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The Peripatetic Vegetarian
- January 2003 If this month's peripatetic
vegetarian seems a little fragmented or cold it probably has something
to do with the fact it is minus 18 degrees in Toronto today, minus 27
with the wind chill. These are dangerously uninhabitable conditions that
explain partially at least why Canadians appear to be somewhat cold, aloof,
standoffish, repressed and insulated. I explain to my American friends
that Canadians tend to be this way because of their colonial history.
British subjects who remained loyal to the Crown during the American Revolution
moved north to Canada. Instead of demanding independence and thumbing
their noses at an oppressive, overbearing monarch, the loyalists hightailed
it off to what was become Quebec and Ontario to demonstrate their allegiance
to the King of England and settle a colony populated by happy, civilized,
community-oriented 'Loyalists'. Those who took on the Brits in the New
World did so because they valued independence above allegiance to any
absolute authority, foreign or domestic, such as a king or queen, and
valued self-determination over edicts from foreign interests. Where Canada
cherishes and prioritizes the interests of the community, the United States
is the apotheosis of the individual, the independent spirit. This has a lot to
do with why I didn't begin to realize my own potential or develop an identity
until I moved to the States. In addition to the independent spirit, it
was also a question of sink or swim; there are very few safety nets in
the USA compared to its relatively socialistic neighbor to the north.
Canada tends to be, in many respects, a gentler, less aggressive nation
where the welfare of the many takes precedence over the interests and
ambitions of the few. You would think this would make it easier for a
vegetarian/vegan, someone who is sensitive to animal and human suffering,
to live in Canada. I would have thought so, too. Unfortunately this is
not the case. I've witnessed incredible acts of compassion and heartless
demonstrations of indifference in both countries. I was coming out
of the subway last week to meet my friend Eric in downtown Toronto. On
my way out I noticed a pigeon huddled up in a ball just outside the subway
entrance. There were other pigeons on the roof above the station trying
to catch the last rays of sunshine during the waning hours of another
frigid Canadian winter day. What you are supposed to do in such cases
is try to 'flush' the bird, rouse it to see if it is capable of flying
or if it is injured. I approached it quietly
and slowly and it didn't move. I took out some of the pigeon supply breadcrumbs
I carry in my jacked pocket and dropped them in front of him. He didn't
show any interest in that either. I sensed there must be something wrong
with him so I asked Eric if we could check on him before we went off to
dinner. When we went back to the station the pigeon had its wings spread
out fully on the ground as if he was trying to protect himself or take
flight. His head was thrust back and his beak wide open, a silent paroxysm
of agony that made it look like he was crying for help and in horrible
pain. It was heartbreaking
and it was obvious he was probably dying. I found a pigeon who looked
like this in Washington, D.C. not long ago. He was flaying about in the
middle of Connecticut Avenue, one of the busiest thoroughfares in the
city, as cars whizzed by him on either side. I scooped him up in my arms
and carried him off to an embankment and took him home. The animal control
people who came to my The pigeon I found
last week exhibited the same symptoms as the bird in Washington. It was
around rush hour when I found him; dozens of people going in and out of
the subway station looking at this creature who was obviously in great
distress, alone on the cold pavement. No one did anything to help him
or stop and see what was wrong with him. When I find an injured or sick
animal like this I find this indifference, which is the way most people
act in such situations, as distressing as the condition of the animal.
I have been sensitive
to the sufferings of vulnerable creatures, humans and non-humans, since
I was a child and many of my vegetarian friends are the same way. I would
like to believe there is nothing unique about us, that we don't possess
any extraordinary sensitivity or compassion or empathy for the sufferings
of others. I would like to believe all people are born with this capacity;
that maybe it is the dog-eat-dog nature of society or isolation that makes
most of us so self-centered, indifferent, cut off from each other, from
nature and the interrelatedness of things. I know all those people I saw
looking at that pitiful creature outside the subway station were very
busy, hungry, preoccupied; that injured pigeons are like the homeless
or beggars on the street to them, unfortunate casualties of urban life;
something the city or the police or animal control or the fire department
deals with. I hate the divisiveness
of sects, religions, politics and persuasions. I've never considered vegetarians
any better or more enlightened, smarter or even kinder than meat eaters.
(Better looking maybe, but that's our only consistent distinction from
carnivores.) To say what we are and what they aren't the beginning of
an exclusion that reeks of moral superiority. I know a lot of people who
are aware of what goes on in factory farms and slaughterhouses and don't
become vegetarians. These are good, kind, ethical human beings. So why
do we get it and they don't? I chalk it up to grace. (And in my case,
Grace's father. Grace is my mother's name and her father, Abraham Stone,
was a highly regarded philosophical, contemplative, probing, compassionate
and deeply spiritual soul of Germanic-Russian descent. He left this world
before I entered it but I believe he re-entered it through me.) I believe most of
the vegetarians I know would have tried to do what they could for the
bird, or any suffering being for that matter; not because they're better
or more enlightened or G-dly than non-vegetarians; but because they have,
for whatever reason, extended their sphere of compassion beyond the quotidian
routine of their daily needs and desires. I have been accused
by some of my child-loving yuppie friends of being self-centered because
I never wanted any children of my own. I've explained to them that I may
want to adopt a child who needs a good, stable home some day but that
I can't justify bringing another one into the world when there are already
so many without a home or family of their own. The reasons I haven't adopted
yet, I tell them, are two-fold. One, because the life of a freelance,
peripatetic writer cannot provide a child with the kind of stability he
or she needs and deserves. Two, because I have always instinctively felt
some kind of kinship with and relationship to animals and people who are
beyond the sphere of conventional family and society. You could call it
empathy, resonance, identification or any other number of things. I really
don't know what it is. I've been this way since I was a child. It's not
something I ever had to reason out or question. It's been the one certainty
in my life, the one constancy, often the sole comfort. To have to focus
on caring for one or two or three children would limit my interaction
with this universe of living beings, human, animal and other, I feel so
connected to. When I am not connected to this larger universe of life
I feel very much alone in the world. It's true I do feel alone in the
world most of the time, even when I am surrounded by friends and family;
I don't mind admitting it. I can't relate to most of what's going on around
me. I feel like an alien. In fact my legal status in the United States
is Resident Alien. But something happens when I look at a dog, a bird,
a cat, cow, turkey, chicken, etc. It's a kind of instant recognition,
like when you meet someone you know in a foreign country; that kind of
heart-warming, reassuring familiarity. They seem to recognize me, too.
I get this from some
people, too; those who haven't lost the child-like or animal-like innocence
and wonder they were born with. They live in the moment, have very little
suspicion and minimal ambition. Like our animal friends, they are content
just to be in the world and do it very little harm. These people make
me feel the same way the animals and most children do, before the latter
become spoiled, grasping, greedy, competitive miniature thugs like their
parents. There is a joy and presence in their demeanor and it is free
and generous and limitless. This is why I love them, why I feel comforted
by them; why I don't eat them and why I try to do something when I see
one of them suffering. There are no services
in Toronto that would send someone out to help with the pigeon I found
and no place to take him that would not have euthanized him right away.
There is a wonderful, rehabilitative wildlife center here but they were
closed after I found the bird and wouldn't open until next morning. So
I lined a box with my New York Times, put the pigeon in gently and took
him home, placed him in a quiet, dark corner. It's recommended you don't
give them any food or water until a veterinarian can check them. When
I came back an hour later he had died. I cried a lot. I wasn't consoled
by the fact he was out of his misery. I couldn't get the image of his
silent cry for help on the cold ground out of my mind, and I couldn't
do anything to save him. I called a dear friend, Laurie, in New York and
she stayed with me while I just felt my feelings. She said all the right
things and made me feel I did all the right things, all I could do anyway.
I lit a candle and some incense and put them next to the pigeon, said
a prayer for him and went to bed. The ground was too
cold to bury him. I called the city animal department and asked if they
could suggest a humane way to deal with his remains. "Just throw
it out," was their response, as in throw him in the garbage. Laurie
suggested I buy some soil and lay him in it and cover him with it. I found
a peaceful place in a park nearby, dug out what Earth I could, lay down
some soil which was very warm, lay him in it and covered him with the
rest of it. I couldn't bring myself to put the soil right on him so I
put him in a plastic bag first. I knew this ritual was for me as much
as him. I just wanted to honor his spirit and provide it with a peaceful
transition. I put some snow and twigs and leaves over the mound of soil;
said another prayer for him, looked up in the sky (Laurie suggested I
do this because that's where his soul would be soaring) and saw a nest
high up in a tree above the spot I laid him to rest. Maybe he would be
re-born up there the way my grandfather was reborn in me. Maybe his soul
is soaring free up there somewhere already. I told another very
close friend of mine, a Native American woman in Kentucky named Landra,
about this experience the following day. She is a deeply spiritual woman
who has counseled the living and helped the dying transition to the next
world. I have always identified with Native American spirituality because
it identifies with and so reveres the animal and spirit world. I told
her I was thinking about digging the pigeon up and removing him from the
plastic bag; a couple of people told him his body would decompose back
into the Earth this way. "... just leave the little bird as he is," Landra told me. "He is at peace. You helped him leave the world with love. That's what I tried to do with my dying patients. It's the final gift. He came to you so that you could give him this gift. But he also gifted you with his last hours and the privilege of ministering to him." A beautiful and comforting thought. It was a privilege, if painful privilege, to be with him as he left this world for what I believe is an easier and freer and more compassionate place; where interrelatedness and harmony and light and love lift all souls in perpetual flight and perpetual joy. I don't know where or what that is, but it seems like Heaven to me.
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A
Peripatetic Vegetarian