Reason Breeds Insanity

Ducks. Vegan and other wise.
Wood ducks eat fish and snails. I learned this because one of my friends Googled it. However, when I Googled it, I learned they eat aqueous invertebrates and terrestrial invertebrates as well as insects and acorns. I think somewhere deep down, I already knew this. I probably originally learned it on one of the many walks my dad and I used to take around our property, where he would teach me about animals and plants. Because of him I never had to look up too many of the leaves for my biology class leaf collections, I either already knew their names or I asked him and he showed me where they were in the book. He didn’t believe in short cuts, so he wouldn’t just give me the answers, but he taught me how to find them with ease. He also taught me how to spot wood ducks. They were little and fast, sometimes diving completely under the water to look for snacks. For this reason, I called him first when I spotted the pair of Mergansers on the White River. I didn’t know right off that they were called Mergansers, but I knew that they weren’t the same as the other ducks I had seen along the river. I went home, looked them up, and sure enough there they were: Mergansers.

Beavers. Not beaver areas. Just beavers.
A new river phenomenon that we have noted during our morning walks is the tree along Wysor that is slowly being felled. Bec actually pointed it out to me, right near the corner of Wysor and Wheeling, with a strip of teeth marks around its midriff. Something has been chewing on the middle of the trunk, and Bec immediately thought it might be a beaver. Of course I was skeptical until I saw the little bugger swimming merrily along the river parallel to Wheeling, its little head held out of the water until it did a perfect pike surface dive, looking for something good to eat. We can’t decide where it is living or if it has adequate housing to make it through the winter. I think it won’t be long before it chews through the tree, though. Timber! What makes this whole situation funny? The tree is part of someone’s honorarium. It sits right behind a memorial rock.

Jim Harrison. Why I eat meat. Again.
For one of my classes, ENG 610 Writing Across the Genres, we have read about a book a week. Most of them I have enjoyed. I even put excerpts from a couple of others (Erika Lopez’s Flaming Iguanas and Marguerite Duras’ The Lover) on this blog, but I have found a book that tops the rest we have read. I think that I think this every week, as each book seems to impact me more than the last. This week we read Jim Harrison’s The Raw and The Cooked: Adventure of a Roaming Gourmand, which did not appear to be a book that I would like, nor did it appear to be one that would change my opinions about eating and consumption. Don’t get me wrong, I think Harrison is extravagant in his consumption, though not haphazard in it. Butted up against how I feel about world hunger and poverty, I would be the last person to think his writing would impact me the way it did. However, he did impact me with lines like this, “If you do not believe land can lose its soul, look at land that has lost it” and this, “In Paris there had been a cold sweat when a French journalist reminded me that several years ago I said in a moment of ire that I had become a writer to avoid shitting through my mouth like a politician,” and this, “Ultimately, though, spirit will get you through times of no ritual, but ritual can’t get you through times without spirit.” Three entirely different tones, observations, and subjects, but all utterly and equally captivating lines. I don’t agree with all of his writing, but the whole book is full of things like these lines. What does this have to do with eating meat? you may ask. I will tell you: Harrison has a reverence for earth, nature, life, and death that makes me understand how it all works together. Harmony. Do I now believe that willy-nilly consumptive behavior is harmonious? By no means, but I understood through Harrison’s simple illustration— he deserved to get bit by a water moccasin for shooting a goose—that he doesn’t take his consumption lightly. When he writes about seeing a family in O’Hare airport that can’t afford to buy hot dogs, I realize that he, too, struggles with being overly indulgent. Does he still indulge? Grandly. Do I like this idea? Not entirely. Can I live with myself for it? Partially. What I am working on now is figuring out how I can ethically live in this harmony Harrison describes. How can I consume foods that most people in the world could never afford without feeling guilty about it? How can consume dead animals reverently enough to satisfy my own need for harmony?

EDITED:
Here is another reason I love Harrison: “But to address my irritation about whether I’m good at fly fishing: why bother if you haven’t taken the time to learn to make the throw? Beyond that point, any spirit of competition in hunting or fishing dishonors the prey. It means that you are either unaware of or have no feeling toward the nature of your fellow creatures. Fishing tournaments seem a little like playing tennis with living balls, say, neatly bound bluebirds. Competition also endangers anger, there’s little point in being out in the forest, in a river, or on the ocean if you’re going to be pissed off. A number of years ago a friend was angry and shot a raven, and his life hasn’t been the same since. Of course religious beliefs vary deeply but even Kravis doesn’t have enough money to get me to shoot a raven.” Wow.

Let’s start with tea leaves. I was sick for two weeks, and had put off going to the doctor for just that long. On Thursday night , I felt like complete shit, so I asked Bec to get some lemons and some honey from the grocery on her way home. I thought I would resort to a homeopathic remedy that has always worked before. You see, the last time I was this sick was my sophomore year of high school. Of course, I have been sick since then, but never for two weeks, never so intently. I don’t think I have been to the doctor for a sickness since my junior year of college when I had strep throat. Mostly, I don’t get sick, but if I do, I chase it away with vitamins, minerals, water, soup, and green tea with honey and lemons. I personally think that green tea with honey and lemons can cure any ill, but I have been told I am wrong. However, on Thursday night I was ready to try anything, so I broke out the green tea. For each cup—I drank three little ones—I squeezed in an eighth of a lemon, dumped in some honey, and steeped one green tea bag. I promised that the next day I would go to the health center. I did go, but I never did buy my amoxicillin that I prescribed for myself, which is another story I won’t tell here. I feel much better today, and all I have done is keep drinking that green tea with honey and lemons. I think I may start drinking it every day!

Falling leaves. It’s fall. The leaves are falling. Fun thing, the leaves are the same color as Bec’s hair, and Lily is the same color as the leaves. I am not comparing Bec to the dog, but I am comparing both the redheads in my life to the natural beauty I see around me. I assume that most redheads end up being autumns on the fashion color pallette, just because it seems that Bec looks the best in fall colors: sage, orange, yellow, red, and purple, which I guess isn’t really a fall color, but it has been a color in the sunset the past two nights. Anyway, I only mention the leaves because fall is my favorite time of year. However, my favorite holiday is Easter, which the Nathans—these two guys I insist on hanging out with—made fun of me for. No, they said, we’re not making fun of you. It’s just that nobody says Easter is their favorite holiday. I guess that holds especially true when it doesn’t even fall within my favorite season, though I sometimes joke that my favorite season is every one except winter. Let me go back to my original point, which is that I love the falling leaves. I love the crunch. I love the smell. I love the look. I love that leaves flood my yard and my gutters.

I also turned over a new/old leaf today. I barbecued a duck. In barbecue sauce that I made from scratch. You can do with that whatever you wish.

Well, I don’t have syphilis, if that is what you are thinking, but I do have some cold: a viral or bacterial infection. Maybe I have mono, but I will never know because I don’t have health insurance. I could go to the health center for free, but when they tell me I have to buy prescription drugs, I will only be able to look at them as say, “With what?” Maybe these are the issues we should be talking about this election: why some people can’t afford health care, why the oil companies keep making money hand over fist, and why there are some people right here in good old Muncie, Indiana who eat what others refuse to eat. I saw a guy climbing into the dumpster at Marsh, and I knew from the looks of him he wasn’t doing it because it is a cool thing to do. He was doing it because he had to, to feed his family. I thought to myself, I sure hope he doesn’t try that at Wal-mart. If he does, he’ll be shocked. Literally.

I belong to this list-serve that is for the Freegan community. Not too long ago, I received an email telling me never to try to dumpster-dive in Wal-mart dumpsters because they have recently electrified the bottoms and sides of all of them. Why? Because they get paid by developing countries to export their broken merchandise. Apparently, letting people get the broken goods for free is not in Wal-mart’s exemplary human relations plan; they would rather exploit developing countries and charge them for what Americans don’t want or can’t figure out how to fix. The voltage they have chosen to use is actually of a higher level than a cattle fence, so it is apparently a pretty good jolt, enough to make dumpster-divers well aware of Wal-mart’s intolerance of them.

Weird, huh, how protective we are of our garbage? Look at me honestly and tell me that you wouldn’t be pissed if you looked out the window to see someone rummaging through your refuse hopper. All that strategically wrapped trash, the carefully separated recycling, and the painstaking arrangementof those bags to ensure the closure of the lids and it would irritate you to see some gruff man in dirty clothes digging through your waste. Never mind that you’re throwing it away, it’s yours until it hits the back of the truck. No one else can have it.

That’s a pretty far cry from ethical or moral. Putting aside the Bible—in which we are commanded to not only allow people to glean our fields for leftovers, but we are also commanded to give our second coat to our brother or sister—and looking at this situation from a purely moral and ethical standpoint, how can we even begin to think ourselves progressive, like we tend to do in these United States? I think it’s safe to say that it is only ethical to allow people to scavenge our trash.

I am fortunate enough to have friends and family who understand my desire to reduce, reuse, and recycle. Recently, some friends of mine gave me tons of clothes. Some of the clothes fit me, but others I will be using to make new clothes and some bags that I will either sell or give away. I may make one bag to auction off at our reading for Cella’s Round Trip. The reading will be on November 21 at the Heorot. All four of us (Sarah, Elizabeth, Rachel, and I) will be reading, and we will be raffling off some stuff in order to make enough money to go to AWP in Chicago. We hope to raise a nice little chunk of change. Maybe we’ll even have enough left over to donate it back to Cella’s for production costs.

Look at this, I am supposed to be sick. I’m stopping.

I am slowly learning that I am addicted to the Internet. I check my email more than anyone I know, although I do not leave it on all day with an audible alert reminding me that someone has sent me another message. I check Facebook just as much. I check my blog more. I am consumed with wondering if people like my writing, love me, or are paying attention to my world. I am equally consumed with knowing what others are doing throughout the day. I am going to make a conscious effort to check my electronic shackles no more than once an hour. For me, that will be challenging. So, if you email me, text me, Facebook me, or whatever, know that I will only be checking once an hour. I am consumed. I am sure I could get four times as much done with my life if only I didn’t compulsively police my cyberworld. That being said. I am giving it a whorl, which I just Googled and learned that I am really giving it a whirl. If I spent as much time reading, writing, and studying as I do online playing Snood, Bejeweled, Googling, Youtubing, or watching South Park Studios, I would be a fucking genius with a 4.0 GPA. Usually, I justify my enslavement to electronics through my hunger for knowledge. I need to play online because I am learning. I am doing research. I am writing. Well, I am.

I am taking American Indian literature right now as I have said before. We just read the Women are Singing by Luci Tapahonso and “There is No Word for Feminism in My Language” by Laura Tohe. I think it is interesting that cultures that have been oppressed typically look back into their histories for role models, while those of us who are part of the dominant culture look around us for role models. For example, Tohe says that Dine (Navajo) women resist modern day feminism because there is no place for them within it. Instead, Dine women look back to Changing Woman adn their female ancestors for strength and inspiration. As a female in the US Western culture, I look around me for theorists who support and challenge me. I look for my colleagues to inspire me. Perhaps, what I am realizing in takign this class is that I need to look back to my ancestors to find hope. My great-grandma made the trek across the ocean through Ellis Island, where they changed her name, in order to see a better future for herself and her furture children. My grandma and great-aunt had to learn English at school. My grandma made gears at Allisons during the war and then became a journeyman meat cutter for Marsh. My other grandma was, at one time during the 1960s, one of the highest ranked female civilians in the US military machine. She was one of the smartest women I have ever met. For crying out loud, if I look way back on my dad’s side, there were women who came over before the Revolutionary War and made houses out of nothing. I come from a long line of strong women. Judith Butler doesn’t hold a candle in the wind to them, but I can’t exactly quote my foremothers in an academic paper, now can I? As I look back at them, I can’t help but think two things: (1) you come from strong-ass stock, and (2) you come from the opposite side of the coin as the women whose writing you love. What does that mean? It’s something I wrestle with. Chances are my ancestors owned slaves. My last name is Roberson. But chances are my other ancestors were slaves. My mom’s side is named Pappas and comes from a poor village in the foothills of Greece. Weird hybrid, huh?

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