Killing The Most Beautiful Thing

Who could love a creature more

than one that kills it, 

takes its flesh into their body,

depends on it for survival

and sees the world through its eyes?

  

          "I recently killed a deer. It's not the first time I have done this, and likely won't be the last. I could tell the story like this: The frozen stillness of the woods, full moon reflected in snow all night and at first light the roar of the nearby highway drowned out by adrenaline as he and I stare into each others eyes. For a moment. I shoot, he dies. 

          After he has been laying down for a couple of minutes I get close enough to touch him - a massive beautiful creature. He still feels so alive, muscles warm and loose. I kneed down and hug him - there aren't many other opportunities for hugging a buck like this - just for being so close to a creature so beautiful and powerful. Eventually, I drag him in the snow away from the deer trail, to gut him. But first I wait a while and just look at him in complete awe, before I cut open and start dismantling his perfect body.

          Something about this relationship is particularly fascinating to me. I honestly feel like that deer, and every deer I have ever killed, is the most beautiful creature I've ever seen. And I killed it. And somehow this makes complete sense to me, though somehow it sounds like it shouldn't at all. 

          Knowing who I have killed in order to eat, to maintain my own like, I carry the burden of taking something extremely beautiful out of this world. A beauty that I can never replace. I owe that deer. I know this, because I killed him. How I can repay what I owe to that deer and the world I took it from I might never know. But I'll try. 

           And because I killed him, because I saw him in grace and power, then in pain and confusion expiring that last breath, it's just between us, and something bigger too, but I know what I took because I did it. The loss and sadness are mine to carry. There is something refreshingly clean about this. 

          The food we buy and feel clean conscience eating, while the hunter's hands are stained in blood - that is more confusing. It's clear to see that a human killing a wild animal is somewhat sad, because humans don't know how to live well in this Earth.

        What is need are more amazing wild creature and fewer humans, not the opposite. What is unclear is how sad consuming any plant or animal as food is, if we are disconnected from how it came to us. 

          Food from the store, as a rule, kills much more beauty, destroys unimaginably more life, than a hunt like the one I described above. It is invisible killing to the consumer at least, because it is culturally accepted. Rivers drained to irrigate crops (yes, even organic ones), habitat destruction and displacement of wildlife, the constant eradication of undesirable plant and animal species. Fossil fuels. Migrant labor. To actually wrap one's head around how much suffering and loss went into their "guilt-free" bowl of organic whole grains with tofu, tamari and flax oil is not possible. There is no guilt-free food option for us (except for maybe bankers, politicians and the like, if you're into that) and there shouldn't be. I don't walk around feeling awful all the time because I need to kill to live (or have someone else do it for me), I love acknowledging that bittersweet reality and how complex it is. It is part of being alive - the essence of being alive. 

          We all owe a lot. And I owe that deer."

Miles Orson in his book Unlearn, Rewild. Chapter 11: Killing The Most Beautiful Thing.

The party is on

I thought quite strange when I've heard for the first time that the Pubs in Ireland usually close at 3am, well, in a country where the counters are so loved that sounds a bit odd. But it doesn't mean that the party is officially over, walking down Grafton st in Dublin, I bumped into this musician and his simpatic trompet. The party was on again.

Grafton Street, Dublin, January 2013

Scaffolding

Marrocos

Chicken Tajine, local food;



Listen here: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d9EHYhF8qpQ

What if money was no object? Alan Watts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZhIjGIdLQ4

Living on one dollar a day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze72rpWp_Dg

Have you ever wondered why people need money?

   Have you ever wondered why people need money? `To live on, of course!` you say. But that isn't strictly true. Try eating a coin. People live on bread and other foods, and someone who grows grain and makes his own bread doesn't need money, any more like Robinson  Crusoe did. Nor does anyone who is given his bread for nothing. And that's how it was in Germany. The serfs cultivated their fields and gave a tenth of their harvest to the knights and monks who owned the land.
  `But where did the peasants get their ploughs from? And their smocks and their yokes and the things they needed for their animals?`Well,  mostly by exchange. If, for example, a peasant had an ox, but would rather have six sheep to give him wool to make a jacket, he would exchange them for something with his neighbour.  And if he had slaughtered an ox, and spent the long winter evenings turning the two horns into fine drinking cups, he could exchange one of the cups for some flax grown by his neighbour, which his wife could weave and make into a coat. This is know as barter. So in Germany people managed perfectly well in those days without money, since most of them were either peasants or landowners. Nor did the monasteries need money, for they too owned a lot of land which pious people either gave them or left to them then they died.

Trecho do livro "A little history of the world" de E. H. Gombrich. Pag 144;