The Mindful Carnivore Read Online Free Page B
Author: Tovar Cerulli
am free.
One evening, leaving class and stepping out onto Eleventh Street near the corner of Sixth Avenue, I noticed an unusually bright streetlamp out of the corner of my eye. Looking up, I saw the full moon and realized I hadn’t seen stars in months.
Two years later, I was in love. My sweetheart, Catherine, and I were moving in together and had rented a place among New York’s Finger Lakes, an hour from her hometown.
Leaving my father’s house for the last time, I sorted through my things. I had gotten rid of my .22 and my father’s few firearms by then; guns had no place in the life of mindful compassion I intended to lead. I still had my Jennings bow, though, and decided to give it to a friend.
I still had my old tackle box, too. Figuring it might be useful for some other purpose, I kept the box, and also the retractable tape I had used to measure trout before jotting their lengths in my logbook. Most of the rest I tossed out, including a few bedraggled lures and a handful of rusty Eagle Claw hooks in paper-and-plastic sleeves. They smelled of salmon eggs.
My fillet knife I sent to Willie.
Half a decade into being a vegan, I couldn’t have fathomed eating flesh again. And I certainly couldn’t have pictured myself eight years later, plunking my first freshly eviscerated mammal down onto the kitchen counter.
2
Man the Gardener
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent’s meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain.
—Isaiah 65:25
V egetarians take a lot of ribbing from meat eaters.
Bumper sticker: “Eat low on the food chain. Barbecue a vegetarian.”
Wisecrack: “If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?”
Personally, I didn’t get much flak. My newfound love, Cath, had been a vegetarian longer than I had—ah, domestic harmony. She had never gone as far as veganism, but once we got together she acquiesced to my dietary zeal. Mostly. She never quite gave up the occasional cup of coffee with half-and-half, or cocoa with whipped cream. Nor did I ever quite manage to say no when she offered me a sip. (A sip, I found, is a highly ambiguous measure of volume, especially when the coffee or cocoa is good.)
With only the rare gibe, our families accepted our diets and refrained from subjecting us to nutritional tirades or exasperating questions about protein. And our friends were vegetarians, or meat eaters who understood. They got it.
By and large, though, American meat eaters do not seem to get it.
Once, during a cross-country trip, Cath and I stopped to eat at a truck-stop diner in rural Louisiana. The vegan options were, shall we say, limited. French fries, perhaps, or a little bowl of iceberg lettuce. I asked the waitress if we could get the spaghetti without the meatballs. She looked up from pad and pen, regarding me as though she had just realized I was a green-skinned, three-fingered, bug-eyed alien.
“You don’t want the meat?!? ” Her holler was generous, inviting the other patrons to share her incredulity and turn to stare. They obliged.
There’s the constant suggestion—whether made in jest or in earnest, with good humor or with malice—that vegetarians aren’t quite right in the head. That a diet composed of rice, veggies, and tofu must be a notion that was hatched a few decades ago in California, the Land of Fruits and Nuts, inspired by the inhalation of something that filled Flower Children with warm, fuzzy feelings for all beings in the cosmos and also gave them the munchies.
Vegetarianism, however, isn’t some recent, wacky dietary fad. You can find its roots in the ancient East, in the Indian religious traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism. All three emphasize teachings on compassion and nonviolence. In varying degrees, major schools of thought within each hold up vegetarianism as an ideal. Eating flesh, these traditions suggest, not only causes
One evening, leaving class and stepping out onto Eleventh Street near the corner of Sixth Avenue, I noticed an unusually bright streetlamp out of the corner of my eye. Looking up, I saw the full moon and realized I hadn’t seen stars in months.
Two years later, I was in love. My sweetheart, Catherine, and I were moving in together and had rented a place among New York’s Finger Lakes, an hour from her hometown.
Leaving my father’s house for the last time, I sorted through my things. I had gotten rid of my .22 and my father’s few firearms by then; guns had no place in the life of mindful compassion I intended to lead. I still had my Jennings bow, though, and decided to give it to a friend.
I still had my old tackle box, too. Figuring it might be useful for some other purpose, I kept the box, and also the retractable tape I had used to measure trout before jotting their lengths in my logbook. Most of the rest I tossed out, including a few bedraggled lures and a handful of rusty Eagle Claw hooks in paper-and-plastic sleeves. They smelled of salmon eggs.
My fillet knife I sent to Willie.
Half a decade into being a vegan, I couldn’t have fathomed eating flesh again. And I certainly couldn’t have pictured myself eight years later, plunking my first freshly eviscerated mammal down onto the kitchen counter.
2
Man the Gardener
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent’s meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain.
—Isaiah 65:25
V egetarians take a lot of ribbing from meat eaters.
Bumper sticker: “Eat low on the food chain. Barbecue a vegetarian.”
Wisecrack: “If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?”
Personally, I didn’t get much flak. My newfound love, Cath, had been a vegetarian longer than I had—ah, domestic harmony. She had never gone as far as veganism, but once we got together she acquiesced to my dietary zeal. Mostly. She never quite gave up the occasional cup of coffee with half-and-half, or cocoa with whipped cream. Nor did I ever quite manage to say no when she offered me a sip. (A sip, I found, is a highly ambiguous measure of volume, especially when the coffee or cocoa is good.)
With only the rare gibe, our families accepted our diets and refrained from subjecting us to nutritional tirades or exasperating questions about protein. And our friends were vegetarians, or meat eaters who understood. They got it.
By and large, though, American meat eaters do not seem to get it.
Once, during a cross-country trip, Cath and I stopped to eat at a truck-stop diner in rural Louisiana. The vegan options were, shall we say, limited. French fries, perhaps, or a little bowl of iceberg lettuce. I asked the waitress if we could get the spaghetti without the meatballs. She looked up from pad and pen, regarding me as though she had just realized I was a green-skinned, three-fingered, bug-eyed alien.
“You don’t want the meat?!? ” Her holler was generous, inviting the other patrons to share her incredulity and turn to stare. They obliged.
There’s the constant suggestion—whether made in jest or in earnest, with good humor or with malice—that vegetarians aren’t quite right in the head. That a diet composed of rice, veggies, and tofu must be a notion that was hatched a few decades ago in California, the Land of Fruits and Nuts, inspired by the inhalation of something that filled Flower Children with warm, fuzzy feelings for all beings in the cosmos and also gave them the munchies.
Vegetarianism, however, isn’t some recent, wacky dietary fad. You can find its roots in the ancient East, in the Indian religious traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism. All three emphasize teachings on compassion and nonviolence. In varying degrees, major schools of thought within each hold up vegetarianism as an ideal. Eating flesh, these traditions suggest, not only causes
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