2006-08-13

Fitter happier

What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me? Into us? Clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly because I can't any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone's sake the scanners do better, because if the scanner sees only darkly the way I do, then I'm cursed and cursed again.

~ Bob Arctor, A Scanner Darkly

Warning: somewhat graphic image of dead/dying animal below.

I'm away. Gone, for now, from the world of things. And by 'things' I mean 'things that normally describe my day-to-day situation'. This place is a part of the world, and yet, not. It's earth, but it might not be - what it is, is Cortes Island, and no, I'm not high.

My head is thick. Thoughts are not flowing properly. It's as if my head was the sink, and the sink is full of dishes, but now I've cleaned them, and all that is left is the plug and the dirty water, and now I'm pulling the plug, and the water is draining, but only slowly, through the bits of chewed and forgotten food, the offensive bits, the clam shells and bits of crab skeletons - the water is draining slowly. It might take all day if I do not clean out the bits in the drain, the bits that are keeping my head thick. But I do not know how to clean them out, or I'm lazy, (and it's disgusting) - the used up bits of yesterday's good times remain, and time flows as I drown in the dirty brown water.

But good is what we are, and when you're here on the island you feel like you must have made some good decisions in the past; as if the hard work must be over and we are reaping the rewards. This is true, partly, but it's too simple - and besides, I want to drown in the hard work and always entertain bigger and better rewards.

And I think it's true that one of the basest human desires is to be admired. I read that somewhere, and though I think the author may have been being facetious, or deprecatory, I know that for me it is true. It is true like the thing you don't want to be true, like a lover's unfaithfulness, because it means you have to revise your opinion of everything. Why do you want to be good? Or no, why do you want to be the best? Why do shows like Rock Star exist? Because others will shiver in vicarious delight at our achievement, and we will receive the ultimate payoff of knowing we did that - we made them quiver and shake. (It reminds me of the story of the man and the sun, the man and the wind, and the bet to see who could make him remove his coat first. It is the coaxing, not the forcing, of others' delight in our own achievements.)

There are no altruistic acts, not truly anyway, everything a shade of intrinsic self-interest. Why else would an athlete train his or her entire life in the single minded (and ultimate) pursuit of winning an Olympic gold medal? Does he/she do it because they believe in the good of the act? Do they believe they will bring peace through the shining example of internationally accepted high-level achievement (and now I am thinking: physical or otherwise?) Or do they dream of the stadium rising to its feet in a collective thunder, an auspicious and critical acclaim spoken as one voice, and directed at the victor who sprints across the line, first among elites, the absolute best (this is true) - the pinnacle of a narrow set of defining and highly desirable characteristics we all agree upon generally. It is that moment that is everything, when you are carried up by the overwhelming approval of your peers onto their collective shoulders (in this case, the entire human race 'plugged-in' to the event). That is why you train your whole life, that is the why of the glory you seek.

Me: And how does this trap work? You put some bait in and then the crabs come in and can't get out?
MG: OK. You take the trap, and you put the stricken chicken in...
Me: Stricken?
MG: Stricken, truly. So you put the stricken chicken in and then the crabs and the cod devour the stricken chicken, and they can come and go, but if they're in there when you start pulling the rope up...
Me: Then they get the axe treatment.
MG: Then they get the axe treatment.
Me: And we get to eat the crabs.
MG: We get to eat the crabs. And they are tasty, these crustaceans of the deep.

The brutal simplicity of the killing surprised me. It was simple and efficient, just as killing should be. It was also amazingly unfair of course, but so are most interspecial dealings with Homo sapiens sapiens. We seek advantage always, and that is why we have covered this entire planet. A crab on its back is totally fucked; bring an axe to rest on its breastplate and hit the butt of that axe with enough force, the weight of a large rock, for example, and you have yourself a stark representation of a fraction, perhaps the first fraction, replete in crustacean format.

I have given up on this. On fighting the moral urge not to eat animals. It used to be that not being associated with the actual killing of the thing being consumed was enough to remove my responsibility from the moral calculus of the equation. But inevitably I would realize that my consumption of said animal was tantamount to killing it myself, I was part of the chain of command that led the cow to the killing floor, and so while I chewed on, this bone of contention stuck in my throat. But I no longer think about this. I have given up, I guess. I don't even mind the killing now. It seems entirely rational; sure we're all part of something bigger, and I hope I don't reject that sentiment if I am eaten by a bear. Of course I would fight, but it doesn't matter, we're all swallowed up sooner or later, this aquarium is only so big, and even if I never knew what it was all about I still feel quietly confident that acting in deference to a million years of evolution and longer is all I need in order to resist the moral suasion of my empathy circuitry, to assuage the guilt of consuming something that lived and breathed and suffered so that I might eat it. A bear eats me and I say yes. We split a crab in two and I dip it in garlic butter and it is delicious and I say yes. Of course it suffers. To live is to suffer; to die, something entirely else.

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