i became a vegetarian when i was twelve years old before experimenting with veganism on & off. my motives were strongly philosophical at the time rooted in a deep respect for all animal lifeforms & planetary symbiosis. over the years my politics have evolved then devolved at convenience but i've not eaten a creature from the land since. i still stand true to the overriding ethos of vegetarianism despite my fall from puritanical grace.
from time to time for a couple of decades now i eat seafood which was spawned from incredible cravings when my vegan pregnant self started experiencing uncontrollable oyster cravings. it was the zinc deficiency which got me in the end. if anyone has been around a pregnant woman in deep set craving mode you know to a/get out of her way and b/go procure current object of obsession forthwith. i never looked back & slowly fell down the slippery slide.
these photos above are of my mother with her grandparents in the early 1950s. two year olds with guns... they don't make them like that anymore. or perhaps they do. just not around here. i guess this must be pre-barbie who wasn't released by mattel until 1959. a good seven years too late for my mother. what can a girl do instead but dress up dead bunnies?
although this seems a gross separation from my reality in fact it is not so. only last week i carried a still pulsing rabbit off the country roads which i had inadvertently hit. the residual clumped guts still stain my washed shorts as its innards spilled over my legs as i wailed to the sky, tears streaming for my murderous role. we gently carried it to the grass in the darkness, measured its pulse & between the two of us in the car stroked it gently before breaking the neck [it took a while to work out how to do it].
needless to say i forgot to pose for a photo.
Perhaps this is a lesson that we are all killers, no matter how much we try to avoid it,we're genetically designed to kill for sustenance, safety and convenience. Or maybe it was just bad luck.
ReplyDelete