After I told him, "And the longest they ever let a 'broiler chicken' live is 42 days! And birds like that would be able to live, like, ten years!", Patrick stared at me with his head cocked to one side, a deep thoughtful frown etched in his features. "Well," he said finally, "is that bad necessarily? Is mutton more ethical than lamb?" I thought about it for a while in stony silence and then felt tears pouring down my cheeks. "Hey! I didn't mean to--" Pat started. "But they just hang there!" I cried in anguish, "Upside down, on a conveyor belt by their feet and a machine slits their throats and the blood drains out. And they're so scared that they poop on themselves which is why virtually all chickens have E. coli," I finished with a final snuff. And there you have it. I have officially become someone I hate.
I don't want to stop eating animals because I look at livestock like something stuffed that littered my bed as a child. These aren't the anthropomorphized, hard-plastic eye-balled toys that we offer to children as odd parodies of the shitting, pecking, scratching, grub-snatching animals. The fact is, I may very well just love those little boogers that trot around the backyard of my home in IL, but they just don't love me back. They love the feed we offer them, or the bedding: but the sweetness of the coop our family built together, the care with which my sister, Erin changes the straw or hangs icons for each season behind the water dish are only meaningful to us. Frankly, those birds would just as soon bed down in garbage bins (and they've done this).
And yet this isn't to say that there is no reason for grief. Later during our conversation Pat said something else that has been rolling around in my head all afternoon: Its not as troubling that these awful things happen to chickens as it is that these things happen to our food. At first this comment might sound anthropocentric, but I think there's some truth glimmering behind his meaning. If human beings are the meaning-makers and not the chickens (who didn't even notice this year when we exchanged the Epiphany icon for a Lenten one), and if we are the beings with one foot in the world of philosophy and symbolism (one thing definitely means many other less-tangible things) and one foot in the needy natural (chances are even before you finish reading this you will think of what you'd like to eat for dinner or that you need to use the restroom) , doesn't the question of what we eat deserve the dignity of careful, critical consideration? If what we eat (and therefore support with our dollars) as thinking individuals is cruel or wasteful we must ask ourselves what it means to inhabit this odd space on the food chain. What are we if we eat whatever we feel like eating, or those things with which our culture has become the most comfortable? Its as Jonathan Safran Foer says in his aforementioned book: "To ask 'What is an animal?' ... is inevitably to touch upon how we understand what it means to be us and not them. It is to ask, 'What is a human?'" (p. 46)
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
Going out, coming in
This is how my day started:
It is just after 6am, I'm dumping organic frozen peas onto a shelf and a co-worker turns to me and asks me to please fill the lugs to the top today, "all the way".
It's hard to explain just what our madness and methods entail, but I will say that telling me to fill the lugs "all the way" might have followed the explanation of where we work, and what exactly it is we sell. I'm not sure how I could have survived a year and (almost) a half in this store without knowing to fill the lugs. Later I was informed that we recycle cardboard. I just kept hoping someone would tell me where to put all the money customers kept tossing across the counter on the way out the door!
I am feeling the tiniest bit cynical, its true, and I don't actually believe that my co-worker thinks I don't know to fill the lugs or that I am stupid or incompetent. All the same, I continue to get the eerie suspicion those around me fear that left to my own devices I might behave like a badly trained ape. All this is to say, I'm thinking again about moving out.
Last summer, desperate to find my vocation else-where, I searched frantically through Craigslist each day, hoping to run into a job where I felt one hundred per cent different than I do here. I wanted to feel appreciated and accountable for and to my own individual quirks and limitations. Finding the preschool has been- and I don't say this lightly- a blessing, but a small, odd, and at times painful one. Two hours a week, and do I really even like it anyway, and is it everything I ever, always wanted? Then I toyed with going to school, a place I've felt loved and known and successful in the past. Now that I have decided against this sturdier known avenue, I'm trying to regain my sea-legs and stay at it a bit longer, facing the wide blue. And this is what I've found:
1. I actually like my job. I don't like some of the stress that comes with it, and at times I feel like a complete idiot. I still blush when I talk to my supervisors and discounting a very small minority, most people know me as A. crazy runner and B. getting married. And yet despite all this, I enjoy the work. It's hard, and its good, and its work.
2. I love to run. Not just to race or to jog around the lake (which are both fabulous) but to adventure. Last week I finally ran from my house to Pioneer square, which is downtown, and reminded me of a goal I made for myself ages ago: to run the bus routes with which I'm most familiar. And then three days later I borrowed a bike and rode from Queen Anne to Lake Forest Park on the Burke-Gilman. 28 miles I estimate, which is great!
3. And as much as I love being vegan right now in preparation for this marathon, I can't help but imagine how I'll feel when its over, if I'll keep on. I am a hungry reader in the past few days, and the more I learn, the more seems to be at stake.
In conclusion, though the pressure of vocational direction sometimes weighs heavy on my too-serious heart, it seems that fortuitous circumstance have handed me a solitary spring. With Patrick in school and Christy finishing up her internship, I have what they both can only wistfully consider (as much as I loath it from time to time): hours and hours and hours of free time. And as the evening light slowly, slowly creeps longer, I'm finding myself post-run at a coffee shop drinking tea and reading about eating animals and trying to decide where it is I stand.
So this time I want to leave the grocery store not for comfort or relief, but for wider spaces, more adventure. Not eating animals (and furthermore, realizing that to do so from this point onward without consideration is not possible), has unburied new questions about my working for a corporation that depends on the horrific factory farming outlined in my current reading material. And yet to regret all this contact with food (here and at the food bank) would be a waste in understanding one of the major building blocks (simply because of the magnitude of what I didn't know about selling food that I now interact with daily) of my eating ethics. I imagine when this is all over (what does that even mean?) I'll have quite a lot to say I am convinced of on the matter of eating, selling, and celebrating food.
I am in transit, and I can only hope that (both ideologically and literally) I have a long, long way to go.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Once a runner
"The awful truth would begin to dawn on him: there was no Secret! His days would have to be spent in exactly this manner, give or take a mile or two, for longer than he cared to think about, if he really wanted to see the olive wreath up close. It would simply be the most difficult, heartrending process he would endure in the course of his life."
John L Parker
John L Parker
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Epiphany, part II
Today I made the decision that's been nagging at me for about a month. So its done.
Its the end of January so I suppose it goes without saying that I am restless. This is new for me, this staying here, this not moving out. The rhythms of college are so locked in my bones that the sun shining after a long stretch of cold (and in this case, rain) gives me yen to pack up and change locations. That sweet, forgiving wind sweeps me right to the center of town, prompting my nostalgia, as if I am going somewhere else. But I'm still here, and the affect is a bit like staying at a friends' house too long. We both know its time to go, but neither of us act and thus, we remember the entire event as that awkward aftermath: the hems and haws, the chewing on exhausted topics...
Weeks later, I am still here. Weeks later, I'm still hitting the alarm and walking down Roosevelt to the grocery store. I heat water for tea, I watch television, run and cook my date-and-hemp spelt wrap sandwiches.
Then two mondays ago, a break in the routine. After work, all I want to do is nap, but the sun has burst through the clouds and in order to spend my get-out-and-go energy I grab a pair of shorts(!) and my Asics and hit the road. I don't even have to ask myself where to go. My insides run me straight to the beach, a little over a 5 mile run. There I run up and down the shore, face-to-face with the breath-taking mountain view, amongst other early beach gatherings, gleeful and sweater-clad. After a few minutes I feel the pull again and move on through Ballard, past the seafood restaurants and the locks, then make a right on Shilshole, past the new Trader Joe's, under the Ballard bridge and then grab the Burke-Gilman right after the Fred Myer. From there Fremont is so close I can taste it. As soon as I reach the bridge, I climb the stairs and run the remaining eight minutes to campus, where I meet a breathless Patrick, hurrying into class with a friend. "Hey!" he yells and kisses my cheek on the way in the door. I like that moment in time, and I wanted to save it: I felt like I had somewhere behind me and somewhere ahead and there we were together, synchronized: a student and traveler. I want to spend every day in this way.
However, this little run-in that Monday prompted me to attend class with Pat Thursday. It didn't hurt that the professor was overwhelmingly likable, or that the subject matter was familiar to me, or that Pat and I stayed in class during the break, chattering like parakeets and I remembered again how we met and why we're friends. It didn't hurt that my review at work was less than stellar and I suspect its simply because we're low on funds. And in the end it led me to schedule a meeting with Dr. Strong, the dean of the religion department and the professor behind the grad program to which Patrick currently belongs.
We met today, and I have to say, I wasn't too sure of what to expect. He asked me about the wedding, and though I knew that they had met before I was surprised to learn that he actually attended Princeton with Dr. Hartley, the dean of my own religion department back in Greenville, the one who- if all goes well- will be officiating our wedding. We reminisced, and I mentally walked the old campus and a part of my heart ached for that sort of environment. He showed me a copy of the courses I would take if I studied theology there, a different track than Pat's program in the end but with similar beginnings. I saw myself in the library there and a shiver ran down my spine: oh the red-penned feedback! And then I looked at the carpet under my feet. I felt the flatness of my wallet in my back pocket, thought of what I wanted for my future, for my marriage, for my day-to-day. And then he prayed for me. (this may have been the deal-breaker) And I shook his hand, and I left.
I clutched the water bottle his assistant had offered and the folded pamphlet, and when I skipped down the steps, something came over me and before I knew it I had swooped down behind the building and dropped it into a bush. When I got to Pat's house, I stuck the water bottle between two branches of a tree; I was afraid he would recognize it, and see the prayer like a cloud around my features and I was ashamed.
I said I'd take him to coffee and he asked me, "Where? The one on campus, or the Tully's?" And I thought about it for a while. The coffee on campus: amongst clicking lap tops and thick text books and chattering classmates. "Tully's," I said.
At the coffee shop I told him why I was on campus. "Oh," he said, "So I suppose you want me to get the folder?" I smiled sheepishly, and couldn't help remembering: In our second year at Greenville we took a class together Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. One Tuesday I got to class early, said hello to Pat and dumped my stuff on the chair beside his, then ran outside to meet the guy with whom I was currently enduring a dissolving relationship. We spoke for several minutes, and then yelled and fought and in the end, I never made it back to class. When the hour was up, too embarrassed to return to class to retrieve my things, I headed straight to track practice to stretch with the team. A few minutes before we hit the pavement, Patrick pulled open the doors of the Rec Center, holding my bag and coat.
"Sure," I said, sighing a grin. "That would be nice."
And so its done, and I won't be going to school after all. In some ways I am quite sad, but in other ways I know its right. Greenville was such a special time for me, but it was never forced, and I was always present. And now I strive to continue that trend by being present in my current situation, which is this: running from neighborhood to neighborhood, this colossal question mark slung over my shoulders- for the moment, my only cross to bear.
Its the end of January so I suppose it goes without saying that I am restless. This is new for me, this staying here, this not moving out. The rhythms of college are so locked in my bones that the sun shining after a long stretch of cold (and in this case, rain) gives me yen to pack up and change locations. That sweet, forgiving wind sweeps me right to the center of town, prompting my nostalgia, as if I am going somewhere else. But I'm still here, and the affect is a bit like staying at a friends' house too long. We both know its time to go, but neither of us act and thus, we remember the entire event as that awkward aftermath: the hems and haws, the chewing on exhausted topics...
Weeks later, I am still here. Weeks later, I'm still hitting the alarm and walking down Roosevelt to the grocery store. I heat water for tea, I watch television, run and cook my date-and-hemp spelt wrap sandwiches.
Then two mondays ago, a break in the routine. After work, all I want to do is nap, but the sun has burst through the clouds and in order to spend my get-out-and-go energy I grab a pair of shorts(!) and my Asics and hit the road. I don't even have to ask myself where to go. My insides run me straight to the beach, a little over a 5 mile run. There I run up and down the shore, face-to-face with the breath-taking mountain view, amongst other early beach gatherings, gleeful and sweater-clad. After a few minutes I feel the pull again and move on through Ballard, past the seafood restaurants and the locks, then make a right on Shilshole, past the new Trader Joe's, under the Ballard bridge and then grab the Burke-Gilman right after the Fred Myer. From there Fremont is so close I can taste it. As soon as I reach the bridge, I climb the stairs and run the remaining eight minutes to campus, where I meet a breathless Patrick, hurrying into class with a friend. "Hey!" he yells and kisses my cheek on the way in the door. I like that moment in time, and I wanted to save it: I felt like I had somewhere behind me and somewhere ahead and there we were together, synchronized: a student and traveler. I want to spend every day in this way.
However, this little run-in that Monday prompted me to attend class with Pat Thursday. It didn't hurt that the professor was overwhelmingly likable, or that the subject matter was familiar to me, or that Pat and I stayed in class during the break, chattering like parakeets and I remembered again how we met and why we're friends. It didn't hurt that my review at work was less than stellar and I suspect its simply because we're low on funds. And in the end it led me to schedule a meeting with Dr. Strong, the dean of the religion department and the professor behind the grad program to which Patrick currently belongs.
We met today, and I have to say, I wasn't too sure of what to expect. He asked me about the wedding, and though I knew that they had met before I was surprised to learn that he actually attended Princeton with Dr. Hartley, the dean of my own religion department back in Greenville, the one who- if all goes well- will be officiating our wedding. We reminisced, and I mentally walked the old campus and a part of my heart ached for that sort of environment. He showed me a copy of the courses I would take if I studied theology there, a different track than Pat's program in the end but with similar beginnings. I saw myself in the library there and a shiver ran down my spine: oh the red-penned feedback! And then I looked at the carpet under my feet. I felt the flatness of my wallet in my back pocket, thought of what I wanted for my future, for my marriage, for my day-to-day. And then he prayed for me. (this may have been the deal-breaker) And I shook his hand, and I left.
I clutched the water bottle his assistant had offered and the folded pamphlet, and when I skipped down the steps, something came over me and before I knew it I had swooped down behind the building and dropped it into a bush. When I got to Pat's house, I stuck the water bottle between two branches of a tree; I was afraid he would recognize it, and see the prayer like a cloud around my features and I was ashamed.
I said I'd take him to coffee and he asked me, "Where? The one on campus, or the Tully's?" And I thought about it for a while. The coffee on campus: amongst clicking lap tops and thick text books and chattering classmates. "Tully's," I said.
At the coffee shop I told him why I was on campus. "Oh," he said, "So I suppose you want me to get the folder?" I smiled sheepishly, and couldn't help remembering: In our second year at Greenville we took a class together Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. One Tuesday I got to class early, said hello to Pat and dumped my stuff on the chair beside his, then ran outside to meet the guy with whom I was currently enduring a dissolving relationship. We spoke for several minutes, and then yelled and fought and in the end, I never made it back to class. When the hour was up, too embarrassed to return to class to retrieve my things, I headed straight to track practice to stretch with the team. A few minutes before we hit the pavement, Patrick pulled open the doors of the Rec Center, holding my bag and coat.
"Sure," I said, sighing a grin. "That would be nice."
And so its done, and I won't be going to school after all. In some ways I am quite sad, but in other ways I know its right. Greenville was such a special time for me, but it was never forced, and I was always present. And now I strive to continue that trend by being present in my current situation, which is this: running from neighborhood to neighborhood, this colossal question mark slung over my shoulders- for the moment, my only cross to bear.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Reasons to be (vegan)
Two weeks of eating vegan, and I'm feeling a little loopy. I keep passing Auntie Anne's pretzel shop and Pagliacci's Pizza, and a buzzing starts in my head: like this whole foods initiative is ludicrous, our society just doesn't eat like this, I will be shut out of every social occasion and what do vegans ever even eat anyway?!
celery, hemp flour, flax, quinoa, mango, and a million bananas...
But then I pick up the book that started this out in the first place, Thrive: The vegan Nutrition Guide by Brendan Brazier, and I remind myself that eating whole foods isn't just good for me; its good for everybody.
Brazier, by the way, is a professional Ironman Triathlete, a feat I could only begin to imagine after having run a marathon myself, as an Ironman includes but is not limited to the typical 26.2 mile foot-race. Add several hours of biking and swimming and you've got your guy. And this is the stuff that he eats: This insanely expensive hemp oil, agave, sea vegetables like dulse and nori, "pies" made of sunflower seeds and dates, "pizzas" made of sweet potatoes and beets, and muffins stuffed with millet. To top it off, his thesis generally states that the refined foods we consume as an alternative to his wacky diet stress our bodies to a point of sickness: we can't sleep, we crave stimulants instead of nutrients, we are ill or gain weight or feel depressed and disoriented. As someone who does not enjoy feeling disoriented and would like to run a marathon with greater ease, why the hell not throw a little ground flax in my cereal? I've even convinced Patrick (who has loved millet since his four-month stay in Russia) that sprouting quinoa on a napkin can be fun.
Add this to the environmental perks: approx. 30% less energy used to maintain a plant-based diet, and you really can't go wrong. Refinement is fine when it comes to dinner parties. But for now, for me, I'm giving it a rest.
And I really did have the most delicious pizza last night: sweet potato, sesame seeds, chickpea flour, coconut oil, garlic, basil, and sea salt in a food processor for the crust. Tomato, onion, bell pepper, beet, green onion and oregano for the topping and an incredible marinara sauce. Please ask for the recipes, or better yet, pick up a copy of the book...
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Epiphany, part I
After some wonderful time with my family I'm back to real life, and it seems a wedding is looming before us all. Whose, I'm not sure. Nothing is clear, not yet.
While I know I want the marriage (which is to say, I want it much of the time), the hooplah can just feel so unnecessary sometimes. Like, I do love to throw a good party, but does it really have to be about us? And I suppose the answer is yes, the "us" that encircles my reality anyway, the "us" that is my parents, and dear grandparents and sweet friends of all sizes. But there is something else significant happening here, and I know that also.
Like for one, my sister is having a baby. An event so huge and transformative I feel silly thinking about invitations and outfits at all. But I know also we all love silly and so I've somehow tricked Christy into going wedding dress shopping with me on Wednesday. Once I find some cash.
The point is, life ka-thumps onward- even though you've always been much wiser than this, a small, idiotic part of you still thinks getting married will be this very interesting turning point in your life, but its not. Pat still has school and we still struggle to find time and space in which to connect. I still spend long afternoons looking for a hobby; Christy made it into Oxford, and is making plans to sell our beloved piano and leaving her Gilmore Girls to me (hurrah!). A co-worker of mine has passed away and tomorrow at noon I meet my friends to head to his funeral. Dear friends of mine are engaged. I'm training for the marathon, and have been flirting with going vegan.
Oh, my God, I've never needed a slice of Old Amsterdam more. Thank the powers that beer is made of plants; I'm starving for some comfort.
The hour is too late; the lights keep flickering. I can hear rain and merrymakers on my roof. They're singing in unison, and somewhere a radio blares bass that is so far from here I can only feel it in the pillow that rests between my back and the wall. Tonight everything in my life feels large and close like a dream. I wonder if the doors rattle every night in the witching hour or only if I'm awake to hear it.
I think about our baby, a fuzzy little peach, about my co-worker who has finally finished the race, the contents of my room: the orange scarf, the wicker chair, that Boston cap, a painting of a church, a spoon, a light, a map, a bowl. My friends that line the wall above my bed: Ron, Ginny, Hermione, Luna.
While I know I want the marriage (which is to say, I want it much of the time), the hooplah can just feel so unnecessary sometimes. Like, I do love to throw a good party, but does it really have to be about us? And I suppose the answer is yes, the "us" that encircles my reality anyway, the "us" that is my parents, and dear grandparents and sweet friends of all sizes. But there is something else significant happening here, and I know that also.
Like for one, my sister is having a baby. An event so huge and transformative I feel silly thinking about invitations and outfits at all. But I know also we all love silly and so I've somehow tricked Christy into going wedding dress shopping with me on Wednesday. Once I find some cash.
The point is, life ka-thumps onward- even though you've always been much wiser than this, a small, idiotic part of you still thinks getting married will be this very interesting turning point in your life, but its not. Pat still has school and we still struggle to find time and space in which to connect. I still spend long afternoons looking for a hobby; Christy made it into Oxford, and is making plans to sell our beloved piano and leaving her Gilmore Girls to me (hurrah!). A co-worker of mine has passed away and tomorrow at noon I meet my friends to head to his funeral. Dear friends of mine are engaged. I'm training for the marathon, and have been flirting with going vegan.
Oh, my God, I've never needed a slice of Old Amsterdam more. Thank the powers that beer is made of plants; I'm starving for some comfort.
The hour is too late; the lights keep flickering. I can hear rain and merrymakers on my roof. They're singing in unison, and somewhere a radio blares bass that is so far from here I can only feel it in the pillow that rests between my back and the wall. Tonight everything in my life feels large and close like a dream. I wonder if the doors rattle every night in the witching hour or only if I'm awake to hear it.
I think about our baby, a fuzzy little peach, about my co-worker who has finally finished the race, the contents of my room: the orange scarf, the wicker chair, that Boston cap, a painting of a church, a spoon, a light, a map, a bowl. My friends that line the wall above my bed: Ron, Ginny, Hermione, Luna.
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