in the throes of lust — aaarrrggghhh

I think it's lust.  Isn't that that uncontrollable desire that can't be sated until you act?  And the act has consequences. And you know it has consequences — and you just can't help yourself because, well — it's lust.  And around and around you go, trying to be rational about the whole thing — but your body's just aching, almost quaking with this desire you can't shake off. I know, that's way too many ache/quake/shakes for one sentence, but that's the trouble, see?  Complete loss of one's senses.

It's the adorable factor.

Michael Pollan wrote The Botany of Desire reminding us of what flowers can do to us.  Don't worry, this post is not about flowers.  I'm just using this as an example.  This post is about much worse than flowers, actually.  But it's not as bad as babies.

I guess there's a continuum of lusts.  Maybe put flowers (or hot cars) at one end of the continuum, and put babies at the other.  And sex, right smack between the two.  This lust is probably on the dial halfway between sex and babies.  And it's fucking killing me right now.

So. Michael Pollan.

Said that flowers are there to seduce us.  Their aroma, their look — they just go way overboard even in photographs to hook us and make us do their bidding. Even in a bulb catalog, those gorgeous combinations of wild colors and design just nail us. And we take out the old piece of plastic, make a phone call, or click our 'shopping cart' and a week later: bulbs to plant in the fall, and flowers that are not so picture perfect in the springtime.  But we do it. And then next year we do it again.

Puppies are more serious than flowers, in the lust department.  And I've been looking at puppy pictures now for two years, thinking it's time again.  Puppy love.  Not random pictures. Not random puppies.  Only Becky Bouchard's Best Shepherd puppies.  Puppies who are relatives of our  gorgeous long-haired German shepherd, Roshi.

Okay, stop.  I know it's vomit factor lust.  The too adorable for words lust. Might as well be babies kind of lust.  I swore up and down that I wouldn't 'do' another puppy until one of two things happened — neither of which have — and therefore I suppose I'm bound to that agreement.  But hell, sex and babies and puppies just don't happen by making rational well-timed decisions, do they?  They just happen.

They happen exactly because we're quaking with desire. Because we're in the throes of lust that cannot be denied.

And then you live with the consequences.  Michael Pollan's beautiful bulbs have it easy.   If that's 'desire' — it's desire lite.  The commitment to our springtime flowers is nothing compared to the commitment to those babies —

Phone call.

She says, "thank you for letting me be the voice of reason..."

Aaarrrggghhhh —

I hate the voice of reason.  Unless it's mine.  Talking someone else down from their irrational desire.  Telling someone else just how much this is going to cost.  Reminding someone else that this is a major long term commitment they're engaging in.  Think. Think about this.  It's not the right time...  blablabla...

But that's the thing with lust. It is not amused by rationality.

All rationality does is piss us off.

"Substitute sex for puppy lust..." she recommends. But no, it just won't work.  Or. Maybe it will work.  Okay, I'll have to try it.  Can you really substitute one lust for another just to come down off this terrible ache?

Drug lust.  That's what it feels like.  Insatiable. Undeniable. Irrational. Intense — and immediate. That's why God gave us evolution, right? We've evolved both rationality and irrationality — and it's the latter that drives us to action.

Think of the long-term consequences, the voice of reason says.  But that takes all the fun out of it.

For the first time in my life I am not making a unilateral decision.  The new girlfriend's "NOT NOW" is rational and reasonable, and right.  And somehow I'm going to try to manage to try to consider being considerate and somehow (maybe) get over this puppy ache.  And that's despite the fact that I've already started negotiating this pup.  I could list all the reasons why she (the pup) is exactly right, and why the timing (which is all wrong) is exactly right.  More blabla.  I do good bla.

Fact is, I'm still completely out of control.

So. This is me on the other side of my rationality.  On the side that actually takes unilateral action.  The side that brought home every stray or designer critter of my life so far. The side that ran off to Europe for three years with my boyfriend. That headed off overland to Afghanistan and ended up at the Nepalese border. The side that got married on the spur of the moment (rationality side says: okay, I needed a visa). The side that made each (glorious) child. The side that got divorced, that bought every house, painted every color. The side that starts blogs, has sex, falls in love.  The side I don't want to control at all.

I'm (somehow) letting the new girlfriend have veto power here.  Knowing how much the rest of the time I actually am in control, and can be the rational being I respect.  Why is it that my lust-side gets to have all the fun — and my rational side has to pay the vet bills for the following 18 years?  Some 'intelligent designer' somehow designed that one all wrong.

This is me, calming down.  Just a little.  Puppy lust is one of the most uncontrollable desires on planet earth.  The heart's still thumping, the extremities still quivering —  Those goddamned photos of the super-cute!  If this weren't happening to me, I'd be close to throwing up.  The vomit factor of gooey cute. I don't know how long I can hold out ... Rational side is saying: next summer.  Wait until those variables are all lined up.  Lust side, says — well, lust side is beyond words...

Antidote?  Dunno.

If it's not sex, I'm just hoping it's not Bud's French vanilla ice cream or designer dark dark chocolate.

of gummy-worms and larger creatures

Michael Pollan has been eloquent in his appeal that we change our eating and growing habits. He sums it all up in seven syllables — not quite a koan, nor haiku either, but nevertheless giving off the impression of a wise and ancient teaching:

eat food
not too much
mostly plants

A modest proposal from a modest man.

So why does it sound so radical here in Amrika?

On the tzaddik's yahrtzeit I stopped eating animals. It was a very long time coming. I can hear my friends on both sides of the aisle berating me over it. The veg-folk for having it take so long, and the meat-folk for having let go one of the great tasty pleasures of life. The fact is, I love the taste of meat. But I can't stand the word anymore.

I think I became a vegetarian because of the word 'meat'. I finally heard it. Just that, and nothing more.

meat

It's a word that bothered me very suddenly, listening to an interview on public radio with Jonathan Safran Foer. His new book is entitled Eating Animals. I had just shown Rouch's award-winning film, Les Maitres Fous, to my night class, and more than any other part of the film, students react to the slaughter, boiling and eating of a sweet medium sized short-haired trusting dog. I've seen the film hundreds of times and it gets me every time. I can't get used to it.

But they also sacrifice a chicken and a lamb or a goat as well. Why is it no one even mentions those? And they break raw eggs upon the Hauka altar of the 'governor's palace.' How come that doesn't bother anyone either? For that, too, is wasted life.

I think it's because we think of chicken, lamb, and goat as meat. And meat is something that we eat.

But Foer's book isn't called Eating Meat — which would make almost any potential reader defensive and oppositional instantly. The title of Foer's book is Eating Animals, and that's something altogether different. When you put it that way, it's something we really don't want to do.

That's the dog in the Rouch's film — an animal, not meat — and why eating dog is so horrific and unwatchable. We just don't think of a dog as meat.

It sounds like Foer is stating the obvious here. He doesn't push the point. But I'd like to push it here. Language matters.

Pollan and Foer share this facility for hard-hitting simplicity in their writing. They're both reasonable and not fanatics. They both are okay with folks who eat meat. Just not too much. Foer's soft sell on the radio, I guess just got to me when combined with having just watched the dog sacrifice for the umpteenth time.

I had no problem eating meat.

I had a big problem eating animals.

So. Is this about morality, ethics or ecology? Arguments I've been reading since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Nope. It was just about the power of words.

Words, like music, can have this awful power over us that is not quite rational, not quite irrational. We are moved beyond reason. We use words to come up with a reason for our reason. And if we commit to them, we are transformed.

Sure, I do feel different. I've had a belly ache for a month, to tell the truth. I don't think I was designed at all for not eating animals. Maybe I'm doing it all wrong. But I'm gonna hold the course and see how it goes. Not dogmatically (excuse the terrible pun here). No. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. But for the first time, it feels right even if it feels awful.

Where do the gummy-worms fit in here. They do fit in, I'll give you that, but yes, another time. For once again it's later than I'd like, and my eyes are dry and closing. I've listened to Erin's kaddish tonight and it took me to the Siberian steppe, with only a single tree on the horizon, an ironwood. And there were nomads there, with their sheep and goats. Beloved animals. But over the fire in the fire pit: nothing but meat.

And I hear nothing, nothing but the kaddish.