My Pets

Someone asked me today if I felt pain. “I’ve never seen you show pain.”

How I pity you, with your puny human lives.

I guess I, like everyone else, don't seem to be what I am. That appears to be my most recent theme. Those seeking screeds against ragheads, race-mongers and pinkos must look elsewhere temporarily, or through the archives here. I'm quite brilliant, you know, and what I have written in the past is just as superb as that which I produce currently. Excellence, like infinity, has degrees, each perfectly suited to its sublime purpose. And speaking of sublime, it is true that I must present the appearance of some great blond beast, a lean grey steppenwolf circling the cowering cave-dwellers huddled about their flickering campfire. It is not the shark that is the perfect killing machine. It is, as it were, myself, Jack H. As it were. I'm wonderful.

Of course I feel pain. Almost always. This fella must never have been around while I warm up. It’s like the mummy of Amon-Ra coming to life. Creeeeeak. If I didn't roll everyday, I'd feel like a teenager. But I roll everyday. A compulsion, it seems. I do have some insight into it. It has to do with my son. I haven't been to a movie in years now. Four, I think. Not since I went with my son. Now that I've drawn it up from the pit, I realize that I'm not going to see another one until he comes back. I have no idea why -- hardly any.

He'll be out of Iraq and in Germany in a few weeks, then a couple of months decompression, then he's done. When that happens, and I'm alone, I think I will sob until I can't breathe. Maybe not. But it is a lot of pressure. I'd like some sort of catharsis, though. They're great.

As I type this, there is a cat sitting on the monitor, its tail hanging down the middle of the screen. I'm not at my computer. I'm relocated.

So here's the point. Where do I get the energy to fight, a lot, every day? Why would some people think I don't feel pain -- the implication being that I'm not quite human? Well, I've never been quite human. When I was a teenager I went back to the Midwest to visit some cousins and my grandmother. After a while she said, "You seem more human this time." It had been a couple of years, from mid to late teens. I didn't take it as an insult. An insight, more likely. But that's a different kind of human.

This is the physical stuff. And I get the energy, and the strength, and whatever other salient mutable traits, from my lifestyle. I'll tell anyone who asks. I've told you. (Move your damn tail.) But I don't preach. Some fellas want to attribute it to genetics. I've pointed out on several occasions that I have brothers who are pretty average, who have a different lifestyle. Yours. Whereas I've spent thirty years of dedicated but non-fanatical commitment to fitness and health, focusing primarily around a sane human diet. I believe being vegetarian is a huge part of that, but for most people that's just not going to happen.

It shouldn't really be a puzzlement. Same general genetic material as my brothers, with the only and major difference being a radically different lifestyle. Hm. But it still must be genetics. Because if I'm right -- and it is after all an anecdotal account, rather than a double-blind study -- then all the other suggestions are just excuses to continue eating meat and the concomitant crap that accompanies it. Tell me, what disease is prevented by supplementing a diet with meat? What's that? Anemia? Well, yes, I suppose ... although spinach really is a better source of iron. But you make an excellent point, I guess. Your fatburger does indeed prevent starvation, a very pernicious disease. You do however see my point. I hope to God you do.

Diet is emotional. All of your arguments for meat amount to this: you want to eat it.

Did I mention that I living with animals not my own?

Health is a choice. Almost always. Before it's too late, that is. After that, the choice is taken away, replaced by chronic illness. I don't mean to blame. If you have disease, you have my sympathy. But if you don't, do you suppose that the nutrients, or non-nutrients, that you put into your body might have something to do with the amount of energy you have? And the level of health? And the capacity for self-healing?

Yes, I'm living in place where someone I care about is just waiting to die. It's a very slow process, and may take several more years, or longer. But he walks at a ninety-degree angle to himself, all hunched over his walker, which he shortly will not be able to use any longer. And sometimes he is utterly incoherent. In the hospital last week he was supposed to have an X-ray, but he went paranoid and accused the staff of certain crimes, and bit a nurse. He's diabetic, and just ate a can of frozen juice concentrate with a spoon. Again.

Why has this happened? Decades and decades of eating without nourishing. Food is not about calories. I could see it coming, literally, for thirty years. But appetite is emotional, and I don't nag.

So I'm living around six cats and two absolutely tiny little dogs. And a man whom I love, ruined, demented, in pain, and old before his time. Normally I'd say something sarcastic here, like about hoping you enjoy your next meal. Maybe I'd point out that the word sarcasm comes from the Greek, sarkazein, meaning to tear flesh. Like a dog, an unthinking, undisciplined dumb domesticated appetite-driven pet. But somehow it doesn't seem appropriate. And you already know how clever I am. I'm brilliant. A brilliant blond beast, prowling outside the circle of your dim firelight.


J