Confusion in the mind is not necessarily a bad thing or a retardant. Confusion, if taken seriously, encourages internal debate. Who am I really — introvert, extrovert, bully, recluse? What am I most comfortable with: Vegetarianism, non-vegetarianism? What philosophies do I really build my reasoning upon — pragmatism, realism, cynicism?
As we know, interior monologue is an ongoing process. We converse with ourselves. I used to know a person way back in the distant mists of time who never hid from this. Like an extrovert Walter Mitty he seemed forever lost in a parallel world while negotiating his way through the one in which he lived. He would be seen often riding a bicycle to work, chattering away and gesticulating while some inner debate raged. That he never managed to have a serious accident while riding and swerving with one hand, and gesturing with the other, is testament to a parallel power of concentration at work even when a person is otherwise engaged. At least I think so.
As children, we used to watch this man with a fair degree of amusement and consider him a trifle potty. However, when he was in company, this very same individual was far more cogent in his reasoning and supremely confident in his articulation than all of his peers at the time.
Which brings me to Travis, the son of friends. If his mother cooks the best non-vegetarian dishes in the neighbourhood it is clearly because Travis has pushed her to be the best. He is one of those whose philosophy on food is more ‘Live to eat’ rather than ‘Eat to live’. Waking up each morning, he would, as his mother says, order the menu for the day dictated of course by the secret gastric juices coursing within.
“Right! What have you got lined up for us today, mum?” was a common waking-up conversation opener, followed by, “How about….?”
And a whole menu for the day would be composed over a deceptively ordinary bowl of porridge that like a thin gossamer sheath masked what truly lay ahead in the hours left before bedtime.
Mum, prone to flattery as nearly all mums are, would toddle off to the market to acquire the ingredients that would in turn get the kitchen going. And so, for example, a day would fly by, on the wings of braised or roasted chickens, succulent peppered steak, or lamb cutlets flavoured with rosemary to name a few dishes from a compendium that had been compiled through Travis’s growing years and into manhood. Then, suddenly, who knows perhaps as a result of persistent interior conversation, Travis awoke one morning and over the self-same porridge announced, “It’s over.” While his parents held their breath thinking he had perhaps ended a romantic alliance, he elaborated: “No more meat.”
“There’s plenty of meat in the freezer,” assured his mum, misconstruing meaning.
“You don’t understand. I’m done with meat. I’m adopting a vegetarian way of life from now on,” he replied.
Silence descended on the breakfast table. Later, in private, parental opinion was batted back and forth, “It’s only a passing phase. He’ll get over it, wipe your eyes, my dear.”
Every day, Travis took to putting up a famous quote on his wall as some form of reaffirmation to his newly acquired lifestyle. Harvey Diamond’s ‘You put a baby in a crib with a rabbit and an apple. If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple I’ll buy you a new car’. Mum tried countering it with a quote or two on the kitchen wall. G. B. Shaw’s, ‘The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me’.
In the end, she gave up, unable to compete with: ‘You have just dined and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity’. Or, G.B. Shaw himself, in another mood: ‘Animals are my friends ... and I don’t eat my friends.’ ‘Let sleeping dogs lie,’ declared mum, rather mysteriously.
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.