Do not go gently.
I see a dead cat on my way to work every day. It has been there in the dividing lane of a busy road since early December. The first time I noticed it I immediately thought of my childhood cat Muffin. Both cats had long, black and white fur. Maybe the similarity is what has made me so sensitive to this particular animal’s fate.
I don’t like to see the cat, but I catch myself looking for it when I pass. By now it almost blends in with the other road debris of leaves and cardboard. I want someone to clean it up, to bury it, to find its owners and tell them what has happened.
Life, or what was life, shouldn’t be left so vulnerable. Thick asphalt ensures that the earth won’t absorb the corpse. Pedestrians can’t cross the highway, so there’s no chance that anyone will move it out of pity. It just lies there in the rain, reminding drivers (or at least this driver) of the world’s general disregard for innocence, of how our cars or coal mines or hospitals can take the very lives they were trying to improve.
Death usually stays out of sight. We mourn, bury, and eventually forget.
When I was at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford I noticed that they line the walkways with the tombstones that are no longer legible. The biggest slabs only remember the rock they came from, not the inscription once cut into the surface. Death fades; personality fades; cats fade away. We don’t have the capability to hold all those stories, and our minds cannot settle in tragedy.
The cat hasn’t allowed me move on. Until the city cleans the streets or until I get inspired to dodge traffic and do something about it myself, it stays suspended and unprocessed. So for now I am forced to deal with my own mortality every morning during my commute. Perhaps it’s a healthy routine.
I don’t like to see the cat, but I catch myself looking for it when I pass. By now it almost blends in with the other road debris of leaves and cardboard. I want someone to clean it up, to bury it, to find its owners and tell them what has happened.
Life, or what was life, shouldn’t be left so vulnerable. Thick asphalt ensures that the earth won’t absorb the corpse. Pedestrians can’t cross the highway, so there’s no chance that anyone will move it out of pity. It just lies there in the rain, reminding drivers (or at least this driver) of the world’s general disregard for innocence, of how our cars or coal mines or hospitals can take the very lives they were trying to improve.
Death usually stays out of sight. We mourn, bury, and eventually forget.
When I was at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford I noticed that they line the walkways with the tombstones that are no longer legible. The biggest slabs only remember the rock they came from, not the inscription once cut into the surface. Death fades; personality fades; cats fade away. We don’t have the capability to hold all those stories, and our minds cannot settle in tragedy.
The cat hasn’t allowed me move on. Until the city cleans the streets or until I get inspired to dodge traffic and do something about it myself, it stays suspended and unprocessed. So for now I am forced to deal with my own mortality every morning during my commute. Perhaps it’s a healthy routine.
posted by Erin 1:46 PM
2 Comments:
Eew- your the only one I know who would feel obligatd to say "perhaps it's a healthy routine" when discussing a dead cat that you are forced to see EVERY day! I love your eternal optimism.
Did we ever talk about the artist in Portland who found a dead deer in Hillsboro and hauled into the heart of the city to leave it decay? I think the first time I heard about it I just didn't get it, thought it was a part of the inanity I had heard this "modern art" described as. That classic perception of some artless action. Then the more I heard about it, later, in retrospect, it made perfect sense on quite a few levels. Enough levels that I just googled "portland dead deer artist hillsboro".
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