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the absence of love

2009-10-18 - 9:16 a.m.

I recently watched the movie "Peaceable Kingdom" again, and after 2 emotional meltdowns at precisely the same moments I had them last time, I immediately stopped eating beef and chicken. Again. Eventually, I'll make up my mind. Overall, I think most meat is unpalatable, but whenever I eat it, for the most part I pretend it's something else, like an illusion.

Almost without exception I do this, especially with chicken and turkey, so I was glad to give them up again. I know it doesn't make a lot of sense to eat something you're only merely tolerating, but then neither do some butch lesbians who say they hate men but insist on looking and dressing like them. Could be social conditioning.

During the time I was a practicing vegan in the past, dining with my family could be especially painful. One winter I flew back to NY and went out to eat to an Italian place with one of my brothers and his family. The food was really good, especially if you were eating it, not just remembering eating it. I was only eating raw uncooked food at the time, and so I vaguely remembered that the place didn't have avocados, so I brought one from the store and put it in my salad right there at the table. I could have sucked it up and ate the lettuce by itself, but it was really cold outside and I didn't have a lot of fat holding me together as it was, as clearly evidenced by the looks on my nephews' faces after they hugged me hello and stared blankly through me like I was an apparition. I only slightly embarrassed the remainder of my family when the waiter did a triple take after he saw the avocado on my salad, looking like a second rate criminal accomplice. But war is not the only thing people have to prepare for around these parts.

Anyway, my boss lent me that movie back then because a) he was a vegetarian, b) I was a new vegetarian and c) I think he felt that together we could enforce some kind of New World Order at the company.

"Here, take this home, and then we're going to make everybody watch it."

There were no vegetarians at the company, and I'm sure there still aren't. I took the movie home and watched it, and my heart fell out to where I couldn't put it back. There is a scene in the movie where a cow is being reluctantly dragged away at a factory, and I'm not kidding, I see his little helpless face in my mind every time I hear a reference to red meat. I love this cow, and I can't pretend I'm not eating him. It was such a beautiful and sad movie, but the farm animals in it began to remind me of humans, and the humans in it were really convincing, most likely because they were telling the truth. This time around, I made sure my husband would be willing to endure it too. He didn't cry, but he has since altered his diet somewhat.

Ten minutes after watching the movie I did a quick-pose and said to him:

"Who am I?"

"You're - a chicken that's just been saved from the hatchery!"

He's really good at techie stuff, as well as guessing my character imitations.

As a possible side effect of seeing this movie again, I've become very active in my own community, taking photos of our neighboring river, where "someone" has been decapitating little goat babies and roosters and leaving them there. I don't pretend to understand it, but I do tell people about it. Nobody should have to be decapitated for the sake of religion, or for any other reason. Plus, as someone pointed out - it's littering. I've started a new blog which chronicles this mess, but it's really depressing, not at all like this one, so uplifting and airy and light.

When I went back to work that following Monday, I began to see some of the farmers from the movie showing up to meet with our boss in those familiar blue overalls they wore in the film - it was cute because this company I worked at was a Financial Services Management company, whatever in the hell that was, and no one wore overalls to work unless they were joking. They only wore sweatpants or evening gowns, with very little variance. The farmers, I think were gaining support for their farms and rescue missions, and since my boss was an animal rights activist and public speaker, it was a synergistic utopian team. He also had a few other projects, one in particular where he flew animals into Los Angeles from all over the country who were abused or broken, and paid for their surgery and other expenses to put them back together. Dissimilarly, our company's main function was to act as helpmate to 30 outside Independent Salespeople, trying to put them back together again, but many were too far broken and some even seemed to prefer it that way. We processed and collected on their sales orders even though their customers usually realized they'd been scammed pretty quickly after buying from them. But it was already too late - our Warehouse had shipped the orders that made it through without being cancelled, and then the task was to audit the Salespeople so they weren't as likely to get raided again or arrested next time, while they ran their boiler rooms from somewhere in Hollywood. Back inside, our own company really did have a nice union of the most unique coworkers I've ever come across, because a) half of them were amazing musicians who had worked there for decades and would only play their music at the company Christmas party, b )another 25% were either really nice family people or active drug addicts and c) the remainder were completely entertaining characters, in a 1982 sort of way. Most of the outside Salespeople were ex-musicians, and a few had some success in the eighties and were still pretty good.

I had a huge birthday party at one of the Sales guy's houses a couple of years ago, and asked him if his band would play. I forget what he was doing in the eighties, but his newest group was a surprisingly awesome and spot-on Led Zeppelin cover band. About one hundred of my friends showed up too, some of them with their own instruments. It would've been a great party if you were watching it on television, from another country. Some of my girlfriends set up a nice bar outside so that I could drink appropriately after a 12 year hiatus. That wasn't my best idea. Many of the Sales guy's friends showed up too. It was like a musical show down.

None of my friends' styles matched the house band
And my friend's guitar pics were the nails on his hand
Then he and his brother played bright like the sun
And jokingly spoke to the guests while they'd strum
Stream of consciousness, where someone says
the very first thing that pops into their heads
Like, "We live in Topanga, is that a joint in your hand?
Now please check out our awesome band"
Then the Zeppelin guys would get back on guitar
While the angry remainder came inside from the bar
Donnie Darko wall leaners with brooding demeanors
And only pot smoke in their hearts
Or lungs
On that night, the tensions were tight
But the pants were so much tighter

A friend of mine felt he should go up and join the Zeppelin band and play harmonica and sing along, and while I thought he did really well, I don't think the band's lead singer thought so, glaring at him from the couch. Needless to say it was a clash of the vibes, and
I couldn't possibly get drunk enough to tune any of it out. Externally, it was a hit, and probably people had a good time. But for all of it, I have to say it was one of the worst parties I've ever attended. I was grateful to the host, but more grateful to leave, and gave him a nice Vaporizer to thank him. Naturally he already had one.

Sometimes everything lines up. It's perfect, because you can feel it. You look around and you're in an abandoned town somewhere 1000 miles from home where life is falling apart and living is desperate, and maybe you're not, so you hang out a little to make it better. You feel like everything is okay because you're supposed to be there, drinking tap water and eating moss. And then some other times, you end up at a perfectly constructed event, where everything is in its place, and glasses sparkle and people have hip threads, undeniable talent and irreverent eyes; but for the life of you, you can't connect with any of it. And doing that enough, you could so easily lose your head.

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