Hazelfaern Again

I originally wrote this as a response to a comment on VRF (Vegan Represent Forums), from a member who was suffering from vegan-animal rights related burnout. I think it works well enough to stand alone as an essay-post. Enjoy ~

***** I remember reading a post on a veggie board (was it this one?) last winter when I was doing some preliminary research right before I decided I was definately going to commit to veganism. The scenario, that the individaul couldn’t stop watching videos of animal suffering and crying, really stuck with me — mostly, I think, because I knew then and know now that if I accept the notion that all animal suffering is wrong, then I’m distancing myself rather severely from the majority of the opinions around me and this can lead to feelings of futility, disconnection, rage, etc.  

It is true that right now there are animals enduring unimaginable suffering for little more than the pleasure of the taste buds of a surprisingly large number of imperfectly informed human beings. It’s also true that in southern Africa children as young as 8 or 9 are being drafted into local wars over diamond-rich territory for little more than a Westerner’s desire to wear something hard and shiny round their neck, finger or on their teeth. Along the coast of Africa, young children are forced into slavery for the production of cocoa and chocolate. In a surprisingly large number of nations, including our own, women and children toil in sweatshops for 12-16 hours a day, making as little as 15 cents an hour, are subjected to sexual harrasment and physical abuse and are refused rights as basic as being able to use the restroom to relieve themselves. Two counties away from where I’m typing this response, a fire in a chicken processing plant killed nearly 200 employees, almost all women, because the managers of the plant had locked the employees in, to keep them from leaving the premises during work hours. In an OSHA investigation of a pipe foundary in Tyler, Texas, just a few years ago, an inspector was dumbfounded and shocked to note that over 3/4s of all employees were permanently scarred or maimed in some way, despite the fact that the plants turnover rate exceeded 800% — a popular bumper sticker in the area reads: "Pray for me, I work for Tyler Pipe". And just a few months ago, without fanfare, we crossed the environmental point of no return for global warming — parts per milometer of carbon in the atmosphere have now exceeded the ratio at which we can reasonably mitigate the long-term effects of our own pollution.

 The very worst acts we engage in and/or tolerate as human beings tend to be the ones which are most easily hidden, removed, abstract to our understanding. 

And yet… somewhere, right now, a 16 year old has just decided to go vegan and will save the lives of over 800 animals over the course of a lifetime due to that singular decision. The designer Mark Bouwer is not just participating in anti-fur fashion events, such as the "Cool vs. Cruel" design competition, but actively challenging his design students to create entire collections free of any and all animal products. Wangari Mathaii recently became the first African woman to recieve the Nobel peace prize for her extroadinary work within the Greenbelt Movement, which, to date, has been responsible for the planting of over 30 million trees.

I’ve realized, though, that we don’t live in a completely non-vegan world. We live in a half-vegan world. No human being alive exists as a true carnivore and very, very few of us are totally immune to the suffering of our fellow living creatures.

And in a sense, that can be one of the most infuriating aspects of living a conscientious, compassionate life — so many of the changes we need to see occur in this world are but a hare’s breath shy of reality. We have the language and the reason to promote better decision making processes, habits and traditions, yet we fail… over and over again. We may have gotten to the point where most people will readily agree that the melanin content in another person’s skin doesn’t make them a better or worse human being, yet we still promote the welfare of the residents of this country over the welfare of those who happen to have been born on more distant soil, we promote humans over animals for little or no reason — in short, we promote the familiar over the reasonable and the convenient over long-term sanity and prosperity.

For myself, the bedrock basis of my commitment to compassion begins with a reasonable examination of what it means to be alive and human. What I promote, first and foremost, is the belief that all living creatures, human or otherwise, should have the right to exist outside of the classification of "property". We need to be able to discuss basic, living rights — the right for every living creature to access fresh air, clean water and enough open space to exercise the natural inclinations we were born with. If we can begin with a view as simple and basic as this we can quickly move forward to address a diversity of issues as broad as the immorality of child armies, sweatshops, intensive animal agriculture, the livestock industry, gross poverty, human rights, animal rights, women’s rights, the safekeeping of our environment, etc.

This view also informs the way I treat myself and my fellow human beings. If I believe that it’s wrong to work a horse to death, why on earth would I treat myself with less respect? If I believe torture is wrong, why on earth would I dwell on thoughts which serve no purpose except to add to my own discomfort? If I wouldn’t slap a dog around because it’s in my way, why would I verbally abuse an ideological opponent?

I may not be able to reverse the atrocities which have been committed against my fellow earthlings but I can consistently contribute the talents that I have to the creation of a more sustainable and humane future. I can make better choices, I can continuously extend the language of reason and I can commit myself to existing as a perennial example of the feasibility of an ethicly-grounded life.

And, honestly, of all the individuals who’ve graced this world with their zeal and profundity, I can’t think of one compassionate leader who’s done more or less.

This is just a table I rest my hand upon —
one warm, oil rubbed surface to refract the generous light
of an idle, open, fecund Arpil afternoon

This is just a table, as this room is just my own —
a permeable enclosure expanded by the heavens
perpetually peering through

In this moment I could say I am completely
seperate, if the light explores the boundaries
where a hand and hardwood meet

and shadows blur distinction, as our perception
which is fluid, throws a gauze across the moment
in which I’m here and then I’m gone

I trace the line of what was once a tree ring
across the surface, pondering origin
wondering over the woods in which this wood once swayed

What is the story of a table?
What other hands, aside from mine, have touched it?
What was that work like? How’d it go?

What breath, what chatter, bathed it’s transformation
from a sapling to a leafy tower to a sawyer’s harvest
and finally into this? What holes, do you suppose

have been created and refilled throughout that streaming?
Forests and pockets, mouths and waysides, finally this room
all bear witness to a tale sprouted from a pollen’s

gauzy leisure, if they are mute as this surface, as this
afternoon light is, as this hand brought temporarily to rest — all
fallen from somewhere, all equally possessed if, in this moment,

we imagine time suspended, frozen, disconnected
from the first and then the next tableau into which every story
goes to decompose

This is just a table just as I am just one person
just as the light becomes an easy metaphor for consciousness;
there are walls which seperate me if they are punctuated
by eyes which may open and bear witness

drinking in perception or, protectively, narrowing against
actions which connect and disconnect and reconnect

I set my hand upon a cloud of pollen, a foriegn child’s country
a sparrows empty nest, the platform of my rest and then unrest
the trestle which bears the work I wrestle, my future plates
my books, my weary head

I say I will create a tribute to the earth and light which bears me
I say I will let the light bathe me nameless

Recieved this today via Knopf and thought it interesting enough it needed sharing. The poet is David Young and the poem can be found in his new collection Black Lab — read on, reader; roll on, Spring.

Walking Home on an Early Spring Evening

Every microcosm needs its crow,
something to hang around and comment,
scavenge,
alight on highest branches.

Who hasn’t seen the gnats,
the pollen grains that coat the windshield —
who hasn’t heard the tree frogs?

In the long march that takes us all our life,
in and out of sleep, sun up, sun gone,
our aging back and forth, smiling and puzzled,
there come these times: you stop and look,

and fix on something unremarkable,
a parking lot or just a patch of sumac,
but it will flare and resonate

and you’ll feel part of it for once,
you’ll be a goldfinch hanging on a feeder,
you’ll be a river system all in silver
etched on a frosty driveway, you’ll
say “Folks, I think I made it this time,
I think this is my song.” The crow lifts up,
its feathers shine and whisper,

its round black eye surveys indifferently
the world we’ve made
and then the one we haven’t