NEEDLING

America is so afraid of death, of dying, getting old, that it does everything it can to take death out of living, and since to be completely alive and aware of life, you have to be completely aware of death and mortality, then everything becomes fake, plastic, and ironically enough since to take death out you have to take life out, everything here looks and smells of death. Fake, plastic, unnatural, still-life, embalmed death. We don’t want you to know the steak comes from the cow, and for the cow to give you the steak, she has to be killed, she had to die, so we do all the killing, cutting, cleaning, far away from your earsight and eyesight. When you get to see the steak, it is vacuumed packed under clear plastic on top a little yellow tray displayed on shelving filled with all kinds of other “meat products.” You can’t smell a thing except the cleaning product they use to clean the shelving with. It’s as if for that steak to be there on that shelf an animal didn’t even have to die. It’s all too clean, impersonal, artificial. Now, I love a good steak, but I’d much rather deal with a man or a woman in a white apron picking at large chunks of meats and cutting them the way I want them cut. Somebody I can talk to, ask questions about where the animal came from, what is the quality of the meat, what breed, what region, how old. I want to see whole or half animals hanging on hooks behind him, blood on his clothes, big knives and big saws, and the smell of meat, blood, and death. When I’m inside that butcher shop, I know I’m alive. When I’m inside the supermarket in front of that display of vacuumed packed meat entities, I am ashamed. There’s no cheating death, and by trying to do so, you just end up cheating life.