MUSINGS ON MORTALITY: YOUNG WOMAN AT A HOTEL BREAKFAST BAR - By Tony Lopresti

Highland Scottish cattle looking upon their future diners. Photo Credit Diane Dragonetti

My name is Tony Lopresti and a svelte, attractive young woman at the dark wood-paneled breakfast bar of a quaint country inn taught me that we are all killers.

She wore a soft, thin, long-sleeved, striped blue shirt carefully unbuttoned to the midpoint of her sternum. A soft, darker blue – almost indigo – slightly fuzzy, thickly knit sweater draped her shoulders. Her well-worn jeans fit her form but not too tightly – it was breakfast after all. She had chosen to wear comfy shoes.

She made her breakfast selection with confidence: a small bowl of grains, a brioche, coffee with a touch of milk, no sugar.

She chose a table in front of a window where the sun’s blindingly bright yellow light transformed her body into a black, two-dimensional profile in silhouette. She sat delicately, her chair at an unusual distance from the table, as if she wanted to get up. She crossed her right leg over her left, placed her napkin on her lap and leaned herself and her chair toward the table.

Her slender, dainty fingers tore at the brioche. She raised a jagged piece toward her face, opened her mouth and gently stuffed it in. She began to chew. Because she sat in dark silhouette, her act of chewing became very clear: the up and down and side to side motions of grinding up once living organisms. Then she swallowed, her soft larynx moving up and down as she initiated the process of peristalsis which would move the food through her long alimentary canal.

She took a spoonful of grains and brought them to her mouth with similar grace. She emptied the spoon into her mouth and her jaw began to grind them. Up and down. Side to side. Swallow. Repeat.

Watching the young woman in silhouette brought to mind watching cartoons where some sort of disaster would create an x-ray effect so the viewer could see through the bodies of the characters as they ate.

We eat with others all the time. We seldom watch their mouths. We either don’t look at them as they eat, or we concentrate on their eyes. That distracts us from what communal dining really is – a group of people ripping apart once living plants and animals, grinding them to a thick paste in their mouths and then swallowing them. It’s probably the most primitive thing we humans do. More primal even than sex. We are killers first, procreators second.

I remember a story told to me about a five-year-old boy and his mother shopping at the supermarket for dinner provisions, which included lots of beef because the boy’s father insisted on steak at nearly every meal.

Walking through the dairy aisle with their cart loaded with plastic-wrapped cuts of meat, the boy asked his mother where steak comes from.

“From cows,” she answered.

A few aisles later, the boy stopped in his tracks. He looked up at his mother, his eyes wide with horror.

“Mommy, do they have to kill the cows?”

As gently as she could, she responded, “Yes, they do. That’s what those types of cows are raised for.”

The boy burst into tears and wept uncontrollably for the rest of their time in the market. He never ate meat again.

At dinner, the boy would look at his meatless plate, and at his mother’s, who had taken up his diet. Then the boy would stare coldly at his father’s steak and he would ask his mother, “Mommy, how many cows did we save today?”

Some. A few. Maybe. A child’s sweet thought.

Killing is part of our nature, essential to our survival. No dietary plan changes that. A plant-based diet may be healthy, but it doesn’t absolve the eater from killing.

How do we atone? Can we find a way to be forgiven for all the suffering we cause just to survive?

Since I was a young boy I’ve had this image from the point of view of the God of Genesis looking upon his creation and who “saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good”. The round blue earth was beautiful, too, but all God could hear from it was a cacophony of horrid screams and cries as all sorts of creatures were being slaughtered every second.

A pretty young woman in a country inn. A killer among God’s beauty.