Being Vegetarian

Source: Dreamtime.com

A few years back... about five to be precise, I just stopped eating meat.

Now I'd never really wanted to eat meat, but growing up in a household that did meant that sometimes I really didn't have a choice.  Plus-- who am I to deny a delicately prepared pastrami hot dog, amirite?

Still, I was vegetarian for a solid three years without missing the taste of fried chicken or steak or bacon.

And then I started getting curious.  I wondered how meat tasted, it seemed like such a foreign thing to ingest at that point.  And though a lot of meat eaters I knew couldn't roll their eyes far up enough when I say this, it really was.  The juices of the meat, the texture, the taste even, was something that almost brand new for me, after three years of abstaining.

So fast forward to now... and I am plagued with the question, why do I still eat a mainly vegetarian diet?  Every so often, especially when it seems the food is running low and its that time of the week again (for grocery shopping), I will have myself some meat though I usually stay away from red meat still.

I have been asked that question before, as though people simply cannot comprehend why I would give up meat - unless I was some sort of animal rights activist or had a medical condition - and are baffled when I either say, I just don't like meat... I don't really see the point in eating it.

Apparently that is a reason that just doesn't fly these days.

Still, it wasn't flying with me either.  Lately it seems that only out of habit do I order the portobello mushroom pasta instead of the Bangers and Mash.

So why exactly did I become vegetarian?

The more I think about it, the more I realize a few things.

1) I feel so much healthier, clear-headed, and ready for the day when I not only abstain from meat, but when I fill myself instead with bright veggies, eggs, and fruits.

2) Knowing the state of the U.S. agribusiness when it comes to meat, I think I've grown uncomfortable with supporting an industry that has turned animals into little more than atrophied, lifeless meat factories.  Not only from an ethical standpoint, but from a selfish one too: why would I want to eat something that I knew was not healthy when it lived?

Source: apedonkey.com

3)  Philosophically, I believe that humans - especially those privileged enough to NOT live in food deserts and to have enough income to comfortably support themselves - have a duty to the rest of the natural world to live in sustainable, healthy ways.

Yes, it is a natural thing to eat meat for many creatures in the animal kingdom, and it is an unfortunate aspect of nature that the world is often kill or be killed.

However, instinct is also a natural thing: the fight or flight response for example.  And yet it is a characteristic of humanity that if we so choose, we are able to control ourselves and ignore instinct except when it is absolutely vital to our survival.  It's how civilization is able to be -- you know -- a real thing.  In the same way, I don't believe it is necessary for us to kill other animals to sustain our lives or even our comfortable lifestyles.  And I certainly don't believe that it is necessary to imprison and essentially torture our livestock, placing them in unsanitary conditions and breeding them so that they are morbidly unhealthy throughout their lives.

The human intellect is and has always been a source of great power for our species.  And like Uncle Ben said, "With great power comes great responsibility."  I believe that on an individual level, being conscious of what I put in my body, where it came from and how it lived, is a fantastic way of rising up to this responsibility.

Vegetarianism isn't for everyone, and I know that.  I'm not a militant vegetarian trying to press everyone to join the club or die (though sometimes I feel like I should act that way, just to counteract the many people who think I'm insane, unhealthy or a threat to their identity for not eating meat lol).

Still, for those who don't understand why anyone would bother to reject the glorious internet god that is Bacon, I hope that maybe my ramblings will have shed a little light on the matter. :)

(>^_^)>#

Whitewash

It's this paint that has been sent
to seep into my pores and color the sight
of ignorant observers,
who think me distant from myself
by virtue of the money they believe
is not my own
the suburban home
that is not my own

the social status
the future
the potential
the possibilities I hold for
the dreams I nurtured inside myself

which
they say
cannot be mine, unless -

I am somehow distant from myself
from the impoverished heritage
that this brown skin has marked me to inherit.

That I am whitewashed,
a shell of my ancestors' strength,
a feeble mask that at first glance
seems like black
cracked out and pregnant
lost in innercity alleyways
and filled to the brim with
barbaric sex

until they see the glimmer of humanity
in my eyes, the hope, the intelligence -

this is not the trait of the black woman,
they must say to themselves,
who do not understand what it means to be
black woman, black human

so therefore she
with brilliant speech
and witty mind

must be some sort of divine
heaven sent nigger wench,
colored but still somehow
with the power to assert herself
here, where the state necessitates that her beauty
be doused in cum and white paint

until her very essence has been effaced.

Somehow she, so trod upon
by the ignorant eyes of those so blinded
by their own projected fears,
still manages to be human,
humane to those who inspired her tears.

So she holds her tongue while the ignorant man
smiles and tells her that her fertile river clay color,
her power, her filled with every color,
filled up with the starry universe color - so offending
to his senseless soul -

is made bearable by erasing it all.

Free-Write: Magick and Other Unbelievable Things

The trick with magick is this:  for it to work, it must be real to you.  There is no other way.  The wonder of magick is that it allows one to call up previously experienced emotions, physical conditions, etc. with no real stimulus except one's own will.

And through that, to pull into one's reality something that was not there before.

But there is no such thing as a free lunch, and everything has its price.

The price of magick is the ritual itself.  The mental, physical, and emotional exertion required to make something real to you.  To cause something to exist in your reality.

Of course, like the creation of anything else, the components seem lacking, incomplete, mundane or even useless.  It is in their completed application, their final form, that allows it to exist; the magic.

I believe that I have been trying to explain away this inherent paradox - that if something is not already real, then it cannot 'become' real - when in reality the truth lay in this paradox itself.  Witchcraft, the act of creating.. anything, magick, magic, hypnosis, positive (or negative) thinking, etc. ...like anythinge else we experience, it is real because we accept it as being real.

But we must also accept that there are layers of reality, some of which cannot be experienced by others, and some of which others have conditioned themselves - for better or for worse - not to accept.

Finally, there is this conception that one definition of magick - that sort of Hocus Pocus, Halloween, crooked-nose witch, stereotyped magick... which I also have never experienced and may never will - cannot exist.  That it is simply not real.  Moreso, that there is a strict binary between what we believe to be real at the present moment, and what we believe is false.  But we must also remember that we have made great strides in the past century with electronics, weapons, and the like that many before us would have called impossible, including and especially the 'miracle' of airplane flight - which many of us take for granted to this day.

The point of this all is that our reality is always changing.  Our nature is as inherently ignorant beings, and as such we are always searching for what is truth, discovering it in new forms every year, and finding ourselves suddenly able to do things we as a people previously thought impossible.

There is no need to immediately attack that which one doesn't believe, but instead to educate oneself on what one believes to be ridiculous, why people believe it, what others experienced, etc.  Then to come back and to question one's own beliefs if it is found to be important.  There is no need to fear the testing of one's own truths, because if it turns out your truth was indeed false, then you will have succeeded in deconstructing one more misconception that hovers in our social world, and colors the way we see the world around us.

And if it was true, whatever idea you clung to? Congratulations, you were - for the moment - correct. :)

(>^_^)>#