Here’s your sign
I have a darling soul mate friend who, among so many other amazing things, is a gifted LPC and is also Cherokee.
This week she got on a roll and sent me as one of her usual email forward group a lovely, personal piece of writing. She wrote of sittting at home with her ten year old on New Year’s Eve, listening to gunfire interspersed with the firecrackers down in the historic district just as we were over here on the wrong side of the tracks. Like her, perhaps, the only reason I bothered to stay up that night was to fulfil my promise to my pee wee shaky baby that I would take her out to see the fire works at midnight. I truly couldn’t have given one shit, but there was something about that promise.
Something told me, that night, as I stood on my porch alone, searching the clear night sky and smoking one last cigarette as my husband took the kids to bed at about 12.05, to step under the cover of the eaves, because a bullet coming down is going just as fast as it was when it was discharged up. Days later, I did see that a small child was killed here by what was most likely a stray celebratory bullet… Anyway, between waiting for midnight to give her son the traditional New Year’s blessing, as her mother had given her, and her mother’s mother had done before her, between telling her son stories of New Year celebrations when she was a child, she was reminding him that they were safe.
This, and a stop in Cherokee NC over the holidays for a reconnection with the clan, got her going. She wrote of the Cherokee law requiring blood revenge, and how, thirty years after the law was abolished, the Cherokees were decimated by US Government betrayal and the Trail of Tears. Her thoughts ran from the Trail of Tears, to the Twin Towers, to Al Qaeda’s tactics and the terrible loss of life on both sides and the situation in the Middle East today.
Her detailed description of the Cherokee lifeway including the blood revenge requirement was enough to give me a little rush of awe.
But she asked her email group of friends for our thoughts. Here were mine, slightly edited for many reasons.
I have often wondered, and continue to wonder, if this sort of philosophising is the luxury of a decadent, bourgeois society, and if all my peaceniking would be completely meaningless and ridiculous had I been born in Sudan or Bosnia or Kurdistan… but then I think of the Dalai Lama, and what the Tibetans have been through and how he continues to speak, write, and conduct himself, and wonder if thinking these thoughts, even if only by little old anxious, exhausted, judgmental, and exceedingly bourgeois me, could still be of use. Certainly lots and lots of folks in our decadent and cruel society are turning back toward each other and our original mother, nature… things could be getting better… healing school work tells me– as does any thought about the Dalai Lama’s teachings, actually– it doesn’t matter one way or the other. I’m just blowing off some very rare extra brain energy here– embarassing myself by showing my attachment, I guess. Whateva. Human. Wounded. Just where I am supposed to be.
Anyhoo…
“Writing this [response to your thoughts] has humbled me and reminded
me of where I want to be, right now.
Do you remember that wonderful group you did at my house? With the red circle and the blue triangle or whatever? We came to an amazing truth that night. We were able to switch back and forth, at will, between the thought that made us so damn angry, and the thought that made us feel comforted and happy.
Holding the anger and hurt right there alongside the peace and the joy is what it means to begin to heal.
At the end of the group you mentioned that song ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon, and I said, so if every person would simply be responsible for and learn to live with his or her pain– holding both anger and hurt, and peace and joy, at the same time– and STOP taking it out on others, there would never be any more violence, ever again. I felt myself profoundly changed that night.
Of course when my husband and I hurt each other verbally we still lash out and try to the other down HARD… Some times it just hurts so much, and I can’t believe the depth of my feeling of betrayal, fear, anguish and hatred, and while I can’t speak for him and I’m sure he’d express it some other way I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one. And some of that is about one of us being a jerk, and most of that is about our own lack of self esteem, peace, coping skills, or healing for our own wounds which have nothing to do with the spouse we perceive to be hurting us at that moment.
We don’t become peaceful over night.
Okay, here’s what I think about our Sign.
I believe in the cosmic reality and necessity for revenge, blood, justice. It is a part of who we are as humans who have been temporarily separated from our God or divinity. For some of us, revenge or murder or vengeance is part of our soul contract or sacred tasks for our lives.
I also believe that we have to do some level of containment in the middle east.
But here’s what I think about revenge…
I don’t believe in a simple cause-effect relationship between the ability or failure to stand up for oneself or take revenge. I don’t think there’s a sign.
Revenge has its own consequences, which are unforseeable. It is also not possible to see how or why the sins of previous generations will or will not be visited upon our children. There is a plan– we do not know what it is– the only thing we can control is our own choices, but still, horrible things happen to decent, loving, peaceful, civilized, educated nations and persons.
The grief of the mothers and fathers who lose their children, or the children who lose their parents, or the young veterans whose lives are broken by physical and emotional mutilation in war, regardless of which side they are on, is a cycle which we continue to perpetuate, and it MUST BE STOPPED. And it has to stop somewhere.
God’s (or whatever each person calls the creative or higher power in the universe) love is reflected most clearly in the fierce love felt by usually a mother, but often by other caregivers too, for a helpless newborn and the child and adult that newborn will become (if we are lucky).
That love is, in my opinion, the only thing that reaches beyond the grave, and it is the closest we come to understanding God in this life.
It’s not that we need to love every person we encounter the way we love a newborn. It’s not that one has to become a parent before one gets it– it’s not about the external circumstance of parent or nonparent. It’s that we need to remember that fierce, immovable acceptance and nurture– for ourselves and for others– the very minute we feel tempted to lash out.
It ain’t easy, but it is the answer.
Remembering that powerful tie to other humans regardless of language, color, culture, or whatever marital or parental heartbreak you’re embroiled in at the moment, is the only chance for survival of our species, and it is no wonder that early religious cults centered around feminine fertility– those elders knew something we don’t. Our society does everything possible to sever connection between babies and adults, between humans and the ecosystem which literally keeps us alive, between humans and humans. That disconnection allows us to blindly assent to so many dangerous, hurtful and destructive practices, from how we parent and relate to others, and how we raise meat to eat, to how our industry dehumanizes and poisons most while enriching a few, and we will die from it.
[And that may be our divine destiny, as individuals and a people, and that's fine.]
When that bond, that tie, is severed by violence, whether through violent communication, parenting or relationship styles, whether a ten year old dies because he stepped on a land mine from an old war, or whether blood revenge is taken upon a murderer– both the innocent ten year old and the murderer were someone’s child. When we violate others with words or actions we are violating God and we are poisoning ourselves.
When I think of the Middle East I think of the little picture or Catholic-style prayer card I saw one time at my sister in law’s house– small children clustered at Jesus’ feet. The picture read something like: Jesus would never call them ‘collateral damage’. In our attempt to stop the violence, we are not doing a very good job of getting the bad guys, but we’re doing a great job of slaughtering the innocent and the bad guys continue to do their horrible work.
I believe that we as a race will not, cannot, ascend until we see every human being as precious as that innocent newborn he or she once was, and that has to start within each person. It starts with how we parent. It starts with how we react when our spouse is being an asshole. It starts with how we manage our own pain.
There isn’t always a cause effect when we make changes in how we see and live our lives. Some really bad people really prosper in this world, and some wonderful or at least innocent people are burdened by terrible pain and problems. We don’t know why and we can’t make it all better like we want to.
All we can do is let it begin with us, one tiny step at a time. Reading the wonderful books Sex God by Rob Bell and The No Asshole Rule by Robert Sutton. Blessing our children as often as we can with quality time and kind words, like [my friend was] doing on New Year’s Eve– especially since we know that in just a few days or hours we’ll be screaming at them or seething silently because they are being such little brats.
Biting our tongues when our spouse or a customer or coworker is being a total jackass– you didn’t start it, but if you try to finish it you’ll just make it worse. Reporting or working to stop injustice especially to those who cannot help themselves– children, animals, the incarcerated, the elderly, victims of genocidal campaigns just as Native Americans experienced.
Working in counseling on the huge hurts we have endured or are still facing in our lives, to nurture ourselves through the pain and make the best decisions we can to try to change what we can and accept what we can’t. Making a routine of asking for the ‘me time’ and support we need and offering it to others. Nurturing ourselves so that when others need us we don’t become dried up angry old martyred bitches and our giving comes from a place of nutured, endless joy.
Thank you, darling friend, for sharing your awesome thoughts and reminding me of where I stand on this. You are the greatest.”
* * *
‘I summon you here, my love’
Spoon
(or is it ‘No I can’t just relax, knowing you’re coming back’?)
what do you buy a girl turning four? and how I worked that out, with some goodies for me and parenting philosophy on the side
I know what I want to give my child, when she turns four in March.
But what for the little girls in her classroom who are turning four and giving parties this week?
The ridiculous and ugly stuff marketed to little girls these days reinforces so many things I don’t want to encourage– traditional female roles, consumer culture, ugly plastic aesthetic, low to fleeting imagination or creativity value… but I can’t impose my snobberies on others’ children. And I can’t afford Magic Cabin for everyone. I can’t even afford it for her. And plus it’s too late to order Magic Cabin.
I know if I called these parents they would say please don’t bring anything, just come. I know that’s what I would say. And I would mean it, too. But I have a feeling it would be a serious violation of Expensive Montessori School Social Code not to bring something. You play, you pay. One little girl is my child’s especial playmate, and I would really like to get to know the other’s mom…
[The next day]
I enlisted the help of my mom’s group friends, who had wonderful helpful ideas… and then wouldn’t you know, I had a Barnes and Noble gift card to spend on myself and my husband, so I walked into the book store and did the librarian birthday gift after all.
I purchased a Moongirl DVD/Book set for each girl. Ah, now it is done! But of course I don’t have any wrapping paper except Christmas. Too bad. I guess I better hit the Dollar General. Anyhoo, this is a wonderful story, with wonderful edgy art and a fabulous soundtrack for the DVD featuring the ever versatile and hardworking They Might Be Giants.
At first I wanted to give Robert Sabuda’s popup Alice in Wonderland, which is a truly complex and beautiful work of art. But there were two copies of Moongirl, and only one copy of the Sabuda… so guess who gets the Sabuda? That’s right. Moi.
I am a Tenniel Snob. Two brown ‘leather’ bound volumes, dated 1974 inside the front cover in my father’s handwriting, containing the entire unabridged stories and the original Tenniel illustrations, still sit on my shelf. They may be the two most important works to my inner and imaginative landscape, as well as my literary aesthetic, of my entire childhood. I remember being about four and having a pair of brown wing tipped mary janes (oh to have those shoes again, some for me and some for my girls!) that I called my Alice in Wonderland shoes.
I have raised my little girl to be sort of a rough-and-tumble consumer of all media, pedestrian and ugly as well as beautiful and original. Our home is a far cry from the dark, quiet, rarefied, nearly tv free space that characterized my childhood. Sometimes I wish I’d been more careful with her, but… ever since she walked at nine months I have sort of thrown my hands up regarding forcing her to conform to my expectations and decided to pick my battles and let her make (the less harmful of) her own choices. I scour my friends’ libraries for truly beautiful and rich works of art for kids– M and W have put me on to the awesome Miyazaki anime films, for example, although I am disappointed that I get them dubbed in English rather than in the original Japanese– and hope that I am giving her a balanced smorgasbord of choices of theme, culture, and artistic style.
But I digress.
Every once in a while I run across a work of children’s literature that restores my faith in the children’s publishing industry and in the media world’s power in general to produce something truly beautiful and worthwhile.
The Sabuda is sort of the Tenniel work on acid (as if the original Tenniel illustrations weren’t acidic enough!!). [And let me clarify that I have never done acid. Never. I did chew up a tiny shroom one time but it did nothing for me and it was too nasty to attempt to eat any more. But I think I know it, or what our society characterizes as it, when I see it.] The 3-dimensional popups are huge, intricately detailed, beautifully colored, and give delightful views for the story from many angles– look down the accordion-pleated rabbit hole, or through cellophane windows into the house where the giant Alice is trapped! I haven’t read it through, so I’ll weigh in on how well the abridgment of the story works soon. But since it makes me so happy artistically, I’ll love it no matter what. I’m such a hoarder I believe I may purchase another copy or two today off of Amazon…
along with a copy of Skinny Bitch. The title and cover illustration are a clever marketing trick which, I am ashamed to say, worked on me, but I cracked it and read a few pages in the store, and just now read the customer reviews on Amazon. You know I just quit eating meat (except last night I had a few bites of delectable lasagne that I made myself, with meat, because we forgot to make me a little meat free one on the side), and I gather this book gives a lot of information about nutrition and the food industry that everyone needs to make informed choices about what we eat. If it’s in a no holds barred, listen here girlfriend while I tell you straight so you can take responsibility and live a happier healthier life format, so much the better.
We just lost power here for several minutes. Our infrastructure in this community is such that the slightest variation in weather– today, heavy but not exactly monsoon rain– throws our power grid into a tizzy. Anyway, I adore wordpress.com because it saves posts constantly. I lost very little work.
So. It’s New Year’s Eve.
I have lots to do including all my housecleaning so that I don’t have to wash my good luck away tomorrow, soaking black eyed peas and cooking sweet potatoes for sweet potato pie, taking shaky baby to that party at about 12.30 which involves getting us both showered and dressed, and taking a fearless and searching inventory (to quote Lindsay Lohan) of last year’s accomplishments and my hopes for next year. I’d better run along.
the food not bombs types
I love my brother and sister in law sooooooo much. In their previous city they were involved with Food not Bombs. They would scavenge still good but nearly or slightly out of date foods from supermarket dumpsters and provide a hot meal on the square downtown to feed homeless and/or hungry people.
Once I was talking to my sister in law about whether a food was bad or not, being out of date or having set (redneck for sat) out all night or something. I thought it was not too appetizing. She said she thought the Food Not Bombs people would probably have a different opinion.
I don’t remember giving it much thought at the time, but now, with the exception of meats, I often try to use something rather than toss it. I’ll cook slightly old veggies or fruits that aren’t pretty any more. If I have time to identify something near expiration I’ll try to cook it. Even meats, I may cook up with rice, boiling thoroughly of course, and give my dogs some gourmet, healing fare.
I will eat this stuff. My husband won’t. He gags when you just say the word vomit, so he can’t abide the thought of, uh, ‘aged’ food. And I am very picky what I give to my child. And once we’ve cooked and eaten it once, I don’t always force us to eat it again. It’s more about new items that just go bad on the shelf before we even touch them.
So I was at the grocery earlier this week. I bought lots of yogurt smoothies to have for breakfast on my way out the door to work. My husband put the groceries away. I looked for these smoothies this morning. They were not there. I looked and looked, in disbelief.
I went to my car. Sure enough, two superfood smoothies and four yogurts.
I just stuck them in the fridge.
I drank one this morning. I mean… yogurt’s already clabbered, right? And they were vacuum sealed. And it’s chilly here right now.
I’m not dead yet.
I know food poisoning is no joke. I have had it exactly one time– the autumn I was pregnant with shaky baby. I rarely ever threw up during my pregnancy– well except on account of those nasty iron prenatals, but I quit taking them.
But I ate at Fazoli’s in Knoxville after we got through purchasing wedding reception decorations at Big Lots. (Yes, Big Lots.) I spent much of that night curled on the couch in agony, and the rest of it in child’s pose, in the bitter cold shaming myself by vomiting off one or the other of their porches.
Once I heard:
[the dry rattle of dispersed vomit hitting a broad selection of autumn leaves far below]
miaow!!!
I guess I’d hit one of the cats. Sorry cat.
So… I’m not dead. And I’m going to drink those other ones too.
tight, tight, tight
I used to think I was tight. And really, I am, I lived in the country and worked with Appalachian people on food stamps and Social Security disability income (trust me, folks, ‘welfare’ just ain’t all that) too long not to be, but with working and everything else it is so much easier for me to, say, throw something away rather than fix it or clean it or organize it or whatever.
M, troubled about the growing buildup of food calcifying upon her baby’s high chair, asked me once how I cleaned my high chair (heh, as if I have much to offer in terms of mothering advice!! but I always felt good that she asked). I said, I didn’t. When it got nasty I threw it away and stuck her in a booster seat. I don’t have time for yard sales or consignment sales, and I don’t have time to look for the best deal a lot of the time– I just have to buy it, balls to the wall, like our latest car seat or stroller purchase, or our THOUSAND DOLLAR HOT WATER HEATER.
It’s all about diminishing returns. If I were staying home, I would squeeze every penny til it cried out. That would be part of my job.
I’m not sure how much my lack of thrift, due to lack of time, offsets the benefit of my working outside the home… that’s another discussion, maybe, something to explore.
I have a dear, dear friend who is very thrifty. She jokes about it a little bit some times… but if she’s miserly with food she also has a perfect figure (which she clothes very modestly, you practically would never know), and if she’s miserly about bargains and whatnot she is never, ever miserly with her kindness, hospitality, friendship and assistance. If she’s miserly she’s also achieved some incredible coups, financially, through being miserly, that just impressed me so much. I’m sorry I can’t share them, cause they’re so damn cool, but she told me in confidence.
I had an imaginary conversation with her today, in my head. I do that a lot, friends, I’m sorry to tell you that you’ve talked with me more times than you know. Anyhoo, I wanted to ask her, did your mother tell you the ancestors would curse you if you were not thrifty to the very last thread or penny? Did she tell you you have to earn your place in this world by wearing yourself out scraping and pinching? Do you think you owe your husband because he’s ’supporting you?’ And of course none of this is my business so I will never ask. And M don’t you dare ask either.
As I was thinking these thoughts I handed my dogs a leftover pumpkin muffin (vegan, very decent, but I have another recipe to try that may be better) that my baby had licked the sweet topping off and left. I don’t usually feed the dogs scraps because I have seen that thrift in the area of feeding dogs too much table scraps results in tragically uncomfortable death, by way of terrible vet bills. But if it isn’t too rich or isn’t too much I’ll give it to them.
So I don’t know why it popped into my head but it did… what if thrift is not the misery of scarcity, but the sweetness of gratitude? What if it’s a choice to truly appreciate what is at hand, instead of throwing it away and buying something else in my hurry to move on? What if I viewed recycling like that, and cooking– only enough for us to eat at one sitting, finally getting a grip on the fact that there are only TWO of us and one little bird who rarely eats at all, best I can tell– and other things that we are so careless about because we are ‘too busy?’
Isn’t it funny when a paradigm just shifts in your head, just like that?
And I still believe that we need to evaluate financial and time management choices in light of diminishing returns. Or is diminishing returns part of my soul impoverished scarcity mindset? I suspect that it is!!!
I’ll report back.
Income up, wages down
From Fast Company’s Blog: It’s Labor Day. Let’s Celebrate?
Point of View’s Waging a Living — a MUST SEE
Indentured Families: Social conservatives and the GOP: Can this marriage be saved?
I was listening to conservative, or was it Christian? radio the other day and heard Allan Carlson talking. It sure felt good to hear this conservative ripping the pro family Republican party a new one (in the nicest way) for the way its ass kissing of big business harms American families.
Now ordinarily these pro family types drive me nuts, because they utterly fail to see the reality of what most children and families endure in this society and keep sawing away at trying to impose an agenda that just doesn’t help anyone.
But this guy had some good things to say. Finally a pro family person making some sense.
One of his points, fodder for my grassroots family (including nontraditional and same sex and adoption and whatnot) lobbying efforts, is that it is in the best interest of big business that both parents are in the workplace. And voila’, tax credit for child care! If both parents are in the workforce, companies can pay lower wages– they don’t have to pay parents a wage that will enable them to sustain a family on one income.
Augh, this makes me sick. Children are so much better off with a parent home– that is, if parents want to choose having one parent stay home, they need to have the choice, and children are so much better with one parent home. That is, the ‘right’ feminism has ‘earned’ women to be equal partners in the workplace has net resulted in greater poverty for both women and men, and bad news for women (or men for that matter!) who might have chosen to stay home and parent their babies. I’m reminded of the fact, cited in the Motherhood Manifesto, that paid maternity leave reduces infant mortality. I believe that a living wage paid to every worker would show a similar uptick in our miserable infant mortality rate.
But we don’t care. We want business to thrive, so just throw ‘em in day care and get back to your minimum wage job before your– er, episiotomy– is even completely healed, or sooner. [Remember that shaky mommy had no clue or desire other than to go back to work after she had her baby, so I'm not talking bad about others for their choices when I made the same choice. I'm talking bad about this culture.]
Per Carlson in the article linked above, “Certainly at the level of net incomes, the one-earner family today is worse off than it was thirty years ago, when the GOP began to claim the pro-family banner. Specifically, the median income of married-couple families, with the wife not in the paid labor force, was $40,100 in 2002, less than it had been in 1970 ($40,785) when inflation is taken into account.”
Carlson also said that the move toward same sex marriage is not a CAUSE, it is a RESULT of the way this society has undermined the family.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I am pro same sex marriage all the way. I am pro, as I have said before, giving privileges and benefits to anyone that anyone wants to designate for that role, from sisters to same sex partners to best friends. Anyone who is brave enough to commit, to throw their lot in with someone else to try to make a better life, thus improving the stability and consumption of our economy and perhaps making a safe and loving home for an unwanted child or two, should get those incentives.
I’m just saying, it was so refreshing to hear a pro family guy remind us that a) the Republican agenda is NOT a pro family agenda, and b) gay marriage is not eating away at the traditional family… the traditional family is already torn clean apart, not, I would argue, by some kind of moral degeneration, but by economics and oppression of those who value traditional human caring roles instead of profit, pure and simple.
Then today what should cross my computer screen but this USA Today headline:
“Earnings actually fell for people working full time. Household income rose because more people in the households worked, although at lower-paying jobs.”
Fast Company’s blog is where I learned about the USA Today article and the Waging a Living documentary, which will be aired on my community public television at 3 Sunday morning. Yes, that’s three AM. We wouldn’t want anyone to finally put two and two together and figure out that working your ass off does not have much to do with the American dream or even making sure your family’s needs are met, these days (besides those who are in the thick of it, too busy trying to make rent to slow down and let policymakers know how wrong it is).
I’m not ungrateful. My husband and I are so blessed. I’m just angry that children and parents have to go through what they go through. I have to discharge this anger, and pray that some day this situation will turn around, before I can step away from the computer and go enjoy the incredible blessings we enjoy at our house.
Maybe it bothers me so bad because I know that there but for the grace of… my husband and I have both lost our jobs and had to struggle to keep the wolf away from the door. Thank heaven this happened to us before we were married, before I had my baby– since then our financial troubles have slowly resolved into financial okay and, I hope, into financial wellness before too long– but for my husband, and for his uneducated ex wife and small children depending on his sizeable child support, it was a painful and sobering wakeup call.
Now that I’ve bitched about it properly, and have made no move whatsoever to alleviate this situation in reality, I can go and crack open a cheap bottle of wine and make some delicious vegan pasta with creamy mushroom walnut gravy and watch The Big Chill with my husband. Maybe I’ll even read a book or jump rope with my little one (preferably *before* imbibing) instead of turning on the fourth Little Bear in a row.
defining my self through my media consumption
After an even more wonderful than usual conversation about AS Byatt’s The Biographer’s Tale last night, I am reluctant to do this, but I have to.
I am about to once again spout off based on media fare I’ve consumed lately.
I hear my fellow book club member A (and listen, nobody is more cultured, more easygoing, or better read than this world citizen) reading the little snippet of short story that was so perfect for our discussion.
The upshot, sort of, of our discussion, is that I am very wary of the difference between consuming media on the subjects of how I would like to live, or the sort of community I would like to create, and actually living or creating. I mean, if you asked me, my stated purpose really is to live a certain way– sustainable, community, healing school, suburbanity, relationships, spirituality, nutrition, blah blah blah. But the discussion last night really pointed out (among some other delicious tensions within the endless meaning/meaninglessness of life) how much time one spends analyzing it (an awful lot) and how much time one spends doing it (not much).
But I’m going to sit here and talk about consuming media anyway.
that was the day that the chicken truck crashed
ran up in the grass and turned over and stopped
and the chickens ran away
and the driver walked away
he walked to the chicken shack
he had wings! finger lickin good! finger! lickin’ good!
Sadly I did not write that. It’s pinched from a song by a truly stellar band from North Carolina who were touring when I was in college lo these almost 20 years ago. I am pretty sure I don’t have the last little bit of the words right. They, Fetchin’ Bones, were so great, and they are where I got most of my girl country punk aesthetic long before the girl country punk aesthetic (or other aesthetics, for that matter, according to this site) was cool or even on the radar. Their shows are where I learned to headbang and jump up and down until my whole body ached. They had the most wonderful t-shirts– skulls and bones entwined with flowers, most tastefully, believe it or not, so perhaps that’s where my skull thing really originated.
I have looked them up many times in the past and haven’t been able to find a damn thing on them. Suddenly, as I write this post in a last ditch effort to find the correct lyrics, I can. Now if I can just get the lyrics to this song.
Anyhoo…
I have one bad thing to say about my recent trip, or maybe it’s just an observation.
I have seen all the hundreds of miserable chickens in tiny metal boxes on chicken trucks, loading up and pulling out of all the chicken farms and into the ‘processing’ (read: killing, flaying, and chopping up) plants, all the huge tanker trucks full of — what? Waste?– that I need to see. I’ve put two and two together, between those poor miserable chickens going to their deaths in the chicken trucks, and the smell of cooking chicken wafting all over the small southern town where I was staying. I don’t think I want to eat chicken any more. It’s just too sad. If someone thinks they can rationally talk me out of this attitude, I’ll be glad to listen.
I *hate* to talk that way when the chicken industry provides the paychecks that allow many people to feed their families. Humans who need food and shelter come before animals, truly they do. I wouldn’t ask someone else to convert and see it like I do. But I just can’t be a part of it. For now. Til I become desensitized to it again and decide that this is a cruel world and I may as well eat since I’m fortunate enough not to be eaten.
I was thinking, with respect to food addiction and smoking just the other day– where is the line between, take, eat, this is my body given for thee, which, my mother told me, is about the goodness and sacredness of all food, and simple addiction that obstructs one’s ability to truly live? Or, where is the line between impossibly huge-scale industrialized cruelty to animals and gratefully taking the bounty of nature that our way of life offers us?
Now, if I could just find some cruelty free eggs and dairy I’d be in business.
I must admit, it is not a holiday– Thanksgiving, Easter, Christmas– for me without succulent roast of some kind of meat. But I think I can see my way clear to enjoy a really special meal that includes meat occasionally, sort of a, er, burnt offering, although I’m sure the poor animal doesn’t see it that way. I dunno. I’ll report back.
