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Eating A Piece Of Meat, At Its Most Efficient, We Could Say Is Like Throwing Away Six Times That Amount Of Food Every Time You Eat It Because You're Recycling All Those Calories Through It. I Know A Lot Of People Who Came To This Issue Not Through Animal Welfare But Through Wastefulness.

-Jonathan Safran Foer

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Eating A Piece Of

Jonathan Safran Foer

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Eating A Piece Of Meat, At Its Most Efficient, We Could Say Is Like Throwing Away Six Times That Amount Of Food Every Time You Eat It Because You're Recycling All Those Calories Through It. I Know A Lot Of People Who Came To This Issue Not Through Animal Welfare But Through Wastefulness.

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I Don't Think That There Are Any Limits To How Excellent We Could Make Life Seem.

He Was Not Such A Special Person. He Loved To Read Very Much, And Also To Write. He Was A Poet, And He Exhibited Me Many Of His Poems. I Remember Many Of Them. They Were Silly, You Could Say, And About Love. He Was Always In His Room Writing Those Things, And Never With People. I Used To Tell Him, What Good Is All That Love Doing On Paper? I Said, Let Love Write On You For A Little. But He Was So Stubborn. Or Perhaps He Was Only Timid.

This Is The Sixty-nine," I Told Him, Presenting The Magazine In Front Of Him. I Put My Fingers -- Two Of Them -- On The Action, So That He Would Not Overlook It. "why Is It Dubbed Sixty-nine?" He Asked, Because He Is A Person Hot On Fire With Curiosity. "it Was Invented In 1969. My Friend Gregory Knows A Friend Of The Nephew Of The Inventor." "what Did People Do Before 1969?" "merely Blowjobs And Masticating Box, But Never In Chorus.

She Wanted Nothing More Than Someone To Miss, To Touch, With Whom To Speak Like A Child, With Whom To Be A Child.

Family Are The People Who Must Make You Feel Ashamed When You Are Deserving Of Shame.

People Shouldn't Be Allowed To Get Married Until It's Too Late To Have Kids.

Why I'm Not Where You Are ...

We Say No To Lots Of Things That Would Please Us. I Would Like To Punch People Every Now And Then, But I Don't. I Would Like To Have Something For Free Rather Than Pay For It. I Would Like To Skip To The Front Of The Line... I Don't Mean To Brush Aside The Taste Of Meat, Which Is A Powerful Attraction. But Its Power Is Not Without Limit.

I Try Not To Remember The Life That I Didn’t Want To Lose But Lost And Have To Remember

Succotash My Cocker Spaniel, You Fudging Crevasse-hole Dipshiitake!

Feeding My Children Is Not Like Feeding Myself: It Matters More.

If People Thought About Food More Like How We Think About The Environment, A Lot Of People Would Be Eating Differently And The Whole System Would Look A Lot Different.

The More Exposure People Have To The Realities Of Factory Farming, The More We Will See People Rejecting It. It's Already Happening.

Eating A Piece Of Meat, At Its Most Efficient, We Could Say Is Like Throwing Away Six Times That Amount Of Food Every Time You Eat It Because You're Recycling All Those Calories Through It. I Know A Lot Of People Who Came To This Issue Not Through Animal Welfare But Through Wastefulness.

The Hardest Part Of Writing Is Not To Get The Ideas But To Remember, Why It Is Important To Get Them.

Love Me, Because Love Doesn't Exist, And I Have Tried Everything That Does.

Everything Is Illuminated

If It Weren't My Life, I Wouldn't Have Believed It.

Things Were Happening Around Us, But Nothing Was Happening Between Us.

Words Never Mean What We Want Them To Mean.

You Only Get To Keep What You Refuse To Let Go Of.

Needless To Say, Jamming Deformed, Drugged, Overstressed Birds Together In A Filthy, Waste-coated Room Is Not Very Healthy. Beyond Deformities, Eye Damage, Blindness, Bacterial Infections Of Bones, Slipped Vertebrae, Paralysis, Internal Bleeding, Anemia, Slipped Tendons, Twisted Lower Legs And Necks, Respiratory Diseases, And Weakened Immune Systems Are Frequent And Long-standing Problems On Factory Farms.

We Aren’t Exactly Emptying The Oceans; It’s More Like Clear-cutting A Forest With Thousands Of Species To Create Massive Fields With One Type Of Soybean.

....worthy Would-be Worlds Of Words, Whorls Of Working Wonder.

The Images Of His Infinite Pasts And Infinite Futures Washed Over Him As He Waited, Paralyzed, In The Present.

What The Meat Industry Figured Out Is That You Don't Need Healthy Animals To Make A Profit. Sick Animals Are More Profitable... Factory Farms Calculate How Close To Death They Can Keep Animals Without Killing Them. That's The Business Model. How Quickly They Can Be Made To Grow, How Tightly They Can Be Packed, How Much Or How Little Can They Eat, How Sick They Can Get Without Dying...we Live In A World In Which It's Conventional To Treat An Animal Like A Block Of Wood.

There's Nothing Good About Being Certain About Things. And I Don't Think There's Any Real Talent In Using Language In A Manipulative Way, With Phrases Like "tax Relief" Or "social Security Reform." It's Politically Clever, But It's Also Completely Disingenuous, And It's Not Something To Aspire To.

Everyone Is Always In Need Of Something That Another Person Can Give, Be It Undivided Attention, A Kind Word Or Deep Empathy. There Is No Better Use Of A Life Than To Be Attentive To Such Needs.

To Feel Alone Is To Be Alone.

Everything Is Illuminated

Literature Was The Only Religion Her Father Practiced, When A Book Fell On The Floor He Kissed It, When He Was Done With A Book He Tried To Give It Away To Someone Who Would Love It.

I Felt, That Night, On That Stage, Under That Skull, Incredibly Close To Everything In The Universe, But Also Extremely Alone.

Or Perhaps A Widow Found Him And Took Him In: Brought Him An Easy Chair, Changed His Sweater Every Morning, Shaved His Face Until The Hair Stopped Growing, Took Him Faithfully To Bed With Her Every Night, Whispered Sweet Nothings Into What Was Left Of His Ear, Laughed With Him Over Black Coffee, Cried With Him Over Yellowing Pictures, Talked Greenly About Having Kids Of Her Own, Began To Miss Him Before She Became Sick, Left Him Everything In Her Will, Thought Of Only Him As She Died, Always Knew He Was Fiction But Believed In Him Anyway.

From Space, Astronauts Can See People Making Love As A Tiny Speck Of Light. Not Light, Exactly, But A Glow That Could Be Confused For Light - A Coital Radiance That Takes Generations To Pour Like Honey Through The Darkness To The Astronaut's Eyes. In About One And A Half Centuries - After The Lovers Who Made The Glow Will Have Long Since Been Laid Permanently On Their Backs - The Metropolitan Cities Will Be Seen From Space. They Will Glow All Year. Smaller Cities Will Also Be Seen, But With Great Difficulty. Towns Will Be Virtually Impossible To Spot. Individual Couples Invisible.

People Who Become Used To Saying Little Become Used To Feeling Little.

We Are Lying To Ourselves And To Each Other. Lying About What? I Don't Care If We're Lying. I Am A Bad Person. I Don't Care. I Don't Care What You Are.

We Believed In Our Grandmother’s Cooking More Fervently Than We Believed In God.

I Zipped Myself All The Way Into The Sleeping Bag Of Myself, Not Because I Was Hurt, And Not Because I Had Broken Something, But Because They Were Cracking Up.

If I’d Been Someone Else In A Different World I’d've Done Something Different, But I Was Myself And The World Was The World, So I Was Silent.

Cruelty Depends On An Understanding Of Cruelty, And The Ability To Choose Against It. Or To Choose To Ignore It.

Yesterday I Wanted To Turn Inside Out.

She Had Fallen In Love So Many Times That She Began To Suspect She Was Not Falling In Love At All, But Doing Something Much More Ordinary.

Falling In Love

It Was One Of The Best Days Of My Life, A Day During Which I Lived My Life And Didn't Think About My Life At All.

We Know, At Least, That This Decision (ending Factory Farming) Will Help Prevent Deforestation, Curb Global Warming, Reduce Pollution, Save Oil Reserves, Lessen The Burden On Rural America, Decrease Human Rights Abuses, Improve Publish Health, And Help Eliminate The Most Systematic Animal Abuse In History.

I Never Confused What I Had With What I Was.

You Have To Do Something Bad To Do Something Good.

What? She Said Once To Herself, And Then Once Aloud, What? She Felt A Total Displacement, Like A Spinning Globe Brought To A Sudden Halt By The Light Touch Of A Finger. How Did She End Up Here, Like This? How Could There Have Been So Much - So Many Moments, So Many People And Things, So Many Razors And Pillows, Timepieces And Subtle Coffins - Without Her Being Aware? How Did Her Life Live Itself Without Her?

Parents Are Always More Knowledgeable Than Their Children, And Children Are Always Smarter Than Their Parents.

We Laughed And Laughed, Together And Separately, Out Loud And Silently, We Were Determined To Ignore Whatever Needed To Be Ignored, To Build A New World From Nothing If Nothing In Our World Could Be Salvaged, It Was One Of The Best Days Of My Life, A Day During Which I Lived My Life And Didn't Think About My Life At All.

If Nothing Matters, There's Nothing To Save.

Nothing Matters

Oh, I'd Say I Like A Meal As Much As Anybody. But I Find A Certain Kind Of Foodiness Silly, Gluttonous And Embarrassing.

You Do Not Have To Utter Anything You Do Not Want To Utter,” I Told Her, And She Said, “then I Would Never Utter Another Word Again.” “you Do Not Have To Do Anything That You Do Not Want To Do.” “then I Would Never Do Anything Again.

Thanksgiving Is The Holiday That Encompasses All Others. All Of Them, From Martin Luther King Day To Arbor Day To Christmas To Valentine's Day, Are In One Way Or Another About Being Thankful.

I Went To The Guest Room And Pretended To Write. I Hit The Space Bar Again And Again And Again. My Life Story Was Spaces.

I Flipped Back Through The Pad Of Paper While I Thought About What Stephen Hawking Would Do Next.

In The End, Everyone Loses Everyone. There Was No Invention To Get Around That, And So I Felt, That Night, Like The Turtle That Everything Else In The Universe Was On Top Of.

Life Was A Small Negative Space Cut Out Of The Eternal Solidity, And For The First Time, It Felt Precious - Not Like All Of The Words That Had Come To Mean Nothing, But Like The Last Breath Of A Drowning Victim.

So Many Visitors Came To Rub And Kiss Different Parts Of Him For The Fulfillment Of Their Various Wishes That His Entire Body Had To Be Rebronzed Every Month. He Was A Changing God, Destroyed And Recreated By His Believers, Destroyed And Recreated By Their Belief... Those Who Prayed Came To Believe Less And Less In The God Of Their Creation And More And More In Their Belief.

Art Can Be Very Political But That Can't Be The Purpose Of Art, It Can't Be The Driving Force. It Isn't With Any Of The Books That I Love, Anyway.

Why Didn't He Say Goodbye? I Gave Myself A Bruise. Why Didn't He Say 'i Love You'?

We Looked At Each Other Until It Felt Like Everything Would Burst Into Flames

We Can't Plead Ignorance, Only Indifference. Those Alive Today Are The Generations That Came To Know Better. We Have The Burden And The Opportunity Of Living In The Moment When The Critique Of Factory Farming Broke Into The Popular Consciousness. We Are The Ones Of Whom It Will Be Fairly Asked, What Did You Do When You Learned The Truth About Eating Animals?

This Is Love, She Thought, Isn't It? When You Notice Someone's Absence And Hate That Absence More Than Anything? More, Even, Than You Love His Presence?

Everything Is Illuminated

Factory Farmers Talk About Their Desire To Feed The World. That's Not What They're Doing. They're Feeding The World With Really, Really Cheap Stuff.

I See Myself As Someone Who Makes Things. Definitions Have Never Done Anything But Constrain.

Profound, Bottomless Self-doubt - It Has No Value - What's The Point? In A Way, It Takes Up As Much Time As Anything Else.

...he Enclosed Pieces Of String That He Used To Measure Out His Body--his Head, Thigh, Forearm, Finger, Neck, Everything. He Wanted Me To Sleep With Them Under My Pillow. He Said That When He Came Back, We Would Remeasure His Body Against The String As Proof That He Hadn't Changed.

We Need A Better Way To Talk About Eating Animals. We Need A Way That Brings Meat To The Center Of Public Discussion In The Same Way It Is Often At The Center Of Our Plates. This Doesn't Require That We Pretend We Are Going To Have A Collective Agreement. However Strong Our Intuitions Are About What's Right For Us Personally And Even About What's Right For Others, We All Know In Advance That Our Positions Will Clash With Those Of Our Neighbors. What Do We Do With That Most Inevitable Reality? Drop The Conversation, Or Find A Way To Reframe It?

She Laughed Enough To Migrate An Entire Flock Of Birds. That Was How She Said Yes

Cher Marcel, Allô. I Am Oskar's Mom. I Have Thought About It A Ton, And I Have Decided That It Isn't Obvious Why Oskar Should Go To French Lessons, So He Will No Longer Be Going To Go See You On Sundays Like He Used To. I Want To Thank You Very Much For Everything You Have Taught Oskar, Particularly The Conditional Tense, Which Is Weird. Obviously, There's No Need To Call Me When Oskar Doesn't Come To His Lessons, Because I Already Know, Because This Was My Decision. Also, I Will Keep Sending You Checks, Because You Are A Nice Guy. Votre Ami Dévouée, Mademoiselle Schell.

For How Long Could We Fail Until We Surrendered?

Grandfather Kicked The Stop Pedal, And My Face Gave A High-five To The Front Window.

I'm Interested In The Kind Of Religion That Makes Life Harder. I'm Not So Interested In The Comforting Kind Of Religion.

Marriage Is Like A Chess Match Is Initiated And The Board Expands Over Time Until It Takes Up All Of A Life.

Sadnesses Of The Intellect: Sadness Of Being Misunderstood [sic]; Humor Sadness; Sadness Of Love Wit[hou]t Release; Sadne[ss Of Be]ing Smart; Sadness Of Not Knowing Enough Words To [express What You Mean]; Sadness Of Having Options; Sadness Of Wanting Sadness; Sadness Of Confusion; Sadness Of Domes[tic]ated Birds; Sadness Of Fini[shi]ng A Book; Sadness Of Remembering; Sadness Of Forgetting; Anxiety Sadness.

It Will Never Be The Case That People Won't Eat Meat. I Think It Could Conceivably Be The Case One Day That People Eat Very Small Amounts Of It. That It's A Special Thing, Rather Than Reach For It Because It's Cheap Or Reach For It Because It's Convenient, That It Becomes Something Festive Or Something Celebratory, Once A Week, And That Could Actually Be Achieved On Small Farms If We Really Changed Our Habits.

Sadness Of Not Knowing Enough Words To [express What You Mean].

I Wanted To Cry But I Didn't, I Probably Should Have Cried, I Should Have Drowned Us There In The Room Ending Our Suffering.

Writing's Funny, It's Like Walking Down A Hall In The Dark Looking For The Light Switch, And Suddenly You Find It, Flip It On, And Then You Discover The Hallway You Passed Through Is Papered With The Novel You've Written.

His Voice Was Handsome And Broken, Like A Cobblestone Street.

Cobblestone Streets

I Spent My Life Learning To Feel Less. Every Day I Felt Less. Is That Growing Old? Or Is It Something Worse? You Cannot Protect Yourself From Sadness Without Protecting Yourself From Happiness.

As A Writer, Putting Words On The Page Is How I Pay Attention.

What Do Babies Dream Of? She Must Be Dreaming Of The Before-life, Just As I Dream Of The Afterlife.

The Question, I've Come To Think, Is Not What Inspires One To Change, But What Inspires One To Remain Changed.

It Seems Entirely Possible To Me That Horrible Things Can Be Going On Without Us Becoming Horrible People.

I Asked My Schoolmate Mary To Write A Letter To Me. She Was Funny And Full Of Life. She Liked To Run Around Her Empty House Without Any Clothes On, Even Once She Was Too Old For That. Nothing Embarrassed Her. I Admired That So Much, Because Everything Embarrassed Me, And That Hurt Me. She Loved To Jump On Her Bed. She Jumped On Her Bed For So Many Years That One Afternoon, While I Watched Her Jump, The Seams Burst. Feathers Filled The Small Room. Our Laughter Kept The Feathers In The Air. I Thought About Birds. Could They Fly If There Wasn’t Someone, Somewhere, Laughing?

I'm Not Funny. People Assume That Because My Books Are Funny, I'll Be Funny In Real Life. It's The Inevitable Disappointment Of Meeting Me.

It's So Beautiful At This Hour. The Sun Is Low, The Shadows Are Long, The Air Is Cold And Clean. You Won't Be Awake For Another Five Hours, But I Can't Help Feeling That We're Sharing This Clear And Beautiful Morning.

I Believed Him. I Was Not Stupid. I Was His Wife.

If There Is No Love In The World, We Will Make A New World, And We Will Give It Walls, And We Will Furnish It With Soft Red Interiors, From The Inside Out, And Give It A Knocker That Resonates Like A Diamond Falling To A Jeweller's Felt So That We Should Never Hear It. Love Me, Because Love Doesn't Exist, And I Have Tried Everything That Does.

We Were Trying To Make Our Lives Easier, Trying, With All Our Rules, To Make Life Effortless. But A Friction Began To Arise Between Nothing And Something, In The Morning The Nothing Vase Cast A Something Shadow, Like The Memory Of Someone You've Lost, What Can You Say About That, At Night The Nothing Light Spilled From The Guest Room Spilled Under The Nothing Door And Stained The Something Hallway, There's Nothing To Say.

And Also, There Are So Many Times When You Need To Make A Quick Escape, But Humans Don't Have Their Own Wings, Or Not Yet, Anyway, So What About A Birdseed Shirt?

Whether We're Talking About Fish Species, Pigs, Or Some Other Eaten Animal, Is Such Suffering The Most Important Thing In The World? Obviously Not. But That's Not The Question. Is It More Important That Sushi, Bacon, Or Chicken Nuggets? That's The Question.

The End Of Suffering Does Not Justify The Suffering, And So There Is No End To Suffering.

We Live In A World Made Up More Of Story Than Stuff. We Are Creatures Of Memory More Than Reminders, Of Love More Than Likes. Being Attentive To The Needs Of Others Might Not Be The Point Of Life, But It Is The Work Of Life. It Can Be Messy, And Painful, And Almost Impossibly Difficult. But It Is Not Something We Give. It Is What We Get In Exchange For Having To Die.

I'd Lost Count Of The Disappointments.

There's Nothing Wrong With Not Understanding Yourself.

Understanding Yourself

When I Was A Girl, My Life Was Music That Was Always Getting Louder. Everything Moved Me. A Dog Following A Stranger. That Made Me Feel So Much.

It Is Better To Lose Than Never To Have Had.

People Hurt Each Other. That's What People Do.

Everything Is To Protect You. I Exist In Case You Need To Be Protected.

I Love You Also Means I Love You More Than Anyone Loves You, Or Has Loved You, Or Will Love You, And Also, I Love You In A Way That No One Loves You, Or Has Loved You, Or Will Love You, And Also, I Love You In A Way That I Love No One Else, And Never Have Loved Anyone Else, And Never Will Love Anyone Else.

Or Maybe What He Fears Is Just The Opposite: That Nobody Is Looking; That His Death, Like His Life, Is Without Purpose; That There Is Neither Greater Good Nor Evil--only People Living And Dying Because Their Bodies Function And Then Do Not; That The Universe Is A Rip.

I Am Not A Bad Person. I Am A Good Person Who Has Lived In A Bad Time." Alex's Grandfather..everything Is Illuminated

Sometimes People Who Seem Good End Up Being Not As Good As You Might Have Hoped, You Know?

Food Is Not Rational. Food Is Culture, Habit, And Identity.

Farmers Since The Beginning Of Time Have Been Feeding The World Very Successfully Without Systematically Abusing Animals Or Destroying The Environment. But We're Breeding Food That Is Less Safe For Us, It Tastes Much Worse Than It Ever Has In History, And It's Wreaking Havoc On The Environment In A Way That It Never Did In History Before. All In The Interest Of It Being Cheap.

If We Are Not Given The Option To Live Without Violence, We Are Given The Choice To Center Our Meals Around Harvest Or Slaughter, Husbandry Or War. We Have Chosen Slaughter. We Have Chosen War. That's The Truest Version Of Our Story Of Eating Animals. Can We Tell A New Story?

Do You Think I'm Wonderful? She Asked Him One Day As They Leaned Against The Trunk Of A Petrified Maple. No, He Said. Why? Because So Many Girls Are Wonderful. I Imagine Hundreds Of Men Have Called Their Loves Wonderful Today, And It's Only Noon. You Couldn't Be Something That Hundreds Of Others Are.

I Shook My Tambourine The Whole Time, Because It Helped Me Remember That Even Though I Was Going Through Different Neighborhoods, I Was Still Me.

We Shared The Smile Of Recognizing Ourselves In Each Other, How Many Imposters Do I Have? Do We All Make The Same Mistakes, Or Has One Of Us Gotten It Right, Or Even Just A Bit Less Wrong, Am I The Imposter?

Part Of Living Your Life Is An Awareness Of The Opportunities That Can Be Missed And An Awareness That Time Moves In One Direction.

Suddenly Yankel Was Overcome With A Fear Of Dying, Stronger Than He Felt When His Parents Passed Of Natural Causes, Stronger Than When His Only Brother Was Killed In The Flour Mill Or When His Children Died, Stronger Even Than When He Was A Child And It First Occurred To Him That He Must Try To Understand What It Could Mean Not To Be Alive -- To Be Not In Darkness, Not In Unfeeling -- To Be Not Being, Not To Be.

There Are A Lot Of Things That We Crave, There Are A Lot Of Things That Would Make Us Perhaps More Fulfilled In A Sensory Way That We Just Say No To.

It Is Unrealistic To Think You Can Have An Inflexible Identity That Never Has To Give Or Take Or Make Compromises.

...there Are Only Some Many Times You Can Utter "it Does Not Hurt" Before It Begins To Hurt Even More Than The Hurt.

I Hope That One Day You Will Have The Experience Of Doing Something You Do Not Understand For Someone You Love.

Someone You Love

You Are The Only One Who Has Understood Even A Whisper Of Me, And I Will Tell You That I Am The Only Person Who Has Understood Even A Whisper Of You.

The End Of The World Has Come Often, And Continues To Come.

End Of The World

I Feel Too Much. That's What's Going On.' 'do You Think One Can Feel Too Much? Or Just Feel In The Wrong Ways?' 'my Insides Don't Match Up With My Outsides.' 'do Anyone's Insides And Outsides Match Up?' 'i Don't Know. I'm Only Me.' 'maybe That's What A Person's Personality Is: The Difference Between The Inside And Outside.' 'but It's Worse For Me.' 'i Wonder If Everyone Thinks It's Worse For Him.' 'probably. But It Really Is Worse For Me.

I Always Write Out Of A Need To Read Something, Rather Than A Need To Write Something.

Well, What I Don't Get Is Why Do We Exist? I Don't Mean How, But Why.' I Watched The Fireflies Of His Thoughts Orbit His Head. He Said, 'we Exist Because We Exist. . .we Could Imagine All Sorts Of Universes Like This One, But This Is The One That Happened.

It's So Hard To Express Yourself.' I Understand This.' I Want To Express Myself.' The Same Is True For Me.' I'm Looking For My Voice.' It's In Your Mouth.' I Want To Do Something I'm Not Ashamed Of.' Something You Are Proud Of, Yes?' Not Even. I Just Don't Want To Be Ashamed.

She Wants To Know If I Love Her, That's All Anyone Wants From Anyone Else, Not Love Itself But The Knowledge That Love Is There, Like New Batteries In The Flashlight In The Emergency Kit In The Hall Closet.

I Got Incredibly Heavy Boots About How Relatively Insignificant Life Is, And How, Compared To The Universe And Compared To Time, It Didn’t Even Matter If I Existed At All.

She Extended A Hand That I Didn't Know How To Take, So I Broke Its Fingers With My Silence.

I Know Lots And Lots And Lots Of Vegetarians Who Think It's Perfectly All Right To Kill Animals For Food To Eat, But Don't Do It Because They Think All The Ways In Which It's Done Are Wrong.

I Have So Much To Say To You. I Want To Begin At The Beginning, Because That Is What You Deserve. I Want To Tell You Everything, Without Leaving Out A Single Detail. But Where Is The Beginning? And What Is Everything?

What You Deserve

I've Never Particularly Liked Bankers.

Ironically, The Utterly Unselective Omnivore -- "i'm Easy; I'll Eat Anything" -- Can Appear More Socially Sensitive Than The Individual Who Tries To Eat In A Way That Is Good For Society.

What Were We Spending So Much Time Doing If Not Getting To Know Each Other?

Getting To Know Each Other

The Paper, The Stapler, The Staples, The Tape. It Makes Me Sick. Physical Things. Forty Years Of Loving Someone Becomes Staples And Tape.

Why Are Entire Flocks Of Industrial Birds Dying At Once? And What About The People Eating Those Birds? Just The Other Day, One Of The Local Pediatricians Was Telling Me He's Seeing All Kinds Of Illnesses That He Never Used To See. Not Only Juvenile Diabetes, But Inflammatory And Autoimmune Diseases That A Lot Of The Docs Don't Even Know What To Call. And Girls Are Going Through Puberty Much Earlier; And Kids Are Allergic To Just About Everything, And Asthma Is Out Of Control. Everyone Knows It's Our Foods... Kids Today Are The First Generation To Grow Up On This Stuff.

And Here I Am, Instead Of There. I'm Sitting In This Library, Thousands Of Miles From My Life, Writing Another Letter I Know I Won't Be Able To Send, No Matter How Hard I Try And How Much I Want To. How Did That Boy Making Love Behind That Shed Become This Man Writing This Letter At This Table?

I Love The Idea Of Books Being More Than Books, Or Being, Rather, Something Other Than Books.

Isn't It So Weird How The Number Of Dead People Is Increasing Even Though The Earth Stays The Same Size, So That One Day There Isn't Going To Be Room To Bury Anyone Anymore?

I Tried To Think About Other Things. I Tried To Invent Optimistic Inventions. But The Pessimistic Ones Were Extremely Loud.

But Come. No Explaining Or Mending. Be Beside Me Somewhere.

Everything I Did, I Did Because I Thought It Was The Correct Thing To Do… I Am Not A Hero, It Is True… But I Am Not A Bad Person, Either.

And Yet And Yet - The Last Secret Of The Tree Of Codes Is That Nothing Can Ever Reach A Definite Conclusion. Nowhere As Much As There Do We Feel Possibilities Shaken By The Nearness Of Realization. The Atmosphere Becomes Possibilities And We Shall Wander And Make A Thousand Mistakes. We Shall Wander Along Yet Not Be Able To Understand.

Is There Really Anyone, Besides Rudy Giuliani, Who Prefers The New Times Square?

I Felt, That Night, On That Stage, Under That Skull, Incredibly Close To Everything In The Universe, But Also Extremely Alone. I Wondered, For The First Time In My Life, If Life Was Worth All The Work It Took To Live. What Exactly Made It Worth It? What's So Horrible About Being Dead Forever, And Not Feeling Anything, And Not Even Dreaming? What's So Great About Feeling And Dreaming?

Maybe I'll Try To Be More Patient With Morons.

I Am Sure People Tell You This Constantly But If You Looked Up 'incredibly Beautiful' In The Dictionary There Would Be A Picture Of You.

I Started Carrying Blank Books Like This One Around, Which I Would Fill With All The Things I Couldn't Say.

I Wish My Days Could Be Washed Away Like The Chalk Lines Of My Days.

I Don't Mind If Smiles Come At My Expense, I'm A Small Price To Pay.

There Is A Glaring Reason That The Necessary Total Ban On Nontherapeutic Use Of Antibiotics Hasn't Happened: The Factory Farm Industry, Allied With The Pharmaceutical Industry, Has More Power Than Public-health Professionals.

Health Professionals

Every Widow Wakes One Morning, Perhaps After Years Of Pure And Unwavering Grieving, To Realize She Slept A Good Night's Sleep, And Will Be Able To Eat Breakfast, And Doesn't Hear Her Husband's Ghost All The Time, But Only Some Of The Time. Her Grief Is Replaced With A Useful Sadness. Every Parent Who Loses A Child Finds A Way To Laugh Again. The Timbre Begins To Fade. The Edge Dulls. The Hurt Lessens. Every Love Is Carved From Loss. Mine Was. Yours Is. Your Great-great-great-grandchildren's Will Be. But We Learn To Live In That Love.

I Wouldn't Want A Boy To Think I Was Pretty Unless He Was The Kind Of Boy Who Thought I Was Pretty.

I'm Grateful For Anything That Reminds Me Of What's Possible In This Life. Books Can Do That. Films Can Do That. Music Can Do That. School Can Do That. It's So Easy To Allow One Day To Simply Follow Into The Next, But Every Once In A While We Encounter Something That Shows Us That Anything Is Possible, That Dramatic Change Is Possible, That Something New Can Be Made, That Laughter Can Be Shared.

I Could Not Believe In A God That Would Challenge Faith Like This.

In The Past Seven Years Of Love-making He Had Heard The Words "i Love You" So Many Times: From The Mouths Of Widows And Children, From Prostitutes, Family Friends, Travelers, And Adulterous Wives. Women Said "i Love You" Without His Ever Speaking. "the More You Love Someone," He Came To Think, "the Harder It Is To Tell Them." It Surprised Him That Strangers Didn't Stop Each Other On The Street To Say "i Love You".

You Can Make Great Meals Without Meat That Are, Of Course, Much More Healthy For The Same Price, But It Takes A Process Of Reeducation, Just Because Americans Aren't Familiar With How To Cook Vegetables Anymore.

Sometimes You Have To Put Your Fears In Order.

He Couldn't Bear To Live, But He Couldn't Bear To Die. He Couldn't Bear The Thought Of He Making Love To Someone Else, But Neither Could He Bear The Absence Of The Thought. And As For The Note, He Couldn't Bear To Keep It, But He Couldn't Bear To Destroy It Either.

Kids Are A Great Analogy. You Want Your Kids To Grow Up, And You Don't Want Your Kids To Grow Up. You Want Your Kids To Become Independent Of You, But It's Also A Parent's Worst Nightmare: That They Won't Need You. It's Like The Real Tragedy Of Parenting.

I Saw Herschel And He Saw Me And We Stood Next To Each Other Because That Is What Friends Do In The Presence Of Evil Or Love.

The Books Could Be Completely Worthless, And Things We Don't Even Read Now Could Be Considered The Most Important Books.

You Will Remember When A Bird Crashed Through The Window And Fell To The Floor. You Will Remember, Those Of You Who Were There, How It Jerked Its Wings Before Dying, And Left A Spot Of Blood On The Floor After It Was Removed. But Who Among You Was First To Notice The Negative Bird It Left In The Window? Who First Saw The Shadow That The Bird Left Behind, The Shadow That Drew Blood From Any Finger That Dared To Trace It, The Shadow That Was Better Proof Of The Bird's Existence Than The Bird Ever Was?

I Often Think About How My Sons Will Come To Know About September 11th. Something Overheard? A Newspaper Image? In School? I Would Prefer That They Learn About It From My Wife And Me, In A Deliberate And Safe Way. But It's Hard To Imagine Ever Feeling Ready To Broach The Subject Without Some Impetus.

Consumers Are Going To Have Get Used To Eating Less Meat - To Paying More For Better Quality Meat And Eating Significantly Less Of It.

Just Because You're An Atheist, That Doesn't Mean You Wouldn't Love For Things To Have Reasons For Why They Are.

The American Dream Itself Is Declining.

And She Would Say, "today You Believe In God?" And He Would Say, "today I Believe In Love".

What's So Horrible About Being Dead Forever, And Not Feeling Anything, And Not Even Dreaming? What's So Great About Feeling And Dreaming?

How Beautiful Is Forgetting! What Relief It Would Be For The World To Lose Some Of Its Contents.

Why Do I Write? It's Not That I Want People To Think I Am Smart, Or Even That I Am A Good Writer. I Write Because I Want To End My Loneliness.

I Took The World Into Me, Rearranged It, And Sent It Back Out As A Question: "do You Like Me?

I'm So Afraid Of Losing Something I Love That I Refuse To Love Anything

Words Are Capable Of Making Experience More Vivid, And Also Of Organizing It. They Can Scare Us, And They Can Comfort Us.

It Is My Great Hope That Our Paths, However Long And Winding, Will Cross Again.

If It Had And Answer, It Wouldn't Really Be Love, Would It?

My Boots Were So Heavy That I Was Glad There Was A Column Beneath Us. How Could Such A Lonely Person Have Been Living So Close To Me My Whole Life? If I Had Known, I Would Have Gone Up To Keep Him Company.

... The Man Took My Passport And Asked Me The Purpose Of My Visit, I Wrote In My Daybook, 'to Mourn,' And Then, 'to Try To Live,' He Gave Me A Look And Asked If I Would Consider That Business Or Pleasure, I Wrote, 'neither.' 'for How Long Do You Plan To Mourn And Try To Live?' I Wrote, 'for The Rest Of My Life.

I First Became A Vegetarian When I Was Nine, In Response To An Argument Made By A Radical Babysitter. My Great Change - Which Lasted A Couple Of Weeks - Was Based On The Very Simple Instinct That It's Wrong To Kill Animals For Food.

Everything Else Happened - Why Not The Things That Could Have?

It Made Me Start To Wonder If There Were Other People So Lonely So Close. I Thought About “eleanor Rigby.” It’s True, Where Do They All Come From? And Where Do They All Belong?

I Imagine A Line, A White Line, Painted On The Sand And On The Ocean, From Me To You.

Long Distance Relationship

But I Dig Negroes. I Dig Them All The Way.

But When, At The End Of My Sophomore Year, I Became A Philosophy Major And Started Doing My First Seriously Pretentious Thinking, I Became A Vegetarian Again. The Kind Of Willful Forgetting That I Was Sure Meat Eating Required Felt Too Paradoxical To The Intellectual Life I Was Trying To Shape. I Thought Life Could, Should, And Must Conform To The Mold Of Reason. You Can Imagine How Annoying This Made Me.

We Tried So Hard. We Were Always Trying To Help Each Other. But Not Because We Were Helpless. He Needed To Get Things For Me, Just As I Needed To Get Things For Him. It Gave Us Purpose. Sometimes I Would Ask Him For Something That I Did Not Even Want, Just To Let Him Get It For Me. We Spent Our Days Trying To Help Each Other Help Each Other. I Would Get His Slippers. He Would Make My Tea. I Would Turn Up The Heat So He Could Turn Up The Air Conditioner So I Could Turn Up The Heat.

I Woke Up Once In The Middle Of The Night, And Buckminster's Paws Were On My Eyelids. He Must Have Been Feeling My Nightmares.

When I Looked At You, My Life Made Sense. Even The Bad Things Made Sense. They Were Necessary To Make You Possible.

The Only Way To Overcome Sadness Is To Consume It.

Being With Him Made My Brain Quiet. I Didn't Have To Invent A Thing.

It Can Be Challenge Enough To Have To Eat With Myself.

I Think And Think And Think, I‘ve Thought Myself Out Of Happiness One Million Times, But Never Once Into It.

I Felt Suddenly Shy. I Was Not Used To Shy. I Was Used To Shame. Shyness Is When You Turn Your Head Away From Something You Want. Shame Is When You Turn Your Head Away From Something You Do Not Want.

I Wondered, For The First Time In My Life, If Life Was Worth All The Work It Took To Live. What Exactly Made It Worth It?

It Would Be Possible, In Theory, For Life And Art To Be Reversed.

The End Of Suffering Does Not Justify The Suffering, What A Mess I Am, I Thought, What A Fool, How Foolish And Narrow, How Worthless, How Pinched And Pathetic, How Helpless.

Elsewhere The Paper Notes That Vegetarians And Vegans (including Athletes) 'meet And Exceed Requirements' For Protein. And, To Render The Whole We-should-worry-about-getting-enough-protein-and-therefore-eat-meat Idea Even More Useless, Other Data Suggests That Excess Animal Protein Intake Is Linked With Osteoporosis, Kidney Disease, Calcium Stones In The Urinary Tract, And Some Cancers. Despite Some Persistent Confusion, It Is Clear That Vegetarians And Vegans Tend To Have More Optimal Protein Consumption Than Omnivores.

I Wanted To Protect Him, Which I Was Sure I Could Do, Even If I Could Not Protect Myself.

It Took Me As Long As I Had Known Him To Get Rid Of All Of His Words. Like Turning An Hourglass Over.

I Observe, I Write, I Try Not To Remember The Life That I Didn't Want To Loose But Lost And Have To Remember, Being Here Fills My Heart With So Much Joy, Even If The Joy Isn't Mine, And At The End Of The Day I Fill The Suitcase With Old News.

Anyway, The Fascinating Thing Was That I Read In National Geographic That There Are More People Alive Now Than Have Died In All Of Human History. In Other Words, If Everyone Wanted To Play Hamlet At Once, They Couldn’t, Because There Aren’t Enough Skulls!

He Removed Several Pages Of Death Certificates, Which Were Picked Up By Another Breeze And Sent Into The Trees. Some Would Fall With The Leaves That September. Some Would Fall With The Trees Generations Later.

(what Are Your Ghosts Like?) (they Are On The Insides Of The Lids Of My Eyes.) (this Is Also Where My Ghosts Reside.) (you Have Ghosts?) (of Course I Have Ghosts.) (but You Are A Child.) (i Am Not A Child.) (but You Have Not Known Love.) (these Are My Ghosts, The Spaces Amid Love.)

You Cannot Protect Yourself From Sadness Without Protecting Yourself From Happiness.

I Do Think Ordinariness Is, In A Way, The Enemy, But Not Ordinariness As The Opposite Of Flamboyance.

I Couldn't Speak The Language Of His Feelings

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