You're eating a hamburger?

"You're eating a hamburger?"

"Yeah. I'm eating a hamburger. What's wrong with that?"

"Well, E. coli for one."

"Oh, come on, man. And yesterday I had turkey. What of it?"

"Bird flu. Turkey shit burger. Turkeys are caged in chickenwire boxes they can't even really turn around in, they shit on each other, they eat contaminated farm animal byproducts that weren't deemed fit for human consumption. As if the standards aren't atrocious as is, how bad is thatshit, huh?!"

"It was free range."

"You ate the carcass of a bird who lived believing it was free when it was only existing for the purpose of becoming food in your belly. You ate a free bird, man."

"Birds don't believe anything. They have nothing approximating a human consciousness, no capacity for representational or abstract thinking. They are not concocting belief systems based on memory and imagination."

"How do you know that? How do you know?!"

I decided it was time to eat my burger in peace. I stood up from the picnic table and walked toward the bench up the hill with a view of the mountains. Brian kept chirping behind me about something or other. I chomped away at my burger. Delicious. Fuck cows, man. Fuck turkeys, too. Yeah, they exist to feed me. If they serve some other purpose then it's of no interest to me, man. I eat to live and the living I do has nothing to do with the interests of cattle. I'm a speciesist. I believe the other species are subservient to the human. If they weren't then they would've kicked our ass. Bacteria and viruses have more on humans than cows. Well, maybe cow shit. All that methane. And the crops grown for them, cropland that could be growing human food directly. And the pesticides. And the injected antibiotics.

Shit, I'm starting to think like dickhead. Fuck that. I'm hungry. I'm eating my burger. We're all dying, anyway, humans, cows, ducks, ants, don't matter. Each individual dies and the species lives on. One turkey makes no difference just as one human makes no difference. But if one makes no difference then how can the "whole" be meaningful? If the whole is made up of a bunch of individuals whose individual lives are meaningless then on what basis is the whole meaningful?

I don't understand the favoritism toward the general when there is no such thing as a "general public." There are merely individuals. Each person is scattered here and there, living a life loving the body around in relatively familiar courses. Walk to the park in the morning. Get in the car and drive down Powell to I-5 south to Salem. Park in the same parking lot, walk into the same building, go to the same desk, talk to the same people ... most of the time. Perform similar routines day after day. Some changes now and then. Those changes become part of a new routine for awhile. Until more changes come.

Go to one of three restaurants for lunch with a combination of coworkers drawn from a potential pool of about a dozen. Go back to the office. Perform more tasks. Leave the office, get in your car, drive home, maybe stop somewhere like a gym or a bar or a child's sporting event. Whatever. You go home, do something, go out occasionally, eventually go to bed.

Who are you fooling? There is no "us"? There are only individuals bumping into each other day after day while living similar routines. Some lives are more interesting than others. Without question. Is that wrong to say? Is it not true? Are there not lives that follow a more complex and unpredictable path? You know there are. Few individuals really want to live those types of lives. Well, most want to live the really glamorous unusual lives. But not the shitty, dangerous, traumatic, terrifying lives with twists and turns that involve knives, verbal abuse, sleeping under bridges, dumpster diving for food, schizophrenia, arrests and exile for violations of anti-homeless laws, drug addictions, ...

Lots of individuals living interesting lives. Lots living boring, predictable lives. A few living weird, luxurious lives. Can we define the quality of life by the way it is lived? Can we say living a life of wealth and leisure while traveling the world in five-star hotels is a better quality of life than living in a six foot by eight foot lean-to made from particle board, cardboard, and plastic in an unsanitary alleyway in a sprawling Dickensian Mexican-American border town? Methinks the system wasn't really working all that well before it crashed. That it never worked all that well. It's like it always is: depends on your particular position. And/or your particular beliefs and values.

What is it like to only know a life of cardboard roofs? What was it like to only know a life of torturing and killing as a soldier in the Khmer Rouge? What will it be like to only know a life of suffering or pleasure hundreds of years after my death?

How do I get past particularity? I am a specific body at a particular location at any given moment. I can read. I can look. I can listen. I can smell. I can taste and touch. I can run and jump, laugh and cry, sleep and eat. I can consider. I can mull it over. I can immerse myself in learning, recreating, and reliving another life. I can act. I can paint. I can write.

But what does that make it? What does that make what I write? Has that made me experience what I'm writing? Has it made you experience what you're reading? It just adds to the moments, doesn't it? There's simply ... a word followed by a word followed by a word followed by a word followed by ...

Thunderbolts of ice cream cones

Jelly rolls and mustache combs

A tree that whispers "please help me die"

You grab an axe and say goodbye

Gummie bears and donut holes

Captain Crunch and marshmallows

Bloody fingers, open sores

Toilet paper, ear wax, jump ropes, nacho cheese snacks, dandelions, bellyaches, darts. Maybe play a board game in a little while. After you blow me. But before I put a bullet in that fucker's head. In fact, you're going to blow me while he watches, that motherfucker. I'm going to put a bullet in his brain while I'm fucking you, right when I cum inside you, baby. His first moments of nonexistence are going to be celebrated by the living with a fuckfest. And if I knock you up I'm going to treat that kid as if it was him and beat the fuck out of it every day. Just in case there's reincarnation. But you know I love you, baby.