Artwork © Richard Spisak

 

Chapter 16

The incident of the three cats–that which can be argued, especially now, as totally insignificant, even though, arguably, with enough time, even the worst of one’s own tragedies become incidental occurrences to oneself to match them always seeming or being so to others–would have been solely their trauma were it not imagined otherwise; but to the empathic mind, sensitive to life beyond the self, the trauma is also that of one’s own. The reality is that taking in entities that need kindness, respite from fear of going hungry or getting harmed in vying with the masses in efforts to out-scavenge or excel over them in begging to humans or catching prey in order to have a time of play, a love of life, and of course trust in the continuity of its human protector in ensuring that the end of halcyon days is not nigh–that the delecation of the goodness of being alive is not mere illusion–and then dashing that trust by sending those three cats back to feral existence seems particularly cruel, especially with the changeability of life inordinately traumatic to entities of such infantile intelligence, or at least so it seems to me in imagining it as such.

The question always arises as to the degree that empathy is “an imaginary thing.” Empathy, grounded and reliable as a tool like that of one’s senses, is unequivocally “imagined,” not in the sense of it being fanciful, but in the sense of being sensible in witnessing the object that one would later engender the tenderest understanding for, being cognizant of (“imagine” if you will) how one would feel and think in such a situation, and willing to be of assistance even when most of life’s situations are not ones that are easily alterable. Empathy is not an engagement done frivolously. As Adam Smith points out in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, the spectator never easily enters another person’s pain and does so reluctantly when the situation seems warranted and the emotional level of the victim or perceived victim is not so intense and intolerable. With non-human animals, forms of empathy are complicated all the more as none of us is Dr. Doolittle with the ability to talk to animals, and animals, that are probably even more sentient in feelings, feeling them more impactfully than ourselves, not, for the most part, having vocal grunts, chirps, eh cetera all that specific in meaning (“words”) and definitely not abstractionalizing those vocalizations. Again, empathy is not perfect and certainly my “understanding” of the plight of these cats, if I had one, did little ultimately to save them from reverting to a feral state and, arguably, when change is inevitable, upset me for no good purpose, or at least for no practical benefit (virtue, being a godly attribute, of no pragmatic end). Also, as empathic souls, for lack of a better term, can be victimized by the machinations of human predators, there is vulnerability from that which is meant to extend selves beyond solipsistic bubbles; but to think of a world totally void of this human and non-human instrument and It would seem the world would hardly be worthy of being inhabited, and certainly it would never be contemplated.

As for the cats, it doesn’t matter that I did not claim them, but Instead they claimed me, or that they barged into open doors after, presumably, tiring of waiting for an invitation letter. Their imposition was a cry to be more than instinctual responses for base sustenance and in an ideal world, which is not this, Mr Leibniz, it should have been responded to fully as this fleeing to not be preyed upon or to have lifespan reduced by exposure to inclement weather and disease is, as the cats would no doubt say, for the birds. All sentient life should sense the beauty of existence which is mostly lost when relegated to the state of nature, which again, contrary to Rousseau’s assertions, is to prey and to be preyed upon and an incessant fear of starvation, injury, and death. Losing those cats and sensing myself as someone no longer to be trusted in their perspectives–not that I really know their perspectives–even now, weeks later, is as uncomfortable as siting in a YMCA sauna and a naked young god sits there beside me, and there is little that I can do but sit there clawed and mauled by innate fires and brain telling the self that he can never again climb Mount Olympus to be with gods of that tier–humor an especially good defense to sensitive people who understand their sensitivities to be a vulnerability to the crude and crass multitudes who are made so by crude and crass realities of existence in this more refined version of predation, and when tender hearted young males are particularly vulnerable to the crass father- jaugernuts out there out to mow down anything that counters stereotypical responses of masculinity. Right now I am mourning the loss of a gecko that used to reside under my chair. In death it curled up there and the ants that it used to eat were eating it there until I scooped both up into a dustpan and threw them into the yard. Maybe it died of dehydration–one can never quite find gecko water bowls at pet stores; or maybe in my carelessness I bludgeoned it to death with a glass container of Tabasco sauce–a rather mortifying thing for a self proclaimed humanitarian and animal lover to consider, not to mention how “bugs” are treated by the most unassuming of “souls” for lack of a better word.

When I think of my boyhood, so much of it was spent worrying about cats and ultimately crying over their demise. It could be said to have been all to no avail apart from making them happy before being run over by cars, but then, I guess that epitomizes the human condition pretty much as well–at least, metaphorically speaking. I suppose if there was one thing that my parents did beyond those tangible necessities that are so indispensable to a child short term but never have longer consequential and transformative value it was to have my sister and I witness the coming into being and growth of pumpkins and strawberries, in addition to generations of cats, which, at least in me, made a more nurturing entity less prone, I think, to exploit species or individuals for my own purposes than perhaps what I would have done otherwise. It is not insignificant, but I cannot credit them with much more than this, even when trying to give a measured response that justly factors in family games of croquet and table tennis, a card game of Uno, board games of Monopoly and Aggravation, Marshmallow roasts over bonfires, a time at Six Flags Amusement Park–God, I loved that sailor cap that my mother purchased for me there, and a Disneyworld experience in Florida in which I was scared of sitting next to my father in the bumper car) all in early boyhood. Then there was a doting mother’s fondness, for a while, of both her living dolls, and of looking the dutiful part to her own mother, maybe in competition of her sister, and my father who made and filled my sandbox, once took us in a rural area to slide down a large snow packed hill and let me come close to drowning in a lake, which I guess showed some interest in me, if only to let me sink into life’s scary depths, and I remember a wooden car that he carved for a father and son activity which he did not attend and how the car could not roll down the ramp. For what it is worth, it is understandable why any father with no affinity for children, and who thinks work and the property gained from it are the whole essence of a man’s value, would resent the little home-bandit parasites that to him are inadvertent byproducts of love. In my case, I was a parasite whom he called a “suck calf” for needing the comfort of a mother not just from his abuses but her cobra-like strangulation and indifference to his sadistic barrage of derision which was as bad as the derision itself. In many ways her love, certainly not his (he wanted to “mop the floor up” with me whenever he got the chance) was somewhat real as attested from such things as the foods she baked, the attention she gave to purchases for our sake, a male doll that she sewed clothes on, stuffed animals, and taking on a job to have money to provide for our needs and childish indulgences that my father would have objected to. I never want to disparage parents who are never provided easy reader operators manuals for these new devices.

And yet children often have to burrow themselves in the trenches of this war called family the best that they can (I, case in example, rode my bicycle to an empty fairground every chance I could to have some respite of total solitude but was always eager to come back). This entails loving it even when ducking for cover and thinking of it as the best of all possible homes out of not knowing anything else. And , normally loving their caregivers as they do and eager to defend them, even when these guardians are suspected by authorities of having abused them, they tend to blame themselves for their bestial treatment. Thus, it adds insult to injury to dismiss those who would claim to be victims of parental abuse when that which is broken or trodden into oblivion (that being the evolving sense of self in a child) is not noticeable to the outside world any more than a cockroach under a man’s boot. If the abuse ever comes outs–it would never be admitted to by the parents–it would most often occur in adulthood when exact memory has diminished and is deep under multiple reworkings of adult neurological infrastructure and any memory of what had occurred in the present conduit relegated to the idea of something imagined. As normally, children want to believe the best of their parents and usually rationalize that they themselves are the hindrances in this flow of love that will happen one day soon when fully rehabilitated, and most abuse receding under myriad old and newer adult neurological pathways, the abusers are circumstantially granted a type of impunity from the beginning that allows them to get off Scott free unless there are visible bruises and broken bones or worse. Machiavelli was right when he said that romanticizing the world as a good place and trying to live in that imaginary world inflicts incalculable amounts of suffering and yet what else is there for a child who by birth is subjected to this torture chamber and knows nothing else.

While she was an “overprotective” mother on one hand restraining me from movement and thought in her aspyxiating cobra-like restrictive strictures, all contrary to the theory of the psychologist Eric Erikson stating that parents must be nets there to catch the child when failing and falling in his incremental movements away from the family unit, conversely, I was left unprotected to a sadistic barrage of derision to which sister was recruited and promoted to chief of the firing squad. This best period devolved further shortly after she threw a pamphlet from a medical clinic explaining human sexuality down the staircase (my room being in the basement) and discovered a Playboy magazine and condom thereafter under the mattress of my bed. Instantaneously, I was no longer a doll and she became a mistress of coldness. It was only from Sister Sheri that I discovered I was deemed a queer pervert–words that redirected the flow of sexual energy in the direction of the judgment. Years into early adulthood when in college and still trying to assemble the fragmented self, and thereafter, I sometimes wished that my abuse had been effectuated fully instead of the 90:10 bitter sweet ratio I was served for then I would have hated and hated completely instead of wanting to return and relive a nicer, more improved version of it all for so many decades (such wasted energy); but then, hate is a stress induced obsession that destroys the hater far more than that which he hates. It should also be remembered that beings continually change inwardly and outwardly and part of the changes consist of looking at self in relation to time and so becoming dissatisfied with what he has. Marriages dissolve this way as most relationships. In my earliest of all memories is wiping my muddy feet on a neighbors welcome-mat and getting reproached for it, bringing my mother a tv tray filled with water and wildflowers, and being grounded after playing in the street and being nearly hit by a car–the driver who excoriated my mother causing a chain reaction that left me crying on a bed which had a radio on a shelf above it playing a Glen Campbell song (now I don’t know if it was Galveston or Wichita Lineman). And then there was that golf club that my sister’s friend swung into her eye. I cried profusely. She taught me how to throw a frisbee and catch a baseball. Oh how I loved my sister. How upon excelling with basketball did Dad manage to get into her mind and make her my mortal enemy? And yet it happened.

If there were a god (evolution consisting of isolation, sexual selection, natural selection, and mutation, so little chance of this), and he were architect of the step pyramid of life, despite rationality suggesting a patchwork of ill conceived circumstances, and this god (call him Imhotep) were caught and tried in a universal court to which I was chief prosecutor, my primary burden would be to show that as the weak and innocent are the first thing devoured by predators God is nothing other than a malevolent being. In my case my boyhood was stampeded under the feet of the father/sister team, and the mother and sister foes incinerated the being, desecrating the ashes before the phoenix rose again. So no, I don’t believe in family. And I think Plato was too generous in allowing parents to have custody over children for six or seven years. I would have the well vetted government employees with PHDs in child development take away the child on the sixth or seventh minutes of his life.

 

Steven David Justin Sills is a literary writer in Honolulu Hawaii. His early book of poetry is in many academic libraries in the United States with a scanned copy in the Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/americanpapyrusp0000sill. Sills’ early work can also be found on the Online Book Page at the University of Pennsylvania. After Sills finished his last literary novel “The Three Hour Lady” over three years ago, he began devoting time to writing a long war poem about what is happening in Ukraine. Most of those 25 cantos. including his most recent canto, can be seen at this particular journal. As his graduate degree is great books of the Western Canon, he has been hoping to write his own ethical treatise, and this forum affords him that opportunity.

As the Arkansas Gazette says, “Twenty-six poems make up this first published book by Steven Sills, 26, of Fayetteville. Sills’ vision is often a dark one. He writes of the homeless, the abused, the forgotten people. He is also intrigued with the mystical, the sensual, loss–as in losing those whom we hold dear, such as a spouse or lover–as well as the lost, such as someone who is autistic, who seems unreachable. Sills’ skillful use of the language to impart the telling moments of a life is his strength. He chooses his words carefully, employing a well-developed vocabulary. He is thoughtful about punctuation, where to break lines and when to make a new stanza. He’s obviously well versed in “great” literature. Sills’ command of language helps to soften the blows of some of the seemier passages found in his poems. Seamy may not be the best word to use. Perhaps gritty is a better word or just plain matter-of-fact and to the point… ”

Richard Spisak began his artistic career as a light artist in the Lumonics Studios of Mel Tanner, a legendary Light Artist. After serving under Jack Horkheimer as a planetarium operator at the Miami Space-Transit Planetarium, he left to begin traveling with Lumist Kenvin Lyman, whose show Dazzleland Studios traveled across America. Richard later worked as a Laserist with LASERIUM and Laser Productions, served as a technical producer for the festival company PACE Concerts, and later as operations Manager and Senior Producer at WWHP and WTCN-TV in Stuart Florida.

Richard writes for Theatre, TV, radio, and the web. He published two short story collections, Two Small Windows, in a Pair of Mirror Doors, and Between the Silences. Followed by his poetry collection 7370 Allen Drive and the recently released STONE POETRY. Richard also produces “POETS of the East,” a televised webcast featuring poets from across the globe.