In Nicaragua about to feast on a big plate of fried pork fatI had a dream recently that I'm sure Freud would have a field day with. It was about chickens, and it was after I'd just consumed a large plate of fried chicken for dinner. For those of you imagining a peaceful pastoral scene, think again. This was no dream suitable to be shown on Animal Planet. The dream involved me, chickens and some sort of post-modern abattoir. Yes, that's right there is a worse job out there than my former job as an IT Consultant. In this dream I had to grab the chickens by the neck (two or three at a time), and place them in a plexiglass box. I then had to watch as they were systematically electrocuted. You know those horror movies where they go for an extreme close-up of the victims face just before she gets killed? This was one of those movies, and I was the deranged serial killer who zapped the chickens to death. Let me just say that chickens have faces that convey pain very well. I can still hear them screaming.
Like the good Freudian student that I am, I know this dream must be linked to my childhood. Everything is linked to some childhood pain isn't it? I didn't have to plumb far through the depths of my mind to discover the long-repressed memory - year: 1989, place: grandmother's porch, incident: chicken slaughter. My grandmother used to keep a small coop of chickens on her porch in Malaysia. I remember gazing at them through their wire cage, watching as they pecked at grain and wrinkling my nose at their stinky poop. I knew my grandmother kept these chickens to eat, but I'd never actually witnessed her killing one. All I knew was that one day there would be one less chicken in the coop, and a big fat bird on the table for dinner. The slaughtering process was a secret one that occurred between grandma and the chicken. That is until the fateful morning I saw grandma kill a chicken. If I recall correctly, I was playing some inane chasing game with my cousin and ended up running on to the porch. There I saw grandma, one hand around the chicken's neck and the other hand firmly grasping a cleaver. Before I had time to scream/run back inside/beg her to stop, she'd brought the blade to the chicken's neck and in one swift flick of her wrist sliced off it's head. I remember blood, matted feathers, and inexplicably that my grandma was wearing brown flowered pajamas.
The incident with my grandmother occurred twenty years ago, so why is it that I am now only having these dreams? I blame Ruth Ozeki and Lester Brown for triggering my subconscious. Ruth Ozeki is famous for her book "My Year of Meats" which Newsweek describes as
"a sexy and funny cross-cultural tale of two seemingly disparate women that... leaves you hungry for whatever Ozeki cooks up next." I'd be the first to admit that I love books about food - My Life in France by Julia Child? Check. Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes? Check. French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Fork and Corkscrew by Peter Mayle? Check, Check, Check. I bought Ozeki's book expecting a romantic tale involving eating in Japan and perhaps falling in love with a handsome Japanese man along the way. Boy was I wrong! Ms. Ozeki is one cunning, sizzling, bloody writer (and I say that in the most tender of ways). In one scene from the book we follow the protoganist through a slaughterhouse, watch a cow get knifed through the throat, and learn that the still-pumping heart muscle causes the blood to gush out in rhythmic spurts. McDonalds anyone? Lester Brown may not employ such sizzling visuals but his book is equally as disturbing. In "Eco-Economy" Brown lays out some scary statistics about how the consumption and production of protein has led to overgrazing of rangelands, overfishing, extinction of plant and animal species, dust storms, water deficit, deforestation, the list goes on and on. Childhood trauma + Ozeki's lusty visuals + Brown's irrefutable statistics = one big case for vegetarianism.
So I've talked about the pros of becoming vegetarian, what about the cons? I only have one word to say - pork belly (ok that was more like two words). Have you seen those reality cooking shows where they ask contestants to cook their "last supper"? ie. the one thing they would like to eat before they die? I know exactly what I'd want to eat - pork belly. My mother spends hours in the kitchen cooking this traditional Hakka dish, and the result is thick slabs of pork fat that explode in your mouth in deliciousness. This dish is more tasty than Pierre Herme's macarons, more mouth-watering than Thomas Keller's bone marrow and don't even compare it to Joel Robuchon's pork belly! In my mind it is the king of all dishes, the Oscar of porks, the Grammy of pork cuts. A friend once said that eating pork is like having sex - once you go there, you never go back. If so, my mother's pork belly is one great lay.
Yet, the faces of those chickens come back to me. Their small beady eyes implore me to set them free and try as I might I cannot get those screams out of my head. Can I, pork-loving enthusiast, become a bona fide vegetarian? Does this mean I'll have to become all crunchy granola, grow dreadlocks, not shower and have bad breath? "All myths," my friend Louie told me as he bit into his spinach burrito. I could not help but notice that Louie was dressed in what looked suspiciously like hemp and had hair in desperate need of a combthrough. "When you give up meat you feel much more attuned to nature," he said. "When I swim in the ocean and the fishes swim next to me, it's like we're communing with each other." Yes he really said that, and yes he does sound like a crazy hippie. Fortunately his wife interrupted him and offered a more desirable view of vegetarianism. "It was our neighbor who convinced us," she said. "He doesn't eat any meat and grows his own vegetables. He's been doing this for years, the man is 82 and he can out-jog me." Eighty-two and still jogging? That sounded like a pretty good proposition. "And get this," she continued. "He uses his own shit as compost."
Human shit as compost aside, I've realized that the only way to assuage my guilt and keep those nightmares at bay is to give vegetarianism a try. At least for a year, if not more. My thorough research (ok more like google) has shown that the easiest way is to start with red meat, then move on to pork (*sigh*), chicken and then seafood. So it is with great trepidation, some hope, and a naive notion that this may somehow improve my health and happiness, that I begin my year of no meats.
