trixel

"There ain't no Pontius Pilate
There ain't no Judas Priest
There's just a lump of rotting meat
Officially pronounced deceased

Oh yeah, baby, where do you go when you die?
Where do you go when you die?
You're not supposed to ask this question
You're supposed to be here now
And if you have good karma
You won't come back as a piece of British beef

Where do you go when you die?
Nowhere
Where do you go when you die?
Nowhere

When you die"

-Where Do You Go When You Die by Robyn Hitchcock

God I love Robyn Hitchcock, even if I don't share his atheist views.

As I write this I am devouring an unfortunate cow. I had a late night craving for animal. This may not be unusual to many. It is a relatively new development for me. For eight years I was a vegetarian. I ate cheese and milk, but no eggs or moving animals. I ate fungi, which my ex always found a little dodgy. He sees mushrooms as sentient. Well he and I see pretty much everything as sentient.

I stopped eating animals originally because of the disconnection I felt between the animal's life and my consumption of it. I was also kinda weirded out by people's odd reaction to my aunt bringing moose to eat, for example.

They couldn't, wouldn't eat something that someone they knew had killed. Killed to eat. Something that had lived outside and had a decent life probably, as opposed to something which had been reduced to a slab of meat on a styrofoam plate many miles from where it likely had a short and miserable life. Yes, cow. I am sorry your kind have this as your life.

But you are tasty.

This divorce between where the animal was born in blood and lived, and died, and where it landed on this styrofoam chilled in a supermarket unnerved me.

I had no idea how it lived, if it had any moments of joy, what it was fed, what shit was injected into it, how it died.

I felt pushed to being a vegetarian when I realized that I wouldn't have the guts to kill a lot of the animals I was eating. It seemed wrong to enjoy the flesh when I hadn't overcome my repulsion to killing it.

These were the reasons that for eight years I didn't eat anything but tofu, pulses, veggies, brown rice and milk.

Two years ago I succumbed to eating fish again. Fish I have caught, gutted and eaten, and I rationalized that fish live free.

I started having incredible muscle cramps last year. I think my lack of vitamin D from being a desk slave was causing me to have trouble processing calcium, and then potassium, leading to cramping. I started craving meat.

I was travelling with my ex-fiancee in upstate ny. We stopped for dinner, and I spontaneously decided I wanted animal. My ex-fiancee, an omnivore, looked at me in horror. He told the waiter I hadn't eaten meat for 8 years and the waiter tried to dissuade me from eating a rare steak. He practically made me sign a waiver.

I felt sluggish afterwards and I still do almost everytime I indulge.

Now I'm back to where I started: feeling guilty about consuming something whose life I had no part in. I wonder if I will ever hunt an animal for food.

I'm fascinated by the consumption of life by life. I'm confused by it.