My slow start to my day includes sitting here gnawing on the leg of a rooster I killed for meat yesterday.
Watching the video was actually much more emotional for me than doing it.
I think that illuminates some things for me, including how tender and anxious I am about how I am perceived by other people from the outside, but also gives me insight into what I was thinking while I was doing it.
Mostly I was thinking DEAR SHIT DON’T FUCK THIS UP and imagining some poor half dead chicken sputtering around after I failed to break his neck.
That’s not what happened but as it turns out they kinda.. sputter around anyway.
I was also thinking about his long life, about the meat industry, about how most roosters are chucked live in a grinder by the time they’re old enough to be determined boys.
Being this close to my food is intense. I had guidance, but I plucked him and gutted him and sectioned him and pressure cooked him myself. I can see why some people wouldn’t have the inclination toward it. In fact, I thought I probably wouldn’t be able to eat the meat once the killing was my responsibility.
I thought wrong.
I don’t want to not eat meat because I am disgusted and scared. Plants feel us eating them, too. Life feeds on life. That is the nature of living. It is not avoidable. What is avoidable is the horrible way it’s done, and the degree that it is done.
With agriculture and meat raising in the state it’s in, it’s pretty much impossible to eat intentionally unless it’s from your own back yard. So then it ends up being checks and balances and what’s tolerable and what isn’t. Such a pain in the ass. Especially when, like me, you don’t have a back yard.
I keep thinking more and more that I am wasting my time in social justice. All I’m doing is figuring out more eloquent ways to complain about the systems that keep existing. Lots of people are doing that better than I am. I need to keep working on figuring out ways around them.
How can I live in a van in a way that doesn’t feel like I’m raping the planet?
How can I cook without a kitchen?
How can I continue make MY music and still keep shedding industrialized habits?
So many thinks.
Thank you, Mr. Rooster.