I had the most disturbing dream.
It was partly my fault– per Nora Ephron the second glass of wine is the reason you wake in the middle of the night, and I am sure the entire bar of Newman’s Own Orange Dark Chocolate I ate at about 10 pm did not help either. And it was partly because my husband had to get up at 4.45 in order to get to the airport on time this morning. I woke the poor guy up at 2.30 to ask him what time it was. Sigh.
Anyhoo.
A lovely dream of my family and a beautiful and beloved Irish setter type family dog went sour when I found myself harvesting the dog’s pelt for quilting.
It was a lovely day. I had the dog’s parts neatly and bloodlessly laid out on the front lawn like the pieces of a stuffed animal and was busy getting what I needed for my quilting project when someone realized what I’d done.
What the hell!?!?
Other than mosquitos and wasps that directly threaten my kid I cannot bring myself to kill even a bug in my house or outdoors. I believe it is bad luck to kill spiders. I worry myself sick over the epidemic mass extinctions of honey bees. In the house I trap big bugs under a mason jar and slide a paper under the jar to release it outdoors. I can’t bring myself to kill bugs in my garden– I lost all my eggplant and tomato plants that way early in the fall. I tried soapy water– nothing doing. And that was the strongest poison I could handle. My kid loves bugs. I am deathly afraid of them and completely grossed out by them but I know how precious even the least of these is to our fragile ecological balance, and we take photos of them for her nature notebook.
I HATE to shop at Burlington Coat Factory because I still shudder when I think about the scandal of how their suppliers harvested fur to make their coats. For the last 7 almost 8 years I’ve had not one but THREE aging dogs I rescued from various inhumane and neglectful situations– garbage dump, running the streets of Nashville or on a four foot chain, and a fireworks store/gas station somewhere between Nashville and Atlanta– and they have cost me I cannot tell you how much money and trouble. They eat better than most humans– you should see how much their vegetarian, dairy free dogfood costs!
I don’t eat meat and I steer clear of as much egg and dairy as I possibly can for animal cruelty reasons– although the 30 lb I lost, the nasty shit that they use in agriculture and factory farming that hangs around in meat and dairy and the joy I get from vegan cooking don’t hurt one bit in confirming my decision. I buy beauty products only if they are free of animal products and come from companies that swear they don’t animal test– the companies could certainly be lying, but I’m doing the best I can. I sent my first check to PETA the other day. Their tactics are iffy, but SOMEBODY has got to create awareness.
So what am I doing using squares of the family dog’s pelt for quilting, even in a dream?
Okay, so I’ve joked about making my incredibly fat and fluffy and pushy (but loving) shepherd mix’s skin into slippers. I tell her that all the time. But that is AFTER she dies naturally, not before!!
In my dream, I have to go to a counseling group (held in a bar, naturally) to face up to what I’ve done.
My mother tells me she knew I had problems but she had no idea I felt competitive with the poor dog.
I have to go to court. I have to face news reporters.
The shame!
There’s a shift in the dream when the reporter goes to cover the cruelty that takes place at a local pig farm where the animals are raised and slaughtered in incredibly inhumane conditions for meat. He takes photos and raises an outcry. Good!
In my dream I realize that my crime may call attention to the broader issue– if a bumbling unstable housewife killing the family dog causes such outrage, why in hell do we tolerate the way we get our meat and the way we treat our companion animals?
And then I realize that it’s just a dream.
And then my husband is kissing me goodbye as he leaves for the airport. And it’s still dark but I cannot go back to sleep.
I too believe that you can judge our society on how it treats its most vulnerable– the aged, animals, children, parents whose balls are to the wall because they must now provide for their children and so must make terrible choices between rent or house payments and food on the table and emotional wellbeing for their babies.
I am sickened if I think about so many aspects of these issues. I loved Gregory Maguire’s book Wicked. Sure it was suggested to me by that ungrateful republican libertarian drill in ANWR whore (sorry) that tried to break up my family not to mention her own– we’re doing just fine on our own, thank you– and so its complex portrayal of evil should make me a bit insecure or should at least have been a message to me. But it’s still an awesome book, and I pray it’s a foreshadowing of some sort of awareness in our society that while they cannot speak (that we know of anyway), they can certainly suffer.
So I think I had the dream for a reason. It points out so much.
1. As my husband once asked– and hurt my feelings too– why do I think I have to singlehandedly take on and be so angry about these things (racism, gender prejudice, issues facing parents and children, etc.)?
Have I told you that anxiety is a huge part of my personality (or ego defense/mask, however you want to look at it)?
So I really need to take a xanax and be a bit more realistic about the size of my share of the responsibility and angst of our society’s evils.
2. The hypocrisy in our society is simply stunning. I’m not necessarily even down on people who eat meat– some of my best friends eat meat, haha. Just open your eyes, as many of my best friends have done, and be informed and honest with yourself about where it comes from and then make your choice.
Oh, and don’t tell me vegan and vegetarian are elitist choices– plant proteins are cheaper than meat and go a lot farther, and a crock pot sets even a busy working person free to create delicious vegan foods cheaply and quickly.
Maybe this is easier for me to take in because I grew up in redneck land, where pinto beans and macaroni and cheese, white rolls and green beans and corn and taters were good eatin’.
I dropped 20 lb just giving up meat and still eating every other food group including refined flours and suagrs like a pig– could this perhaps an answer to the obesity epidemic that is disproportionately harming other groups of our most vulnerable citizens, the impoverished or disadvantaged, minorities, and the poor or working poor so horribly from tragically earlier and earlier ages, perhaps?
So in a nutshell, I need to stop losing sleep and feeling like a murderer because I have failed miserably at preventing any and all animal cruelty. AND, I can be proud of the little I am doing and continue to pray for a better world and for truly manageable and effective opportunities to contribute to something better. (As opposed to throwing blood on people wearing fur coats, even if I do snicker a little when I hear that another horrified starlet was victimized.)
So.
I’m going to go take a xanax and make my vegan menu and shopping list for the week. And then I’m going to do some quilting.
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