Mark White

Consciousness pondering rumination thinking about consciousness pondering rumination.

In our world death has a negative stigma. We're all wary of it; we'd do anything to avoid it.

We ask, “Oh, how'd they die?” when it happens to someone close to us, as we make a mental note: well, I should definitely avoid that.

I haven't dealt with death much in my life — at least, untimely death. Maybe I'm lucky for that.

I first saw death around age 7. A funeral for my great grandmother. I vaguely remember a dark wooden room, flowers placed on tables, probably a casket. (And really this wasn't seeing death, but its ripple effects.)

I later heard of death in my early twenties — my grandfather's failing health. I was away at college. I didn't see him before he went, but I was around for my mom and her siblings dealing with the aftermath. This was the most apparent result: the effect of death on everyone who knew him.

A few years later, my grandmother went. The effects went farther — she wasn't a grouch, hadn't inflicted a life's worth of mental damage on her children and grandchildren. She also headed for the door in a very visible way, losing her mind and memory, no longer recognizing her own kids by the end of it all. I witnessed the decline, which affected me more than her death.

At her funeral I remember not really comprehending everything about the situation. I saw her lifeless body in the casket, in a room full of live people, which really didn't sit well with me. The situation didn't afford me the mental space and quiet to contemplate what it all meant. So instead I joined the group-grieving and drank copiously, smoked cigarettes, and talked about her life between the tears among us.

I'm thinking about death because I had to put my cat down the other day. It was my first direct encounter with death, rather than his ripple effects. Some might say you can't compare the death of a pet to the death of a human, but to me it's all the same. I'm not so arrogant as to think that our lives matter more than other species on this planet.

An indoor cat all her life, her health had been going for the past few months. She'd started peeing in the house, and was having trouble getting around. Besides not wanting to have my things peed on anymore, I assumed she was getting towards the end of her rope, and I wanted to ensure she enjoyed the remainder of her life. So I started letting her live outside in the backyard.

Like any cat, she always loved sitting in window sills, watching the world on the other side of the pane. This cat also enjoyed one large house plant I had, often settling into the dirt of this potted money tree for a nap. The first time I put her outside in the grass, she lit up — a tall posture, wide eyes, twitching nose and whiskers; senses alive and engaged.

When I had to bring her inside after leaving her out for a while, she didn't want to come in on her own. No rain, heat, air conditioning, or food could sway her. At my beckoning, she'd stop, calmly sit, and slowly close her eyes to half-mast, obviously content with where she was.

In the days leading up to her death she was noticeably worse than the week before — thinner, weaker. She wasn't eating or drinking. I'd usually check on her, pet her, talk to her a bit whenever I went outside, and every time she seemed content and happy to be out in the fresh air and sunlight. But a few days before she went, for the first time her eyes told me something different: she was finished.

On the day she died, I had brought her inside from the heat and put her in her favorite spot in the window. She didn't even stand up, as she normally would, and just looked at me. She let out a meow I'd never heard from her — and as a vocal cat, I'd heard many before. I thought for a second, pacing the room, before realizing that I couldn't put it off any longer. She was ready to go.

I put her in her carrier, leaving the lid open — an opportunity for escape that she would've taken as a younger cat. This time, she let out only a small meow, instead of her normal cry whenever she's put in such a confined space. I put her in the passenger seat of the car and pet her the whole way to the vet. I didn't know what would happen, but assumed the worst. So I drove and tried not to think about anything but comforting her.

The vet confirmed what I already knew from her behavior over the past few months — likely some kind of old-age disease; rapidly declining health now. He said they could run tests and fight the uphill battle to restoring her health, but that euthanasia was something to consider. I finally had to confront the future that was awaiting me on the drive over.

I looked at her, curled up in a ball on the exam table, looking back at me. The sterile room we were in, bathed in florescent lighting; I had wanted to her to fall asleep peacefully among the grass and butterflies — not be put in a box and shuttled to a place like this; I didn't want to have to make a decision like this.

But confronted with the reality before my eyes, the decision came easily. I answered the questions I never expected to answer, like what to do with her remains and whether I'd want to stay in the room, and signed the waiver.

The vet returned after a few minutes with three syringes — I'd decided to stay for the procedure. I didn't know why I'd decided that up front, but would learn why afterward.

He told me he'd be injecting a sedative, which should go into effect quickly since she was so sick. I pet her one last time and silently said goodbye as she looked on, held in place by an assistant. She barely fought or twitched as he inserted the needle, pushing the liquid into her veins. I didn't mark the moment she was gone, but for once I saw the absolute truth that is death, as it happened.

They gave me their condolences and a moment alone with her, where I touched her one more time, looked into her wide open eyes that no longer looked back, and tried to comprehend everything.

I held it together as I walked out of the office with a now-empty carrier; at the oddness of handing someone a credit card right after an event like that; as I drove home, empty carrier beside me, with the vet's words, “she's in a better place now,” in my head.

I wondered if the universe felt her pain leading up to her death, or if it was just hers (and mine) to bear. I wondered if the universe only feels our lives when they impact others; when a life reaches outside of itself; when someone cares enough about you to feel your pain (or joy) right along with you; when someone is around to hear the tree that is you falling in the forest.

Experiencing a raw truth in life, like death, has a way of bringing sudden clarity. In the car I realized that the “cold, uncaring” universe does feel our smallest pains and joys; our births and deaths. It feels it because other beings feel it.

I felt my cat's presence and life; I felt her pain. I can no longer hold her and look into her eyes. But she's permanently shaped my life, both in her life and death (if you must separate the two). As an example, she's inspired this writing, which might then carry on into another mind and shape a life in untold ways, and so on. Life is connected and intertwined in too many ways to count; it finds a way to be felt, and to carry on. That “place” where my cat is now is in my head, in the minds of my friends that have known her, and in these words.

There was no eternal bliss in heaven waiting at the end of her life, but rather something better: she remains among the living.

Don't let ambition kill your wonder.

It's hard for these both to exist at the same time — ambition chases ends while wonder revels in the means.

But it's not impossible. Make time for wonder; come back to it at night, after a long day spent chasing your ambitions. When you feel it, hold wonder tighter than ambition.

If anything is more illusory than the other, it is ambition — its eyes only on a far-off payday. But wonder is real and tangible — it is here today.

Keep this in mind and you won't end up losing yourself as you chase your ambitions.

I'm back in my hometown for the holidays. Last night I met up with an old friend from high school and we went to the bar district — our common annual ritual. After several drinks we were sitting at the bar when someone came up from behind us and put his hands on our shoulders. We both turned around to see Andrew — a face I recognized from my high school class, though I didn't remember his name until much later.

It's always weird to see people from high school after decades have passed. But it was a pleasant surprise! We shared some shallow talk until my old friend asked, “Do you do podcasts?”

Andrew enthused, “Do I do podcasts!”

Here, as their phones emerged and they tried to figure out which podcasts they both listen to, I mentally evacuated the situation.

Now, I get that some people have long commutes, and would rather listen to humans talk at them than to music or the sound of the world while they putter down the highway. Everyone has their own preferences for what they want in their ear holes.

The real problem I have, I suppose, is with people who “listen to podcasts” and think they are somehow imbued with superior intelligence. That by the virtue of listening to people talk through a mechanical speaker they become as knowledgeable as someone who put in the same time reading a book on a subject, experimenting and writing about it, playing with it in the real world, or even making a damn podcast about it.

Also, in general, I'm very uninterested in people who can't stand silence. Anyone who spends their entire day filling their senses with the thoughts of others just doesn't do it for me. Where's the original research? The anecdotal evidence? The personal lived experience? How do you stand out from the herd?

Spending your day listening to podcasts and telling everyone “I listen to a lot of podcasts” doesn't make you an intriguing person anymore than if you say “I watch a lot of TV.” The only difference from watching TV is that podcasts help you ignore your environment wherever you may be, whether driving, walking, riding on the subway, hiking, or hang gliding.

This isn't to say people who listen to podcasts are “bad”. It's just that these confounded things are not for me, and being in the presence of them when I'd rather have non-mechanical sounds fill my ears makes my blood pressure rise.

And if you're someone who enjoys listening to podcasts because of how much trivia you learn, you can safely know that no one cares about what podcasts you listen to. We don't care that you were entertained by Murder Mystery Podcast #521 and we should really listen to it. We care about how your apparently intensive studies affect your actions or your usefulness to the people around you. We care about who it makes you as a person. And if you, too, care about that, maybe try removing the earbuds every once in a while. See what original ideas come to you in the mental abyss of silence, with that brain full of minutiae — what you discover may surprise you.

It's a bit of a dirty term, to want to receive validation from others. It implies codependence, insecurity. But I'd argue that validation is an important and natural human impulse.

We all have our own experience of life, individually unique to each and every one of us. Life has taught us things — some things are bad and some are good. But when these experiences add up to form consistent thoughts, they're still watery ideas that exist only in our heads. We need a thickening agent to make us take ourselves seriously and believe that what we feel in our gut and believe to be true is not just some fantasy.

Validation gets its bad name from wanting it from certain people in particular: certain friends or family; a boss or significant other. We need them specifically to validate our individual experiences, and we go crazy hoping for the sky to turn yellow instead of its natural blue. Our hopes run amok as we place all our expectations into very narrow rules that must be fulfilled to feel good.

instead, we should be seeking validation from the world. When you do, you get that validation. Because it starts with you.

We rely on these feedback loops from the world to make us see ourselves for who we really are. Why would we tie that up in a small segment of the populace? So if life has led you to believe, for example, that walking barefoot is the absolute best way to live — that it makes you feel so good that it should never be infringed upon — you should start walking barefoot. And you'll receive feedback from the world. Some people will kick you out of their stores or give you weird looks. But others will dig it so much that they'll even tell you so. They'll smile at you and want to talk to you because you've provided such a vision for the rest of the world that they can't help but notice.

And thus the loop cycles around. And thus your personal experiences are validated.

You can't expect every single person to understand you — even certain individuals that you already know. Understanding comes from those with the capability and will — and unless you're lucky, you don't already know people who will do so. So you must present yourself so that you can be found, bare feet and unconventional-ness and all. Once you do, all that time you spent unsure of yourself finally becomes as silly as wishing you could breathe water. You understand that your experiences are valid, and the universe agrees, told through the tiny other humans that tell you they like your style or they appreciate you for what you do. With bits of accumulating validation, you start to understand again that you're okay to see the world in your own unique way. You're safe if you're yourself. The loop starts up and soon enough you see you were right all along. You have nothing to fear.

As a youth I did many incredibly stupid things. Rebelling as I saw fit in any manner. Doing outlandish things. Maybe my mind ordained it, maybe fate, who knows. But I was an extremist in my rebellion.

Age has shown me what a mature, smart rebel possesses: nuance. Rebellion is not some grandious act carried out in the most crazy manner possible. Not seeking attention and recognition for an act. It is tiny rebellious actions over and over. Every opportunity for the tiniest rebellion taken. Relished. (Even the smallest slights against the status quo (what many would call passive-aggressive).) The refined rebel understands the weight of these tiny actions, no matter how small they may appear to the world.

Together they make up the rebel that can do something — that actually does something.

Free, free, let me be free, me. Fuck, fight, flee, fly Don't decide, do Don't fucking delay

Mom talks about the— while grandmother whispers how there's— step-dad agrees and placates mom who's still talking all together, simultaneously, in different but the same voices and at some point I'm looped in against my will and I just want to write talk feel peace for a second alone in my mind away from people and their petty drama can I hear myself think no, no never I have to play nice be good keep quiet they wouldn't care if I said a word anyway they speak for me over me against me and I'm better off keeping my mouth shut but then why am I sitting here why even be in the room does anyone question whether or not anyone else is enjoying themselves or are they so wrapped up in their own heads that their pointless trials and tribulations are the most important thing in the world, superseding all else?

For months or years or I-don't-know-how-long I've been afraid to move. My mindset is one of stillness and stagnation; of one person, one place, one pursuit, one life. Maybe it was the first long-time relationship, the first girlfriend I lived with. Maybe I learned to constrain my love and my life.

I used to have many lives I lived, within me and in reality; yet I forgot them for a singular pursuit that was outside of me; my ideas from life as an artist, life as a lover, life as a musician, life as a painter, life as an electrical engineer, all given up for life as The American Dream™.

These multiple lives, these loves, I've always compared in my writing to a woman. Any beauty in the world is “her.” The trees blowing in the wind: her dance. The sun shining on my face: her smiling. The sound of birds or rustling leaves or crashing waves: her song.

I guess if I were to imagine an anthropomorphic god, I'd rather it manifest as all the best parts of all the women I've ever known in my life; some free-spirited, infinitely wise creature of unending love who can create an entire universe without wanting anything in return (better her than a bearded old dude who thinks he knows how I should act).

And in a way I am “her,” in those now-rare moments when I recognize her. It's a one-ness with everything within and without. It's acceptance of the entire world; taking all the good and the bad in and saying this is me — and this is us all.

I need my many lives back. I can't live limited to one love — whether a career or a person or pursuit or place. If I'm ever going to survive I need to be free to love all that I can and all that I'm able to.

Saying sorry doesn't mean the same thing to me that it does to many, I think. I don't wait for someone to apologize for something they did. I don't instantly forgive them as soon as they say “I'm sorry.”

To me, an apology isn't much more than a show of humility. It simply says, I fucked up, and I'm self-aware enough to realize it wasn't a good thing. It's the verbal bowing of the head, making yourself small, backing off of your aggression.

Otherwise when people insult me or do something to me I don't like, I don't view it as some wrong that needs to be “righted” with an act of contrition. I see it simply as a plain, rare moment of raw truth. As social creatures we mostly try not to hurt others around us, so when I or someone does hurt others, it says something very important about who they are as a person — something unobscured by the faces we put on to get along with others; something very blunt and honest.

It's my view that you can't stop people from doing these things (only they can stop them before they happen), and frankly there's nothing to “right” once they've done something I don't like. They're just being honest.

What it comes down to as the receiver of such a slight, is what you're willing to accept. Apology or not, damage is still done (even the apologizer knows this; all they can do is shrink). The real important question that you can ask yourself at any point after the damage has been done is: are you okay with that person being around you, now that they've bluntly shown you who they are? Do the benefits outweigh the negatives of someone like that? If you didn't delude yourself into thinking you could change them, and had to accept them just like this, are you okay with that?

Sitting here working on that novel I've been wanting to write for years now, listening to old Nine Inch Nails that reminds me of no worry, no weight of the world bearing down on me. This realization, in contrast to when I break my concentration, when I mentally look at the normal concerns of my mind, makes me wonder: why do I need to worry about all these things? Will my world collapse if I stopped mentally juggling these anxieties?

I suspect the answer is no. And for now I'll stop juggling.

Until I remove my headphones, walk outside, and the pins and unicycle call for me again.

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