F. Thomas Cardenas
I can sit on the toilet, pants around my ankles, and kill mosquitos. Big ones. Mosquitos with visible striping and marking patterns. Some have bands around their legs. Others have spots on their backs. Every now and then I kill one that leaves a nice, fat, bright drop of blood on my palm.
Killing mosquitos has become reflex for me. The dozens of bites on my body are a constant challenge by a seemingly insignificant enemy. The challenges though are many and varied. Do I repel them while poisoning myself? Do I let them bite and risk their potentially deadly viral friends? Dengue? Malaria? Infection in general? Are the carcinogenic fumes from candles and other inhale-able treatments better than the topical toxins? There are less effective natural remedies I have tried but my answer typically returns to long sleeves and agile hands.
Sometimes I can kill three or four with a single swing a piece. Sometimes I just knick a wing, or the downdraft of my apathetic attempts merely stun them, or simply knock them out of the air. A well placed followup generally does the job, if I’m quick enough about it. I find they are significantly slower if they’ve been starved in a closed space with no food for a few hours. Rooms with no occupants or animals usually do the trick. The reentry has to be done with intention though, or their blood-starved ambush draws fresh energy, and the opportunity is missed.
The relentless forward push for food and new breeding grounds seems almost noble sometimes. Then I think about history. I think about how many cultures and creeds of humans have pushed frontiers for the same reasons. How many annihilated nations have had to withstand their reconstruction from rubble, if they were allowed the chance. I think of the corpses littering my bathroom floor without proper burial, forever alienated from rebirth in the tierra, drying until their dust blows away with the wind, through an open door, into an eternity of disparate existence, not allowed to return a united entity unto the earth. There has been many humans on earth who have met the same fate.
With as little regard as I have for the insects that fall beneath my grasping fingers, humans have fallen before righteous soldiers. Militants of all kinds crush bodies, and spirits, as I do my own tormenters. Sometimes, for as little a reason as I have: because they irritate me. My own discomfort more important than the entirety of their existence. Heads cleaved from shoulders and bodies blown apart are hardly less important than those who lived to see it happen, to perpetrate it. Is their importance enhanced through the arbitrary fortuity of their being born human? Does their life hold more value simply because of its shape?
I offer nothing more than the question. I have no answers. Sentience counts, I think, but does not trump anything. Considerations are most important to me. Life is struggle. Decisions are made, or forced, but always have impact. I can say with relative certainty I will continue to kill mosquitoes rather than poison myself. Self-preservation in basic. After every swing though, I lament my decision, consider my options, and resolve my qualms. Understanding the choice and asking for grace is the best I can do…for now.
NOTES Magazine 