I think I need to tell you a story.
this is a morals and ideas kind of piece where death, life come into focus.
Take your self and put your self in a garage, there is a bunch of things in your garage, and you have been accumulating things for years including gardening tools, hoses, to wood for fires numerous amounts of chemicals fr cleaning cars to carpets, to camping gear... just a bunch of stuff.

Now imaging you hear a meow somewhere in that mess of your garage.
It's a sound that rings over your iPod ear buds, its haunting in every way, a challenge for you to find where its origin came from.
So, you take up the torch and start your hunt. You hear it again and you quickly take out your ear buds to be able to localize it. Its coming from the other side of the garage so you start taking steps to get over there. Watch out for the nails and that stack of wood you pled up walker in the year, dodge the surf board and jump over the christmas stuff... meow... there that sound is again
You quickly jump the conclusion phase of where the sound came from and look hopelessly at the brick and wood wall you had made years ago.
Meow
...
you sigh and start digging because a feeling of death lingers on that little voice that you have not connected with yet. After a few minuets, and no sounds from that little trapped creature you hear a final meow, your questions come to a point and you take out a light source.. ( lamp, iPod, cellphone, flashlight whatever) And you start to look at your work through the dust that is starting to settle and right there, a little orange kitty looking, staring at you. And then it closes its eyes and gives a meow then looks at you again and meows again.
There is a look of joy on both of your faces as you have now found each other, but then you start to notice the condition of the small little hole that the cat is in, mouse droppings along the wall, a smell of decay in the air, dust and dirt on the cat, death of hundreds of insects and small things at its feet and here this bright little orange kitty right in the center of it all.

Now being the smart person you are you are not about to reach your hand into somewhere, where it could be scratched or bitten or come into contact with more diseases than you can, could or would want to name, so you go into your house. And you fetch your self a pair of gloves.
All this time have left the garage door open and your own door open, and after returning you find the poor thing still sitting right where you saw it last but this time with a look of question in its eyes.

You put on your gloves and you look at the cat and tell it that it wont like what is about to happen if it fights you, so you reach in and watch as it sniffs your glove harmlessly, almost reassuring you that there is not going to be any hissing or claw marks on you in a few seconds.
You reach behind the neck and gently as you can grab a hold of its scruff and pull smoothly towards your light, and out of that little hole that it called home a few moments ago.

Its skinny and not very strong but looks healthy for being in your garage for maybe a little over 3 days without food or water... so now you cradle it and it tries to push away from you,
It is an awkward little scene with the orange fluff in your hands pushing away and you walking out of your garage only trying to comfort it, stumbling over things that you have piled to the side to be able to park a car in the last of the garage.

You set it down and it very slowly moves off and then darts away.
No more than 3 meters it stops cold and turns its head to look at you. It gives you a look that you have never seen before, And in an instant it turns and runs a little more, it hops up on a fence and before it disappears from your sight it looks back at you again and gives you the same look.
Your watching it as it goes, and after your feeling of heroism passes you start to think about that look it gave you. It was haunting in every way you have never seen before.
You continue to think and a gust of wind hits you in the side from nowhere.
At the time the wind hit you were talking to your self trying to figure out the look it gave you. You had just passed love and had just spoken the lines of death...

You look back at the tiny hole it had worked into, and upon second analysis found the area where it was sitting to be almost dust free, it had been sitting there for a while you mutter.
looking back on the look the cat gave you there was something in its eyes that pierced you, like it had something to say but was silenced long ago, it was something more than fear, and more powerful than love, and did justice on your thoughts.

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I went through this the other day, and the look that cat gave me is something that is haunting me because of the conclusion I came to of what it was actually saying to me,
there is no emotion and no question or thought behind the look it was a blank and emotionless aimless and piercing look.
the animal had chosen my garage to die in; starve to death, the place it would rest its body...
if you will also note, it is not with the comfort of its family or masters, but in a cluttered dusty smelly garage, far from a warm bed, and its comforts and love.
Humans see suicide in a multitude of ways, from the 5 stages of death, to the more scientific version at 26 stages of death. To the biblical, our gods will grant us passage to a utopia of an after world ranging to complete utopia, to virgins, to a second life, to reincarnation, but take that all away and look at the hopelessness of it all, the animal that decided to die alone, in a cold dark hole, dust and mouse crap surrounded, had accepted its death and was probably only a few hours from going over the edge.

In the end it is the way we all face our eventual demise, and looking at it, it is that same cold place that we will all end up and probably think to ourselves, "this is it" then we will get the life flash, the final words to ourselves, and the eventual decision to close our eyes one last time; never to re-open again.
the look that was given to me was of a higher power, like death was looking at me, and in the idea of the grim reaper, he was biding his time and clenching his bony fist and muttering things at me.
in a more Christian view if the temporal viewpoints had been exposed there were angels and demons standing next to me and watching me directly....
profound how simple a task, can have so many views and alterations in it as picking up a meowing cat in a small hole.

there is one thing to take from this though, through the sadness of knowing that an animal that the Egyptians cherished as gods, the same animal we call our furry friends and tell all our secrets to, to the more comical ceiling cat, had chosen its place and time, is that it took something like that to snap what we call a sentient being into his existence.

If one is to truly live, one must face his death or fight for it as Tyler Durden would say...
the thing that is striking a sour note though is the fact that it usually takes something like this to create a human mind as we see it in the general spectrum and norm... to understand science death, life, each other, our life and how we head and all that jolly crap, but the need for death in our minds, is what sets us apart from the animals, not the will power, not the thumb, or an ability of the human body, not that we eat the other animals or can create with our minds, in the end it takes death, to make us...
and that is the question that is to piercing. why do human needs revolve around death, or in the more practical version, why do we avoid it, if it is what defines us as human?

the little cat with its helpless meow, when taken metaphorically in our actions to rectify that meow, is what humans are designed chemically to do, defeat death, and in the most simple of acts, unconventional love and helping something, we fulfil ourselves in that desire for victory.
leading to the idea, what is death, and how do we define it and its ability to control us?