As Dry as the Sierra Nevada Desert
A Retrospective
“He who abides in the fire, he who abides in the heart, he who abides in the sun, they are one and the same.”
—Maitrayana-Brahmana-Upanishad
When I was a child, we would spend some summers out on a farm in Fallon, Nevada, with my friend Eric and his family.
If I remember correctly (and I can almost hear him chastising me for remembering something incorrectly, he was good at the old zen admonishments!) his Uncle had a farm of big brown cows. Their eyes were often looking in different directions.
From what I remember, in those days anyways, the cows on that farm were used for dog meat. We’d go to the sale barn and they’d bid on beat up old cows that were too defective for human consumption. I remember one came out of the gate, the farmer in the cowboy hat rattling off about it over a microphone at a hyperfast speed. The cow a filthy thing, its face covered in blood, flesh hanging off of it like a zombie. If I’d have been of a weaker constitution, I might have been afraid of that ghastly visage, but all I could think was: cool. I don’t remember feeling any sort of afraid.
There was a fat woman with a cattle-prod, slapping a few dozen scared sheep. She swore at them as though they were naked humans that she was corralling into a pen. That bothered me more than the cow, but still, fear was not really present in the ordeal.
Having lived in Bangkok for a while, I’ve known more than my fair share of vegans. Most of them are city folk who have never seen a cow farm up close, because if they had, they might actually realize the futility of their false morality play and its questionable high grounds.
Pretty much every religion has its own take on animal consumption. From the no pigs and sharks and crabs rules of Judaism and Islam to the no meat at all rules of the Jains.
You know what I say? If it didn’t come out of a human, primate, monkey, cat, dog, whale, or shark vagina—I think you can eat it. But I’m probably forgetting a few animal vagina spawns that you also shouldn’t eat. And if people want to limit their dietary choices because a God told them to, that is their choice. I personally think that if God is telling me what animals I can’t eat, then that is schizophrenia.
And I mean, some people even break those above rules that I got. Some people eat dogs. What the fuck. But hey, I’m not gonna judge you for eating Fido if it’s what your ancestors did. Just don’t eat my Fido. It’s fucked but so is eating a pig. Pigs are smart. And delicious.
When we all go to Heaven (because we are all going there since it is the same place as Hell) I guess then all the pigs and chickens and crabs we ate will have their say about how they felt about being eaten.
Until then, have yourself a beer.
Oh and speaking of beer, I found a nice Sierra Nevada beer the other day. It really takes me back. In Long Beach, that was my go-to beer. It’s a step up from Budweiser, and it reminds me of college, and a dear friend named Jon who passed away a few years ago. We used to drink that and watch TV shows and shoot the shit about most everything in life. I really miss him.
I used to get a nice crate of the stuff, and work my way through it over two weeks, because I didn’t drink to kill myself, just one or two after work. In those days, I lived in a house called Moonrise Manor, and my three room-mates were video game addicts who hardly left their rooms.
The beer also always makes me think of the deserts of my home country. The Sierra Nevada stretches into California, and is a beautiful place. Driving through it, the mirage of water is ever present on the highway, and the Joshua trees stand in the heated expanses like stoic Greek statues or scarecrows.
Somewhere in the hills, mountain lions, old movie sets, and maybe mutants reside up there. You’ll pass a trailer park, a house in the middle of nowhere, a farm, and wonder just who it is who lives out there, and whether or not they are a cannibal.
You’ll pass an abandoned amusement park, and various road signs—the semiotics of a nation. You’ll pass a few Macdonald’s, and rest stops of various kitschy themes, when you travel through that place, the Sierra Nevada Desert. Eventually, you’ll reach your destination—be it Los Angeles, Las Vegas, or Fallon Nevada. But the journey there is important too, so don’t forget to look out of the window.
Because somewhere out there, there’ll be some cows.