The Dreadful Dream

Note to readers: The content of this journal entry contains some disturbing descriptions. To keep us from dwelling on the dreadful element, I'm pasting in some of my favorite scenes (in no particular order), all of which depict elements here at Ravenseyrie, with the exception of the sculpture photos. All photos taken by me.


A few days ago, along the course of whatever research I was doing on the internet, I came upon a curious CNN poll that was testing the pulse of the American public regarding present day views on whether or not they would consider opening up their diets to the consumption of horse meat.

DaVinci's horse sculpture at the Frederick Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids, Michigan

This poll was prompted by a gathering of organizations and individuals with a vested interest in making it legal to once again slaughter horses and process them into food in the United States. The four day convention was called The Summit of the Horse, and as you might have guessed sparked quite a polarization of opinions regarding perceptions of horses and how humans relate to them.

Kevin, deep in contemplation while leaning against the da Vinci horse sculpture

Ciente

At the time, I had my mind on finding an obscure reference to Equus ferus and so quickly moved on from what looked to be a very unpleasant media extravaganza. However, this was not to be the end of that particular chance encounter because during the night I ended up having a very dreadful dream...


In this dream,

I was down in the village and decided to find some type of hiking route up the side of the bluff to make my way home instead of using the open road. There were many paths and I became disoriented. Nevertheless, I continued to make my way upward using a path that felt the most direct. It soon lead me to the back yard of a large dwelling and the only way to continue was to walk through this strange building. I entered through the back door and found myself in what looked like a large restaurant kitchen, newly built and not quite completed. I kept trying to find my way through to a different room or a door that would take me back out to a path that would lead me home--but there seemed to be no way out.

Off to the side of this large restaurant kitchen I came upon a young woman working there. She told me that this building belonged to a very wealthy man in the U.S. who had businesses all over the world and would soon be opening this newly built restaurant on the island. She said I could only find my way back home by taking a trip on the wealthy man's boat.

As dreams go, the next scene found me on the prow of a fast moving ship, with the blue, blue waters of Lake Huron and the familiar shape of Manitoulin Island quickly giving way to foreign waters that became murky and narrow. The ship slowed to a trawling speed and followed a winding trail of a brackish canal. Both sides of the shore line were filled with rubbish heaps and smoldering discarded rubber tires. Strewn throughout this foul mess were the carcasses of cattle and pigs. There were, here and there, some of these animals that were still alive, with broken limbs, tortured eyes and moans. I knew instantly that this boat was taking me to one of the wealthy man's many businesses--this one being a slaughter house. A dispassionate voice said, "This is the overflow area, where those animals that are too far gone to walk the line to the kill floor are discarded."

This "overflow" area just went on and on as the boat continued its slow passage, bringing us nearer to some monstrous building looming ahead, blocking out the acrid sky. Off to the left, movement and loud slurred voices caught my attention. I heard the screams of horses. The smoke from the tires cleared and I could see a dozen or more horses being herded by nondescript tattered and filth covered men. "They have some of the mustangs!" I cried. The men cackled strange laughter as they began to put bridles and saddles upon those horses who were too weak to fight them. The same dispassionate voice spoke to me again, "It is the job of these men to bring the horses to the kill floor to be slaughtered. It is a difficult job, day in and day out, so we do not deny them having a little bit of fun with the horses first." I knew the mentality behind this type of "fun"...it was of the same kind that soldiers in war engage in when they rape women and beat old men after overtaking a village.

The eyes of the horses were crazed in some, completely resigned in others. A group of other men were manipulating a contraption that held a horse on it's side while they quickly and clumsily put all manner of high end horse clothing on it: state of the art shipping boots, an insulated horse blanket, a colour-coordinated halter and lead, etc. Once this outfitting was accomplished, the men pulled a lever that forced the contraption upright so that the horse was now standing. They opened the grilled front and one man began taking photos with a fancy camera. "These photos are for an ad agency hired by a horse clothing catalogue to demonstrate that even wild mustangs can wear their latest products" said the dispassionate voice. It wasn't until then that some small part of my lucid self emerged and said, "This is not real...this is a dream."

And then I woke up.

Double rainbow over the East Bluff

And couldn't get back to sleep...

Through the Cedars

Boneset ( Eupatorium perfoliatum)

Typically, I do not devote energy to the media attention given to the harmful things humans engage themselves in. But when visited by a dream as dreadful as this, I felt a bit of study and a few words on the matter were called for.

The significance with which horses are regarded in human perception varies depending on cultural shaping. The same can be said of how humans perceive themselves in relation to plants, insects, fish, fowl, other mammals, fungi, bacteria, etc.

Red-capped Scaber Stalk (Leccinum aurantiacum)

Dryad's Saddle (Polyporus squamosus)

Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaraia var. formosa)

Shiitake (Lentinula edodes)

Wherever in the world humans have dwelt we have created particular folkways and mores to explain the natural phenomenon of our environment and developed a variety of acceptable and unacceptable patterns of behavior, rife with superstitions, taboos, laws, penalties and the like.

Sandhill Crane

That which is perfectly acceptable in one culture may be totally repulsive to a different society. In such situations, it seems better to refrain from terms such as "good" and "evil", and rather try to identify what is edifying and nurturing versus what is expedient and deleterious--and this done in a holistic view of cosmic proportions.

One of Winter's many art forms

Has humans' slaughter and consumption of mammals, birds, reptiles and fish proved to be edifying and nurturing to our species, or has it been at times expedient but overall deleterious?

Shelagh and Winter Sun

I think virtually any one of us who comes upon a scene such as what was shown to me in my dream would feel repulsed. Why is this?

Why do so few of us "harvest" our own creatures for food, but instead rely upon slaughter houses and meat processing plants to do this for us?

Ciente converses with the neighbor's bovines

There is an element of killing a creature for one's dinner, especially on a mass scale, that most humans find disturbing. One way of dealing with the conflict of nurturing life all the while embracing the learned gastric enjoyment of eating the flesh of slaughtered creatures is to disassociate oneself from the creature and its reluctance to place itself willingly in our stock pots. Another way is to delude ourselves that these creatures by their own choice "give" (or sacrifice) themselves to us or have been "given" to us by divine right for our survival.

Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea)

Have you ever heard of a Schmoo?

Comic strip artist, Al Capp did an even better job of solving the dilemma of wanting to eat creatures that must first be captured and killed against their will. In his cartoon serial Li'l Abner, Capp created creatures that lived on air and seemed to exist only to sacrifice themselves for the needs and desires of humans--which they did so with absolute delight, shape-shifting themselves into whatever type of food humans wanted to consume (joyfully jumping into the pot or fry pan itself) and making their body useful for a variety of other human necessities. You'll notice (if you followed the link) that there is even an image of a human riding a Schmoo with the caption, "Yowee!!--It goes anyplace!"

The grasses, "sine quo non"...

Curiously, there are scientists who are working on creating a different version of a Schmoo by growing meat in their laboratories.

And I thought I had woken up from a dreadful dream...

There is a complicated and chaotic imbalance on planet earth just now, this much is obvious. But all that I study tells me that it is the nature of nature to use chaos to creatively restore a new equilibrium.

Crab-apples

I refrain from marking the notion of slaughtering horses or any creature for food and economic gain as a "bad" thing, rather it is a "learned" thing that is accepted by some and rejected by others. However, I do find myself rather in agreement with a quote attributed to Albert Einstein:

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."

Kevin's Garlic

I don't know of any culture anywhere in the world that has a visceral repulsion for consuming plants as food, do you?

Kevin, Angus, Apples and Peppermint