CCCC (Cat, Consciousness, Creature, Capitalism)
Alloe Mak
Alloe Mak
i am back.
i am back to write about my cat.
again.
no surprise!
it is the human condition to do so.
i love my cat. he is so cute. so soft and so warm. and he is fat and amicable and lets me carry him wherever i would like if i ever need his company.
he is quiet when he needs to be, and i think respects the arrangements of our home. i feed him and he loves me, and i wonder if there is one without the other.
i love him nontheless.
he is big for a cat, and i am small for a human, which makes our cat:human ratio about 3.8:1. a good ratio, i think.
he makes me sniffly because i am allergic to his kind. but i stick it out and i keep him around.
i stare at him now as i tip tap on my keyboard and wonder what it is to be cat—what it is to be creature. not to be a creature as man is creature, that is to say, simply a mammal, a homo sapien, but to be and truly be, creature.
is it consciousness? lack thereof?
if so, what constitutes it?
i want to know if he wonders. if he has the ability to at all. if he wonders as i do—wonders what goes on in my mind as i wonder what goes on in his.
i yearn to understand Creature.
lets work backwards.
like finding an object from its shadow
from a cardboard cut out of its shape
in its negative space.
i suppose we could find Creature in the lack of… lack of Creature.
what is lack of Creature?
lack of Creature is man.
what is man?
man is consciousness. what is consciousness?
oh god, it always comes back to this, doesn’t it?
lets work backwards.
like finding an object from its shadow
from a cardboard cut out of its shape
in its negative space.
i suppose we could find consciousness in the lack of… lack of consciousness.
lack. of. consciousness.
the thing itself. as a phrase.
for it is eternal death, and yet, simultaneously, existence.
lack of consciousness shouldnt be synonymous with death. but it is, because we understand death to be lack of consciousness.
but lack of consciousness doesnt HAVE to be death.
i.e, cat. who isn’t conscious in many ways.
the terms.
thanks, hume!
i digress! so many things exist without consciousness and live without it.
i.e, cat. who isn’t conscious in many ways.
actually, we are the only things that do not abide by that rule.
isn't that silly.
in the confines of our apartment, cat is a lion. he is the great terror.
and i feel sad that he exists for me.
quite literally for my pleasure. and the literal creature comforts he provides me. as a heater. and company in the room.
and that he exists FOR me hurts because he is so good. so good, i think, that there should be statues erected in his name. for the nights he has saved me from becoming as non-conscious as him.
or is that goodness something i impose upon him? surely it is. “it” doesnt even exist. not in terms of my cat. my cat just “is.”
i think the simplicity of it all—death, lack of consciousness—they’re not synonymous—whatever—is what frightens us. death anxiety is the knowledge that we are truly Creature and refusal to resign ourselves to it.
NPC haze.
death.
it is i that will become like my cat one day. i who will join him in nonconsciousness. true lack of awareness. i exist for him, i think. its felt that way recently at least.
he stares at the screen as i type this . cuddled between my arms — little spoon. little spoon for little person. i am sure he feels quite big. as i said, 3.8:1 ratio.
i think i am happy letting him feel so. letting him feel as if he is the Big man in the house even though it is i who feed and house him. idiot creature.
AND YET
it is i who live vicariously through him. and that is what Man has not come to understand
man cannot rectify it in his mind. capitalistic-man-pig cannot understand that all of this—all human achievement—is rendered null, because it is i, who lives vicariously through HIM.
technology serves as a way to disseminate ourselves from the fact that we are simple, and should be so.
tldr, on god for real, touch grass.
we are creature. consciousness is something else.
it cannot be understood. it was forced upon us, and i think it is beautiful in this moment. for allowing love, and ramblings such as these.
but it should pass on, as all things do. in the literal and figurative sense. for to speak of one is to speak of both.