Summer is right around the corner!
It's not altogether untrue. A recent spell of warming temperatures has brought on a frustrating period of false break-up, but with these warm sunny days, it is hard not to think of spring, the Harbinger of Summer.
The most recent personal development amidst all of this chaos is that it has happened again.
I've found myself in yet another bout of Vegetarianism.
The old rules apply (seafood ok, broth and juices ok, little bits ok, wild game ok), and although others might insist that this is Unprincipled Vegetarianism, frankly, it feels principled this time around. The news of my renewed vegetarianism struck fear in the eyes of friends who stood by me the first time and watch me mutate rather quickly into a cranky, raving mad bitch.
I'm pleased to report that it is an easier go this time. I suppose practice makes perfect.
The realization that I was going vegetarian again came unexpectedly and hence, I was forced to halt a lot of meat-related projects midstream. One was the excavation of my meat-filled freezer which now remains just as meat-filled as it was a week ago. I had also purchased a Costco rotisserie chicken just days before vegetarianism began. Fortunately, I was able to enlist the services of BB, who doubles as our house's 72-Hour-Eater. (I know of no one who would have responded to my email regarding partially eaten chicken with more zeal and excitement. Thank you, BB.)
So if I haven't been eating 72-hour chicken, you might ask, just what have I been eating?
Fake veggie sausage patties from Costco.
It all happened harmlessly enough. I was taking a weekend stroll through Costco, sampling a veggie sausage patty, and the next thing I know, I have become addicted to these little brown discs made of only-God-knows-what. In consuming these discs, I also made another unexpected discovery - a sure-fire diet plan.
In my 32 years, I've tried various dieting ideas. One was the Every-Other-Day Diet during which I dieted every other day. It never really yielded any results. Another was the Poor Law Student Diet during which I decided I simply couldn't afford that much food on my hourly wages as a summer research assistant. (This is the summer I lost my ability to digest lactose because milk was too expensive.) I've also always wanted to try the Eat-Your-Favorite-Food-Until-Oblivion Diet. My theory is that if you just let go and eat to your heart's desire, your heart will be sated (really disgusted) thereafter. For example, in the last three years, I've seen a drop-off in my own Doritos consumption that I think stems from previous over-consumption. My suspicion is that this would work well for donuts, too.
But the most recent dieting lesson has been in the form of undesirable food. Here's a quick way to eat less: Make Your Food Taste Bad. You can start by buying a fake sausage patty, bound to be limited in pleasure anyway. Then you can give it the least generous kind of cooking treatment by nuking the patty. Go one step further by over-nuking it. What you are left with is a space-age rubbery disc that will take you at least 20 minutes to consume.
As I chewed thoughtfully on my new toy, I wondered if this was why dogs enjoy rawhide and pig ears.
My motivation in becoming a vegetarian again was not to understand the world of dog food, however. It was to reorder my universe - apply a series of finely tuned but seemingly arbitrary rules to entropy so as to make some sense of it. Unlike my most recent attempts at vegetarianism, which brought anger and resentment but no bodhisattva-like insights, I can tell already this round is going to be different.
It is interesting exercise to effectively eliminate desire in one's life, to snip it out of the daily experience like a coupon in the Sunday paper. I see evidence of past obsessions in my refrigerator, and it seems like an eternity ago. I mean, the other day I wasn't even able to finish a whole slice of Kraft cheese.
Could this be nirvana?
Unlikely, but nevertheless, it is a new experience for me to leave a slice of cheese on the counter uneaten. The other day, I had biscuits and gravy for breakfast, and dutifully left the "bigger than permissible small bits" of sausage on my plate. I really had no desire to cheat, to sweep in the larger, prohibited chunks onto my fork.
In each of my recent confrontations with meat, as I watched BB devour my partially eaten Costco chicken, or as I quietly slurped wontonless wonton soup while Jaja ate her normal version, I felt something. It was not hunger, pang, or envy.
It was peace.
Somehow, in my plan to be vegetarian for two weeks, I've discovered a still life in brown pellets. My life now moves in controlled moments - punctuated by the ritual of eating one brown pellet. Nothing is free and chaotic. It's like I'm eating space food, carefully rationed out for my orbit around Earth. One pellet per meal.
I am becoming a rabbit. Almost like a bodhisattva.
No comments:
Post a Comment