The platonic sausage
Mar. 26th, 2003 11:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radegundTwice in the last 36 hours I've been tempted.
Once was when I was walking home yesterday and I passed Thornton's, a restaurant on the canal, and there was something divinely garlicky wafting from the window, and it had to be fish - monkfish, maybe.
Once was today as I ordered my soup and sandwich in Busyfeet and Coco, and a guy at a table near me had something bacony - melting, crispy, salty smell.
I gave up eating flesh two years ago. Most of the time it's fine (although I do need my Quorn now and then), but every so often I remember (with a visceral, physical memory) that I really like meat, damn it!, and I reflect that there's nothing - nothing - stopping me from going and finding myself some roast lamb or a rare steak or a salmon cutlet or a chicken fillet or even, you know, Donegal Catch.
But I don't. And when I actually think about doing it, cutting a piece of flesh off a larger chunk and putting it in my mouth and chewing it, despite my cravings for the taste, it feels wrong.
I didn't become vegetarian out of squeamishness. I don't have a problem with one species eating another - even farming another, as long as it's done with compassion. But for me, the modern meat industry makes no sense. The cruelty, the environmental depredation, the mistreatment of workers, the agricultural geopolitics - all of this strikes me as unethical, and I don't wish to support it with my disposable income. (We choose our battles.)
And after all, when I want a sausage, I don't want an actual sausage. I want the Platonic Sausage - the paragon of sausagehood that my memory has constructed to torment me.
Ah, such are the contradictions of life.
Once was when I was walking home yesterday and I passed Thornton's, a restaurant on the canal, and there was something divinely garlicky wafting from the window, and it had to be fish - monkfish, maybe.
Once was today as I ordered my soup and sandwich in Busyfeet and Coco, and a guy at a table near me had something bacony - melting, crispy, salty smell.
I gave up eating flesh two years ago. Most of the time it's fine (although I do need my Quorn now and then), but every so often I remember (with a visceral, physical memory) that I really like meat, damn it!, and I reflect that there's nothing - nothing - stopping me from going and finding myself some roast lamb or a rare steak or a salmon cutlet or a chicken fillet or even, you know, Donegal Catch.
But I don't. And when I actually think about doing it, cutting a piece of flesh off a larger chunk and putting it in my mouth and chewing it, despite my cravings for the taste, it feels wrong.
I didn't become vegetarian out of squeamishness. I don't have a problem with one species eating another - even farming another, as long as it's done with compassion. But for me, the modern meat industry makes no sense. The cruelty, the environmental depredation, the mistreatment of workers, the agricultural geopolitics - all of this strikes me as unethical, and I don't wish to support it with my disposable income. (We choose our battles.)
And after all, when I want a sausage, I don't want an actual sausage. I want the Platonic Sausage - the paragon of sausagehood that my memory has constructed to torment me.
Ah, such are the contradictions of life.