Considering Consciousness

Dying in a puddle of his own juices, the frog felt strangely relaxed, much like lazily floating about on one’s back. He floundered a bit with his gangly limbs, but it was simply not to be, and his subsequent stillness signaled his acceptance of this fact. The cool dew on the grass collected about him in his last throes of life, mixing with the fluids of his own body to provide him one last bath. His green-yellow eyes, wide open with incredulity, stared blankly upward into the overcast twilight sky, searching even in his last moments for some sort of understanding, never realizing the ground that a frog’s intelligence would have to cover to achieve such a feat in the most transient of moments. Such would be the plight of a frog.
The pool grew deeper about the frog; his body, still self-aware, spun about as the fat rain drops impacted it. As the frog took in his last breaths, the reddish brown water came in with it. One, two, three….and his existence was no more. Into the arms of death croaked the frog, leaving his spare bits to become the fuel of his former world.
Just moments before, the frog was still hopping along, moving with an ample hippity-hop across the pasture. Things had been well with the frog; he'd spent his morning ably satisfying his appetite for insects, which would keep him going for days if he so needed, and he was just then on his way for a well-deserved afternoon nap. But, of course, “good” is a very frog-centric value judgment to make. Consider:
Dying in a puddle of the frog’s stomach juices, a rather large cricket had not even the first idea what had happened to him, a confusion much akin to being pushed into a pool while blindfolded. He would have floundered a bit with his limbs, if only the frog hadn't chewed them off. In fact, the cricket was dead long before his last throes would have been able to set in. Alas, such would be the plight of a cricket.
Making his way back to his pond, the frog didn’t much think about anything. It had been a hard day, and, of course, he was a frog, and frogs really don’t have too much to think about. Frogs mostly hop, swim, eat crickets, croak, and try to avoid croaking, in the human colloquial sense, that is. Currently, the frog was doing the first of these activities.
An ominous hum began a-humming in the distance behind the frog. At least, distance as a frog conceives of distance; it really wasn’t too far away, but it’s important that the frog tell the story. After all, it is his last to tell, even if he is just a frog.
Hummmmmmmm. The frog took no notice; after all, if he slept each night through the riotous roar of the woodland cicadas, how could he worry with one distant hum?
HUMMMMMMM.
HUMMMMMMMM.
HUMMMMMMMMMM.
And then there lay the frog, all but in two pieces.
“Well,” thought the frog, so beyond his own mortality that he had not the time to accept or reject his doom, “I must have fucked with the wrong cicada.”
The hum continued a short moment before sputtering into silence. Looking up ahead of his broken body, the frog witnessed a man kicking a large green and yellow machine, and, had he known English, he would have undoubtedly heard the man’s profane sentiments toward his green and yellow machine. But I doubt the frog would have much objected to the graphic and explicit in his most graphic and explicit of moments. It was his last; why reserve the profane for a later time?
And here, just as the clouds were beginning to totally darken over the late afternoon sky, is how we originally found our frog, breast-stroking about in the waters of his own loins, hopelessly fading into the unknown. Not scared, not particularly excited, not lamenting his wasted life, he’s just frogging his way into the afterlife. But, then, I must be projecting; he was probably just content with the knowledge that he had populated his home with a few more tadpoles before it was all over.
Meanwhile, one yellow and green grass-cutting apparatus was receiving some stern physical abuse from an overly angry operator. Thud, one kick. Thud thud, two kicks. The lawnmower could do nothing but simply sit still and accept the beating; had it been alive, it probably would have had the same response anyway, given the common habit of this rotund grass-cutter to become violent. The girth that propelled the blows into their target was truly impressive; a belly to rival its size must truly have been rare, especially in these parts. The sheer number of buttons on the poor shirt assigned the task of covering such rotundity would equal that of four or five shirts of any normal sized man, and it certainly would not have been pleasurable to receive such poor treatment from the hulking figure. But again, I am not a lawnmower; perhaps taking the brutal beating was easier on the engine than was bearing the load. I cannot say that I would disagree with the logic…were I to be a lawnmower, of course.
As the storm became more and more imminent, the viciousness of the man’s tantrum did too crescendo. After all, should the rain begin, the job of cutting grass would no longer be possible, and our frog would then have died in vain. Not that the man cursed his machine on the frog’s behalf, it’s simply something I am compelled to consider, even if the frog would not himself do so. A darker shade of gray covered the sky throughout the man’s tantrum, which only fed his anger; the man’s face grew redder and redder, he cursed louder and louder, and he spat more and more and more and more….until his face, being unable to grow any redder, his cursing, unable to grow any louder, and his spit, now completely dry between his jaws, the man keeled over, feeling acute pains in his left side. Now on his back and at a level of distress he had never felt before, the man turned his head and vomited a great reddish brown vomit onto the lush, green grass he had been attempting to cut. He shivered as the rain fell and he waited for the pain to subside, but it was simply not to be for the man.
Dying in a puddle of his own juices, the man only exacerbated his situation with his panic. His eyes were wide open and glazed over with fear as he struggled to accept his demise. His clothing soaked in the heavy rainfall that began to pour, thus cooling him on the hot summer afternoon, although he paid no attention to the timely soothing Nature was attempting to deliver. A much underappreciated bath he was given, even at the time he needed it most. The man attempted to pick himself up with his right arm, but when his left leg was called to action, it gave no response, and he fell back into the watery, vomit-filled puddle. The man understood then and there that he would die where he was, as he could not move. What he could not understand though, was how he would then pass. The clouds were dark as he stared at them, not bright like he had thought they would be. But, then, perhaps that would come later; why not save the best for the very, very last, thought the man. The thought did not much help, though; the very, very last would teach him definitively the true length of a moment. The final throes upon him, the man was still deep in panic from things not being as he was told they would be. Had he been dry, his pants then would have turned a darker shade of blue around the front of his pants, just below the waistline. His breathing quickened to an all-time fastest rate, and he slowly closed his eyes without ever ceasing to fear the end. Such would be the plight of a man, a glutton, a rage-filled representative of human excess.
With the passing consciousness of our final character, is the story then finished? Wait, and consider once more:
Dying in a bath of cerebral juices, the brain was begging for more oxygen. What the brain was forgetting was that the man rarely listened to what it said, but, then, that is not exactly a reason not to try, especially in these circumstances. It must be frustrating, being a human brain, what with being subject to the subtle whims of a human. Deep into its death throes, the brain then erred itself, releasing as much adrenaline as it could muster, making the man panic. Maybe this was simply a last attempt to spite the heart for its weakness; after all, where is the equity in such organs being forced to cooperate, one having infinite potential for knowledge and judgment and the other being totally soft and sedentary from a continual regimen of cholesterol and laziness? The conditions of an existence can just never be ideal, thought the brain, if I’m forced to exist at all. Just before shutting down for a deep and perpetual trip into forever, the brain had one last thought: such would be the plight of a brain.