I don’t know how to articulate this, but I’ll give it a shot.
Recently, I was standing in my sister’s kitchen and she was cooking something for her family for dinner. There was no part of it that didn’t include animal protein. She asked me to eat (like she always does, as though I don’t eat enough) and I explained the problem to her. She couldn’t understand how or why I would have to avoid all animal protein. She was increasingly baffled with each moment.
She said: “What on earth can you eat?”
My oldest niece who was standing in the kitchen overhearing said, “Do you photosynthesize?” ([Smile.] She’s a smart kid.)
I said, “I guess I’m vegan now?”
My niece looked amused. My sister looked scared. I laughed.
“You’re kidding?” my sister asked.
“No, I’m not kidding,” I said.
“Why are you laughing?” My niece asked.
“Because you guys are cute.”
The tension broke and they laughed.
I went off meat a while ago because I became convinced that animal protein is bad for me. For about ten days, I ate nothing but raw foods. After that, I was newly and abruptly intolerant of animal protein. This includes dairy products. It actually makes me sick to eat it now. I’ve done several experiments all with the same result. I don’t know why.
I’ve been surrendering lately to the not knowing. My agent is submitting my novel to publishers and I don’t know. I can give so much joy to my dogs just by walking out the door then right back in again and I don’t know. Atoms and molecules are reduced by the addition of electrons and I don’t know. Ice turns to water turns to air and it all has a charge and I have no clue. There are unfathomable motivations behind the cosmos and, guess what? I don’t know.
My theory is that nobody knows; everybody has theories. Isn’t that what science is? Consider the periodic table. It’s a chart representing everything that exists. Everything real. So where is reverence in that chart? Where is sorrow? Where is that one late night when I was maybe eight and I went from my bed to find my mom only to be stopped by a translucent little boy with the quilt on the windowsill showing through his smile?
What I know is like this: I’m half blind at dusk and there are dusk colored crumbs barely visible to me but occasionally lit by the moon, beckoning me in a direction. It’s easy to doubt their existence. It’s easy to move in another direction.
The streets are wet today and the cracks, veins-like, filled with water. The trees are all sparsely sorrowful and everything adds to the harsh chill in the air. And all the while, in Australia, there are people getting ready to have lunch because it’s tomorrow, high noon. People trying to stay cool because it’s so hot there and the sun is so blinding. Because it’s summer there.
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter: Birth, Life, Dying Death.
It’s all happening all at once right now on the planet. And right now is also tomorrow is also yesterday is also every time.
Sunlight bursts its way through a cloud glutted sky to get to a blade of grass. The grasses have chloroplasts for stomachs and they eat sunlight. Cows eat grasses to fuel mammary glands and make milk. Milk turns to cheese and tops pizzas. We consume life for our food. Death feeds life. Life progresses relentlessly toward death. Babies come thick already with history. We emerge from a wall of fog only to rush headlong straight into a wall of fog.
But yet, there are the dusk colored breadcrumbs sparking in the light. What are those? And what will happen if I follow them?
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