of my own, we will have a precious family cat too, so my kids will know the all-important love of an animal.
Oct 24, 2011
Oct 9, 2011
I am. I am. I am.
My friend was wondering why people continue to exist, and so I started thinking about why I bother to continue existing.
It's a question some people ask me when they find out I'm an atheist. Why would you keep living without the promise of heaven at the end? Or without a distinct system of reward and punishment? The guarantee of a soul or of seeing your dead loved ones again?
Well, it's a pretty easy answer, considering I'm still very much alive. At least, it seems that way. But when you really get down to it, I only keep living because I don't know what else to do. I'm just supposed to keep living; my body is designed to avoid death at all costs. It's second nature to try to survive.
But if you don't considering surviving the same as living, really living, then what makes me keep living? Am I even really living?
There's a Ropes song that goes "My life doesn't mean a thing to me/the only reason I haven't put myself in the ground already/is I don't like to get dirty." Maybe it's sometimes it's the smallest things, if not necessarily as cynical as the song describes, that keeps us adhered to our mortal coils. You don't have to have some grand reason to wake up each morning.
My philosophy dictates that people ascribe their own meaning to life and spend their time trying to do the best they can to adhere to the lifestyle they think is most appropriate. All this cliche, semi-hedonistic stuff is what I think makes life worth living. It's different for every person, and that's what is beautiful about it.
It's a whole list of cliche things that keeps me wanting to breathe every morning. I think I've written before about how I use to think of one thing to look forward to that day before I got out of bed every morning, just to make the walk to the shower a little better. I've gotten bad about not doing that anymore lately; it's a testament to a good life that on any given day, I could think of something positive that would probably happen. They are almost always really small things: an especially appetizing lunch item, getting a paper back I worked really hard on, a meeting of a club I enjoy, getting to see a friend.
Even though each of those things doesn't really add up to much, together they create a life that is positive more often than negative. I couldn't possibly quit living if there was one little thing I had to look forward to. "Oh, I will just go and die after this... oh but then I would miss this!" The sheer fact that I would be missing things is something I can't stand.
My somewhat ironic but reoccurring dream is that I've slept through important things: when I was younger, it was trick-or-treating. Now, it's exams and interviews. But the theme of sleeping through important events remains my biggest subconscious fear. Being dead for all of them would kind of suck, too.
When Christians ask me why I bother to keep living, I usually respond something to the effect of "there are amazing books I haven't read yet, interesting people I haven't met, beautiful sights I haven't seen, funny jokes I haven't laughed at. There are classes I haven't gotten to take yet, words I haven't written yet, and smiles I haven't smiled yet." Missing any of that would be too sad to bear. That's why I bother to wake up each morning. It might be cliche, but each life affirming breath reinforces and justifies my roaming around the earth.
As my darling Sylvia Plath wrote, "I took a breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am."
It's a question some people ask me when they find out I'm an atheist. Why would you keep living without the promise of heaven at the end? Or without a distinct system of reward and punishment? The guarantee of a soul or of seeing your dead loved ones again?
Well, it's a pretty easy answer, considering I'm still very much alive. At least, it seems that way. But when you really get down to it, I only keep living because I don't know what else to do. I'm just supposed to keep living; my body is designed to avoid death at all costs. It's second nature to try to survive.
But if you don't considering surviving the same as living, really living, then what makes me keep living? Am I even really living?
There's a Ropes song that goes "My life doesn't mean a thing to me/the only reason I haven't put myself in the ground already/is I don't like to get dirty." Maybe it's sometimes it's the smallest things, if not necessarily as cynical as the song describes, that keeps us adhered to our mortal coils. You don't have to have some grand reason to wake up each morning.
My philosophy dictates that people ascribe their own meaning to life and spend their time trying to do the best they can to adhere to the lifestyle they think is most appropriate. All this cliche, semi-hedonistic stuff is what I think makes life worth living. It's different for every person, and that's what is beautiful about it.
It's a whole list of cliche things that keeps me wanting to breathe every morning. I think I've written before about how I use to think of one thing to look forward to that day before I got out of bed every morning, just to make the walk to the shower a little better. I've gotten bad about not doing that anymore lately; it's a testament to a good life that on any given day, I could think of something positive that would probably happen. They are almost always really small things: an especially appetizing lunch item, getting a paper back I worked really hard on, a meeting of a club I enjoy, getting to see a friend.
Even though each of those things doesn't really add up to much, together they create a life that is positive more often than negative. I couldn't possibly quit living if there was one little thing I had to look forward to. "Oh, I will just go and die after this... oh but then I would miss this!" The sheer fact that I would be missing things is something I can't stand.
My somewhat ironic but reoccurring dream is that I've slept through important things: when I was younger, it was trick-or-treating. Now, it's exams and interviews. But the theme of sleeping through important events remains my biggest subconscious fear. Being dead for all of them would kind of suck, too.
When Christians ask me why I bother to keep living, I usually respond something to the effect of "there are amazing books I haven't read yet, interesting people I haven't met, beautiful sights I haven't seen, funny jokes I haven't laughed at. There are classes I haven't gotten to take yet, words I haven't written yet, and smiles I haven't smiled yet." Missing any of that would be too sad to bear. That's why I bother to wake up each morning. It might be cliche, but each life affirming breath reinforces and justifies my roaming around the earth.
As my darling Sylvia Plath wrote, "I took a breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am."
Oct 3, 2011
Family Dinner
I hate when the mix of dinner crowd forces me in the middle of a group full of loud personalities, taking up the conversation with their empty, echoing words. They fill up the chairs with their bodies and the conversation with their bellowing, and those of us small in both voice and stature are left to sit quietly by, spooning rice into our mouths and wishing we were anywhere else.
It's not that I don't have input. It's just my words seem to emerge from my mouth, a few octaves lower than I intend, and escape into the battlefield that is the colliding sound waves above the dinner table. Mine are small, feeble warriors and quickly surrender to the pulsing sounds reverberating around the plastic cups of Mountain Dew and Diet Pepsi. Frustrated, I just sit there, replacing the words on the tip of my tongue with the bland food that people seem to think defines my personality.
I am so close to the people next to me that we can hardly eat without our elbows hitting; we are so close I think they might be able to hear my thoughts, tearing each new loudmouth comment apart for its ignorance and depravity, but it's really just envy because people are looking at them when they speak and responding, and that's all I really want. But I know my neighbors can't hear what is happening in my brain because they don't even hear what I choose to vocalize.
I know it isn't true. I know that some personalities are always going to win out, claiming the entire market, making it seem as if they have the only personality worth having. The only way to be. Social, exhaustively happy. I know that I'm as valid as them, as interesting as them, as important. But somehow that certainty just isn't enough to make that hour bearable; I just wait.
I wait until I can pour all the bottled up thoughts onto a page, onto a screen. Sustained by an eternally captive audience, I can release what nobody else cares to take from me. Perhaps I don't have a voice in a crowd so I have the words necessary to move my pen across the page. Maybe I'm meant to be reclusive, and I'm just fighting my nature to no avail. Maybe my dinnertime companions are unwittingly providing me with a livelihood, a reason to live.
Cautiously optimistic, I must accept my fate. Channel Salinger. Write because it's so hard to talk, and maybe one day, they will be sad they never listened, and finally read.
It's not that I don't have input. It's just my words seem to emerge from my mouth, a few octaves lower than I intend, and escape into the battlefield that is the colliding sound waves above the dinner table. Mine are small, feeble warriors and quickly surrender to the pulsing sounds reverberating around the plastic cups of Mountain Dew and Diet Pepsi. Frustrated, I just sit there, replacing the words on the tip of my tongue with the bland food that people seem to think defines my personality.
I am so close to the people next to me that we can hardly eat without our elbows hitting; we are so close I think they might be able to hear my thoughts, tearing each new loudmouth comment apart for its ignorance and depravity, but it's really just envy because people are looking at them when they speak and responding, and that's all I really want. But I know my neighbors can't hear what is happening in my brain because they don't even hear what I choose to vocalize.
I know it isn't true. I know that some personalities are always going to win out, claiming the entire market, making it seem as if they have the only personality worth having. The only way to be. Social, exhaustively happy. I know that I'm as valid as them, as interesting as them, as important. But somehow that certainty just isn't enough to make that hour bearable; I just wait.
I wait until I can pour all the bottled up thoughts onto a page, onto a screen. Sustained by an eternally captive audience, I can release what nobody else cares to take from me. Perhaps I don't have a voice in a crowd so I have the words necessary to move my pen across the page. Maybe I'm meant to be reclusive, and I'm just fighting my nature to no avail. Maybe my dinnertime companions are unwittingly providing me with a livelihood, a reason to live.
Cautiously optimistic, I must accept my fate. Channel Salinger. Write because it's so hard to talk, and maybe one day, they will be sad they never listened, and finally read.
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