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April 02, 2005
Roadkill
In Henry Miller's "Air Conditioned Nightmare" he describes the impoverishment of large pockets of America ignored in the news media. And the despair Miller portrays in this book mirrors the gloom I have seen for years now. There's quiet desperation all around me as I watch people gamely live out their lives in economic and ideologic fear. There is a brutal tyranny that subjugates us to adhere to establishment, control, judgement.
Theres a tendency among the critics to think of a story as maudlin, or sentimental or romantic if there are too many tears, too much nostalgia, or too much despair. But is maudlinism so terrible? The very lack of public show, putting a good face on the ugly side of existence is the cause of an overrought, seering discharge of emotions in private. In public, everything is on the veneer, artificial. Every thing is like a formica top with its contents rotting underneath.
On my way to work one morning, after a weekend of leisure, reading, writing and conversing with those close to me, I got in my car and drive in from the country through the mass tangle of cars. As I pass the dead cat on the road with the crow picking at its guts I think of the poor child whose kitty died. I think of the gaggle of turkeys, feathers strewn, body parts everywhere, and know that anyone who would hit those turkeys like that would hit that cat with the same gusto.
Once, while I was driving a paper route I came around a bend and saw two cats carousing. It was four in the morning and my headlights were shining in their eyes, and I watched in horror as one of them suddenly ran out in front my car and I flattened him. That was twelve years ago and I still feel the thump of that cat under my bumper.
A few years before that, in a state of emotional turmoil I floated three cats off to their deaths in a pond without knocking them over the head first. At times I have to look at myself and wince at the things I've thought and done to animals, but my feelings are hardened towards people. The reason we don't act with more than the ridiculous passive aggression towards each other is that we don't have that sense of maudlinism. The great sense of sorrow I have over what I did to those cats is the same compassion I only get a glimpse of in my daily interaction with humans.
We go to work. The phones are ringing. People are demanding. There's deadlines, reprimands, cajoling. But also gentle kidding and laughter if your lucky. But it would be maudlin to point out those little things that make the day bareable, so we pass the day among people whose deaths won't mean as much to each other as the deaths of those cats I drowned meant to me. The paradox here is that I don't want my death to be gut wrenching to anybody, but somehow knowing that it won't be leaves me feeling very empty.
