My Appetite

A life and death struggle is going on outside my window

It's two o' clock in the morning, some animal is cornered, growling and hissing. . .

Another is excitedly trying to kill it

It's dark and I can't see, even with a flashlight

and no loud or shouted sounds I make break the checkmate

Their movements are quick and abrupt

sudden sweepings of tail and paw

daggers of snapping

There is no such thing as pity for them

It is a night sacrifice

McDonald's is the front room of an abattoir

the pig squeals and whines

and wants very badly to live

Some say that even vegetables don't want to be eaten

But this is not a salad party outside my window tonight

Somehow, to my sensibilities, it's different

Tonight's meal awakens a slumbering uneasiness

Unlike those outside

I have pity

a strange and uniquely human emotion

a sorrow felt for anothers suffering

a sympathy for another being, for its fate

And in situations like tonight I am confused

It seems I don't know who to pity

the cornered and defensive

or the confident killer

And then I suddenly realize: This pity is for myself, for my own suffering

This pity is the realization of my own destiny, my selfishness

Everything is eating and being eaten

One of the meanings of God or Brahman for the Hindus is the All-Devourer

One capable of devouring all things

Perhaps

it is the unconscious re-enactment of this great feast

in which we all participate as murdered and murderer

that causes us to place the theme and ritual of sacrifice

in the center of all the worlds religions

Freud said that neurotics repeat instead of remembering

They repeat an experience with which they were overpowered in their lives

An experience so overwhelming that it was repressed, avoided, not digested, assimilated, escaped . . .

and as a result of that repression

they re-enact it, ritually, over and over

the psyche trying to experience it, again and again

in a myriad of different forms

And in some same way

we find the idea of eating and being eaten, horrifying, frightening, tremendous, sublime

And like neurotics we re-enact it, unconsciously

In my anxiety I give their passion, story and meaning

I create religion out of their suffering

I make theatre out of death

I paint cave walls and mark pieces of paper

I Bang the drum and sing

In towers of ambition and houses of hiding

With art and artifact

I have pulled the blanket of pity over my eyes

and found metaphors for my great fear

But perhaps

this is one of the obligations of a poet

To show the great Emperor Metaphor is wearing no clothes over his naked gospel

To remember, that like these four-pawed ones outside tonight,

we are all eater and eaten in this desperate struggle for life

Unlike these furry beasts, my fear comes to me all alone in my room

full of anxiety

even while the mouth that will take my head

still has no face

I never see the face of those I eat

Someone else has performed the murder for me

I only sanction the act when I eat

But

A poet remembers that hamburger is the flesh of a dead cow

That fear is more native than suspected

and God is a three letter word

There was a gravedigger, who had dug graves for almost fifty years.

One day a young man asked him

"You have been digging graves for longer than I have been alive.

What is the most amazing thing you have seen in all that time?"

The gravedigger answered

"The most amazing thing I have ever seen, is that every day I bury people here

and everyday, I see people acting as if they were never going to die."

Once I was hiking in the mountains in back of Santa Barbara, far back on the Sisquoc River

I had come across the river and was ascending the bank, when I glimpsed something tossing about on the ground

As I approached closer

I saw a small snake which had wrapped itself around a larger bird

and sunk its fangs into the breast of the bird

The bird still had one of its wings and both its legs outside the coils of the snake

and every few moments the bird would thrash about

desperately trying to get free

I took off my pack and sat down to watch them

At first I felt sorry for the bird

It seemed about to be killed and eaten

As I watched for another fifteen minutes or more

I thought about the snake and how it too had to eat

Then

I thought about taking a stick and unwinding the coils of the snake from around the bird

But why should I help either of them?

(Click here for a story on this dilemma from the Mahabharata)

The struggle went on

I decided to break the deadlock

I decided to help the bird

I got a long stick and slowly and cautiously started to unwind the coils of the snake from around the bird

I could see the wide-eyed stares of the reptile and the bird

both of which would have fled from me under "normal" circumstances

It was a strange sort of 'menage a trois'

We all watched and felt each other

As I continued to unwind the coils, all of an instant

the snake withdrew its fangs from the breast of the bird and struck out at me

In that same instant, the bird broke free and flew off

The snake quickly disappeared into the bushes

The bird left without thanks

The snake left without any blasphemy against me

I left with my pity, my fear, my terrible truth, my dilemma

and

my appetite

"This is a dreadful and transitional place. Accept it as such. Love God.

Be consumed by adoration. But do not make moral judgements."

-Da Loveananda