The Death of a Kitten

          I was sitting on the steps of the flat we had rented for our stay in Istanbul, enjoying a cigarette and the cold weather that is so far from frequent in Israel. I had been in Israel for only four months at this point, and the heat and humidity bickered with one another like a pair of small children, both serving the same purpose of making me miserable. I was rather fond of the cold.

           The small street the flat was situated on was busy, with small vegetable stands, a few fantastic restaurants, and directly across from us, a barber shop. A man sat, smoking out front. A small cat, a kitten really, tried to run into the shop. He shooed it out. As it was running across the street, a car approached. The man gestured to the kitten, attempting to sway its course away from the car. I, along with this man, and a few others, watched the kitten's lower half disappear under the wheels of the car.

          This kitten had no concept of gravity, shit, it wasn't old enough to have ever been stepped on. It had no concept of the force of heavy objects weighing down, being pulled towards the earth. It had no concept of death or destruction. It took a few moments before it realized what had happened to it, and then it started to spasm. It mewled so pitifully as it died, claws splayed out in protest of what had already become unavoidable.

          It cried, and cried for three seconds that lasted dozens of decades. The man who felt like he had caused the death of this creature walked over and picked it up. He was joined by two other men. They sat, all three of them, petting this broken little creature until it died. The man, whom I couldn't understand, seemed to feel responsible for the death of a kitten. I could see the shame in his eyes, but how could he have known? How could he have known that a car would come at that very moment and weigh down upon a kitten who just wanted to go inside a barbershop?

           The principle of human existence is to ease the suffering of creatures, not excluding humans. As one causes suffering to others, one fails at the main facet of existence. These men, three burly mustachioed men, who exist in a culture that I perceive as holding a fair amount of machismo, stopped their lives for just a few moments to comfort a creature in the throws of death. Watching a kitten die was horrifying and upsetting. More upsetting was watching these three men attempt to comfort the death of something that couldn't possibly understand one of the oldest and most constant concepts of existing, while it performed just that.

          It was a very poignant moment for me, watching these men trying to comfort this beast. The only participant in this display of human empathy would perish within moments, and I couldn't help but ask myself if it made a difference. Of course it made a difference, as this kitten died, it was loved. It was a stray cat for perhaps the short few months of its life. If I had to guess, without any affection or care. I didn't know the personal details of this kitten, but given my observations of stray cats in general, its life couldn't have been much different.

           Yet, in its most important death, it found love. Temporary love, harbored only out of pity, but love nonetheless. Three humans showed compassion for a living thing, one of which was ashamed of his lack of such in the first place, stood there, petting this little fucking cat until it died. Until it died. It died. I put my cigarette out, and walked back inside, unable to truly grasp the gravity of the situation which had transpired. I'll never forget watching those three men trying to comfort something which couldn't understand the principle of comfort in the first place. Were their actions for the kitten?

The beginnings of a short work of fiction - a dream that I had.

This has nothing to do with Israel, teaching, but a lot to do with misanthropy. I had a dream a number of months ago and I would like to put it to paper. Here's the beginning. Line breaks should be indentation, but copy/paste doesn't work so nicely here. If you like it, that's awesome. If you hate it, that's awesome too: tell me why.

The atmosphere was as if somebody of had died of untreated cancer. The stench was as if they were a heavy smoker, living here, sad and alone, decades ago. Their life amounted to nothing but an endless column of ash falling from their fingertips which would never find others to intertwine. The walls, too, were pallid with years of untended dust. In this room, and an unfathomable amount of rooms just like this one, sat dozens of people, typing. Typing so furiously on archaic machines that reached their peak in a distant era, much like the imagined smoker who used them. They typed, and they typed. With vigorous fervor, typing madly, attempting to appease the voices which floated through the air.

“Can you hear me?”

“We're looking for you.”
“Just answer if you can hear us, we've been waiting for so long.”
Thousands and thousands of voices floated through the air, creating an anxious cacophony of sound impervious to the attempt of thought to block them from reaching every malleus in the room. They hammered ever so gently on each eardrum, turning the voices into a manifestation of consciousness which fueled the desperation in every occupant of these rooms.

“Answer me, I know you can.”

Despite the attempts, despite the sweat beading on every brow in unprecedented determination, they would never be able to reach the voices. Forever, for the rest of time, they would hear the voices of families and loved ones, calling out to them, pleading with them for contact. They would try, and they would try, and they would fail. They had no choice, this is what they were here to do.

There were many people in here, whom varied in their degrees of filth. There were petty thieves, drug dealers, and various other small time criminals. There were murderers and those who abused their children. There were rapists and pedophiles, those who ignored consent and prayed on the ignorance of the young. They all shared a common fate: an eternal and futile struggle to please a notion as abstract as a hammer translating vibration into sound through an eardrum. Their common fate, they would never satisfy, but they had to try.

There were some that have been here for hundreds of years, feverishly working through countless hours, fidgeting uneasily in their seats, hearing an influx of new voices every second. Beckoning to them, pleading with them, each voice providing a new sense of familiarity. Yet the familiar was not comforting to them, it only surfaced memories, feelings, and an idea of a time which was not so riddled with distress.

There were also those who had arrived just days before, who did not realize the futility in contacting the sources of the sounds that filled the room. They did not know that their determination would refuse to falter, they were unaware of the decades to come. They did not realize that they would spend the rest of time, hoping for a connection with the unimaginable. In this place, however, determination and distress were the only steadfast concepts.

There were women, men, and even some children who had been claimed at the time they should have been. Those little boys who tortured cats, the little girls who spread such vicious rumors that others they knew took their own lives. Nobody was exempt from this place, nobody was forgiven for their actions. They were brought here to suffer, to live in anxiety, confusion, and frustration. They were brought here to die, every moment, as they had once lived. Even the filthy, dirty, little children.

A man sat typing. He had lost track of how long he had been typing two decades ago. Such frantic years, with every moment spanning inconceivable heartbeats. His days and nights refusing to offer relief, with voices that refused to abate. A rotting rag lay next to his hands, covered in the sweat of generations. His hands were covered in his own. He perspired, breathing the stale air, reminded of the scent of his own apartment when he was alive.

“Henry, I'm looking for you.”