on the morning i began writing this piece, a gnat flew into the breakfast i had just prepared. i hadn’t yet taken a single bite. i watched it there, twitching around, contaminating this meal i had gone through the trouble of making, and i felt the hateful urge to press my finger on top of its filthy little body and bury it in the food it had so carelessly helped itself to.
i didn’t. i left it alone. i cursed, i swore, and i left that plate out for a little while as i prepared another. if the gnat wanted food, i figured it was fine to let it indulge in the meal it had already ruined, hopefully buying me a moment of peace with my second plate.
i observe the first precept of Buddhism: to abstain from killing. In Pāli, this is “pānātipāta pativirata,” which can be rendered in English as “abstaining from destroying life.” i take this seriously. i pluck carpet beetle larvae out from the fabric of my floor and place them elsewhere. i scoop gnats out of my toilet and leave them somewhere to dry. i shoo spiders off into corners. i’m not sure how i would handle a serious infestation - i wouldn’t be comfortable exterminating any pests, but i won’t say for certain i wouldn’t resort to that if all else failed. in any case, it would weigh heavily on my conscience, and i would know that intentionally causing the death of a living thing would be an act of dark kamma.
once, a woman i loved was surprised to hear me say that i didn't think i was a good person. sometimes she thought i was horrible, but at that moment she didn’t, so she asked me to explain myself. i don’t remember what i told her, so instead, let me link to this tweet i posted on July 4, 2023, hoping it will suffice for an expression of something i find difficult to explain.
when i was a young child, i would often visit my aunt - the one who drove through a house - to play with my cousins. truthfully, most of my memories from those times are better left rotting in the corners of my recollection, including this one: i will share it, however, since it presents an opportunity to reflect on the topic with which i have concerned myself in this diary entry.
of the two sisters, i was closest with the oldest. one day, she scooped a couple of goldfish out of the big fishtank in their living room, and invited me outside. we sat on the concrete beneath the carport. she dumped one of the fish on the ground and pinned it down by its tailfin. she dumped the other in front of me, and i pressed my finger down on its tailfin as well. they thrashed as violently as their meager bodies could manage. their gills opened and closed, over and over, as they instinctively fought for any drop of water that could stave off death. eventually, they slowed down. eventually, their gills grew still. eventually, we killed those two goldfish. afterwards, we got up and played elsewhere with more appropriate playthings.
there was no cruelty in the act - no malice, anger, or hatred. we were bored children who ignorantly ended the lives of two creatures because we had never considered the implications of what it means to be alive, and we had never reckoned with the gravity of taking that life away. still, that kamma is mine, and if it hasn’t produced its fruits yet, it will.
my phone rang on a lonely night. i would have ignored it, as i usually do, but i saw my best friend’s name on the screen. he almost never calls me, and i love him, so i made an exception to my “never answer phone calls” policy. to my surprise, it wasn’t his voice that responded when i said “what do you want, ugly?”
“dude! shut up and get out here!” a drunken voice yelled. it was a guy we went to school with. i wouldn’t have called him a friend, even back then, before he threatened to kill me in a civil war after years of political radicalization changed him. “come rap for us!” it was late at night, and driving out into the country to rap for my best friend and some guys we know seemed preferable to sitting in my bedroom alone and slowly being flattened by whatever strange gravity has pressed down on me for as long as i can remember.
they were even more drunk by the time i got there. one of the guys floated the idea of all six of us piling into a Suzuki Samurai and hitting the road. our impaired inhibitions - theirs subjugated by alcohol, mine by a fear of being idle for just a moment too long - allowed this stupid idea to go unchecked. despite being the only sober person in the mix, it was decided that my position wouldn’t be the driver’s seat; instead, i stood up in the rear buggy bed, like the second player in Mario Kart Double Dash.
we took off, all six of us crammed into (and onto) that ridiculous little machine like a clown car out of hell, peeling through country roads in the dead of night. eventually, we came to a screeching halt in the middle of the street: a road sign firmly planted into the ground was too tempting. it was begging to be stolen, and my friends were happy to oblige. the strongest of us - a guy i have known so long that i can’t remember meeting him for the first time - stomped over to the sign and grunted until he had pulled it out of the earth like the sword in the stone.
what happened next was bizarre - instead of walking back to us, he marched forward towards the nearest house. “what the fuck are you doing, dude?” we whisper-yelled. bluntly, as if we were stupid for even asking, he said, “i’m going to throw it through this bitch’s window,” with no attempt to be quiet. we erupted in protest with a cacophony of whisper-yells, but he didn’t slow down. he stopped right outside his targeted window, raised the sign up like a javelin, and prepared to shatter the glass.
i remember thinking lots of things in rapid succession. “we’re going to jail. i wonder what’s behind that window? god, it could be a child’s room or something. this is so fucking stupid. i should have stayed home.” the front door of the house opened, and the silhouette of what must have been one very angry man floated out like a shadow. this was enough to convince our would-be vandal to drop the sign, turn on his heel, and haul ass back to the Samurai. the silhouette yelled something i couldn’t make out as we drove off. i gripped the cold metal bars of the rear buggy bed and wished i was in my bedroom, succumbing to the strange gravity.
afterwards, the night felt different. something had changed. i think the six of us had become divided into two camps: one hungered for trouble, and the other wanted the night to be boring again. as we drove deeper into the country, we came across an opossum. what happened next was horrible, and i’d like you to consider stopping here to close this webpage and go do anything else.
where i live, there is a wretched pasttime called “opossum stomping,” which is exactly what it sounds like. most of those who take part in it do so without any qualms. those who do possess any sort of apprehension about it soothe themselves by saying that it helps keep pest populations under control, which benefits the local farmers.
the driver slammed on the breaks. “get that motherfucker!” someone yelled. four of the guys jumped out and chased this poor, terrified animal through a field by moonlight. my friend and i looked at one another, then followed behind to impotently plead for them to stop.
someone caught up to the animal and drove his boot into its backside. the muffled sound of the impact and the creature’s pained squeal was such an ugly sound. another kick spun the little thing across the ground like a ball. they took turns kicking the opossum until the guy who told me to come - the guy who would later threaten to kill me in a civil war - the guy who would join the military and talk openly about how excited he would be to “drop bodies” - pulled out his pocket knife, hunched over, and began stabbing. he plunged the dull blade into the opossum, in and out, poking and prodding away what little life remained in it. i’m not a skilled enough writer to describe what this sounded like.
“dude, hold up…” someone said. “oh fuck…” “oh my god… shit, man, i didn’t know!” several tiny babies had spilled from the opossum’s guts. they writhed around on the ground, brought into this world prematurely by the brutal killing of their mother. for some reason, this was a bridge too far for the other guys. realizing they had just killed a mother made them consider the cruelty of what they had just done. nobody said a word. we all got back in - and in my case, on - the Samurai and went back to the house we came from. i drove back home and gave myself to the gravity.
one afternoon, i found myself sitting alone in my other best friend’s living room. i was staring blankly at the TV, waiting for him to wake up. moments earlier he had suddenly told me that he was exhausted and wanted to take a quick power nap - “i still wanna hang out, though, so like, you can just stay here for a bit, man. you can smoke some of this weed or whatever, just hang out and give me half an hour or something.” sitting in my friend’s place, alone, waiting for him to wake up seemed clownish. the alternative - going back home, lying down alone in my bed, and staring at the ceiling until i couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer - seemed worse. “sure, i guess.”
“yeah, cool man, just one thing…” he explained to me that his girlfriend’s sister would be dropping by soon to pick something up. i was instructed to answer the door and give it to her. shortly, there was a knock on the door, and everything went according to plan. before long, however, there was a second knock. it was her again. i dealt with her and sat back down. this happened several times over, and eventually, i grew annoyed.
*knock knock knock!* i clenched my jaw and answered the door. to my surprise, it wasn’t my friend’s girlfriend’s sister; it was our drug dealer. before i could say anything, he said “oh shit, what’s good bro? is your boy home?” and pushed himself through the doorway. as he passed me, i realized that he was completely out of his gourd: definitely drunk, probably high on pills.
“uh… yeah man, he’s just… asleep… what’s up, dude?” i hoped these words would be met with some explanation as to why he had let himself into my friend’s apartment. he dropped his backpack on the ground and began pulling out giant bags of marijuana. “my bitch kicked me out!” he groaned. he sat down on the couch and gestured at the weed he had laid out. “pack some of this shit up and let’s smoke.”
“yeah, sure man… so like, do you want me to go wake him up, or…?” he didn’t answer me. instead, he got up and walked over to my friend’s kitchen counter, opened up a bottle of absinthe, and began drinking it straight from the neck. “this shit is gross!” he said before turning the bottle up again. he stumbled into the bathroom and shut the door.
i sat on the couch, dumbfounded. thousands of dollars worth of marijuana was spread out on the table before me. my friend was taking a goddamn nap in his bedroom. a drug dealer had barged in and locked himself in the bathroom. if you’ve never been heavily intoxicated, let me fill you in on something: seeing yourself in a mirror for the first time since you've become inebriated is nightmarish. he must have caught a glimpse of some version of himself he hated and he didn’t handle it well.
a beastly howl slowly rose to a crescendo, followed by loud crashing sounds. i had no idea what was going on in there. when he returned to the living room, he began looking at me. “you know, you…” he trailed off. “for a dude…” his body - much larger than my own - swayed as he spent every ounce of his concentration to remain upright.
“you got them blue eyes… you’re so little…” he suddenly changed tones. the nervous laughter gave way to a scowl as he slurred angrily, “but i ain’t no fuckin’ faggot! you better not even… don’t even fuckin’ think…” he furrowed his brow and clenched his fists.
“naw, man, i know you better than that,” i said, despite having just become certain that he was a closeted homosexual. he calmed down. “good… yeah, good…” he sat down beside me again, though before long, he had flared back up. “you motherfucker… you think you’re so smart, huh? yeah, yeah, keep talkin’...” he got back up. he flexed his muscles. “i ain’t no fuckin’ faggot, but i could fuck you and throw you through that fuckin’ wall!”
this ridiculous routine played out a few more times. he would express how badly he wanted to sexually brutalize me, and i would find some sequence of words to defuse his rage for a moment; he would realize that i had just done this, and he would get angry all over again. all the while, i thought of the knife i had in my pocket. i considered pulling it out. i suppose i considered trying to kill him with that knife. i don’t know what that says about me. ultimately, i decided to leave it in my pocket.
this story doesn’t have an interesting ending. in the end, my friend woke up and called his girlfriend’s sister - the person i had thought was at the door when i opened it - to come and pick up our drug dealer and take him away to sleep off whatever horrible state he had found himself in.
as a child, i was given a living being, as a gift, to celebrate the day that the Messiah is believed to have risen from the dead and walked out of his tomb. specifically, i was taken to a pet store and told i was allowed to pick one animal to take home. i was over the moon.
there was no contest - i had always wanted a dog, i had always hated cats, and i wasn’t foolish enough to blow this opportunity on a rodent. even among the different dogs, i didn’t need time to deliberate; i was immediately drawn to the cage of pugs. utterly useless creatures, barely capable of breathing, with faces hideously distorted by generations of humans meddling in mother nature’s affairs. they’re perfect. i adore pugs.
my mother suggested one pug in particular: tan fur, with little highlights of black complementing her pitch black face. she was strikingly small, and her giant bug-eyes poking out from their sockets made her look like an alien. i didn’t need convincing. she was my dog.
i have many photos and videos of that pug, but only one from when she was a puppy: a four-tone grayscale photo, 128 pixels wide, 120 pixels tall, stuck on my old Gameboy Camera cartridge. most of the media i have by which to remember her preserves the version of her body that had become weak, cancer-ridden, and heart-breaking.
i want to confess something: we were not good to her. we loved her, but we did not care for her the way she deserved. my mother constantly fed her candy, ice-cream, fatty meats covered in salt, and many other things that are effectively poison to a tiny pug. my father once left two pounds of chocolate confections out, which she ate, and when i came home that day to see that she was pitifully lying on the floor surrounded by black liquid shit, i yelled at my father for the first and only time.
i was bad to her as well. i didn’t walk her as much as i should have. when she had gotten older, and more physically unwell, and i had gotten older, and more mentally ill, i neglected her. she couldn’t control her bowels or her bladder, and often shit or pissed on herself with a frequency that made fully bathing her every time unrealistic. to compensate, my mother used sanitizing wipes and sprayed her throughout the day with some horribly perfumed mist. she smelled terrible. my obsessive-compulsive brain told me that the germs & chemicals that adorned her, through no fault of her own, would poison me, so i neglected her.
when i think of her crying at the foot of my bed, begging to be set up on my pillow like she always loved, only to be ignored for reasons she could never possibly understand, i hate myself. when i think of her wheezing with her little head poking through my door, looking at me longingly, i hate myself. i think of every opportunity to hold her, to play with her, to love her that i wasted, and i hate myself.
i finally made the decision to have her euthanized when my mother told me she had fallen face-first into her water bowl and didn’t have the strength to lift herself out. i went outside and dug a hole in our yard. i stabbed the shovel into the soil and threw the dirt to the side, over and over, trying to imagine how deep it needed to be to ensure her remains would never resurface. the smell of disheveled earth filled my lungs.
i still have the photos and the videos i took before we drove to the veterinarian’s clinic. knowing she was going to be dead soon gave me the courage to lay in the floor with her. she had no idea why things were like they used to be all of a sudden. she laid between my legs, and i reckoned with the fact that i was about to bring her to an appointment to end her life.
up until the very moment the two veterinarians held her down to the table, i was convinced i was merely being responsible. between she and i, it was me that had been burdened with the depth of human reasoning and assessment, and it fell on me to make the call to inflict terrible mercy on her.
when she was pinned to the table, and i watched her squirm, i immediately regretted what i had done. i saw her fight with every last pained breath to cling to what life she had left. they plunged the needle into her body and she tried to get away and they wouldn’t let her and it was my fault. she looked like that goldfish i killed.
when i try to express the way i feel about this to people, they offer me reassurances, or speak to me as if i’m just being emotional or speaking under the influence of grief. this isn’t the case. when i saw her fighting for her life - her miserable, pathetic life - i realized that i had no right to make myself an arbiter of life and death.
i observe the first Buddhist precept. my dog was the last thing i killed. i hope that she achieved a fortunate rebirth and is faring well on her journey through this world of suffering.
