Columns

FLOWERING BRANCHES

	I'm often asked about meat-eating, a way of life which I left behind a long time ago, but not entirely.  There are many good arguments to give up the practice altogether or at least cut back drastically.  In macrobiotics, we recommend that if you do eat meat it should be only for occasions, and the portion should be so small it becomes the garnish, like the pickle on the side of the plate, rather than the main event.  Plato said the pursuit of luxurious meat-eating, the need to satisfy a population's lavish needs, leads inevitably to war.  That the Republic was to be a vegetarian city is one of the best kept secrets in the history of philosophy.
	Throughout most of history eating vegetables was linked with poverty, inadequacy and punishment, and surely all my ancestors would agree.  Meat was what we ate when we were well off and squeamishness was out of the question.  To this day I'm unable to get sick at the thought of meat-eating no matter how hard I try. I don't crave it, but must confess the aroma of barbecued pork sure gets this Jewess's salivary glands going.  Sorry.
  	When I was a young girl I used to go with my mother to the busy markets on 13th. Avenue in Brooklyn where she picked out the best live chickens and fish she could find for our Sabbath meals. I watched the schochet (ritual slaughterer) slit the chicken's throat with a sharp knife and the fish monger slam the carp's head against his cutting block with a wooden hammer.  I saw the bleeding bodies twitch and flail, watched the guts pulled out with bare hands, the soft feathers and shiny fish-scales swiftly plucked and scraped.  I watched all this with the same fascination I might have had for watching the swallowing of communion wafers in church, or the changing of the guard at  Buckingham Palace.  Rather than revulsion or sorrow I felt included, as a participant in an important event.  Sometimes, if we were lucky, we found shiny clusters of small yellow balls inside the chicken, unborn eggs which my mother would poach in the soup especially for me.
	I read that somewhere in Argentina they cut slabs of meat off live animals for instant barbecues.  On the Discovery Channel I watched primitive people in Australia draw blood from the veins of live cows which they mixed with the animal's milk and guzzled with the same gusto some might experience with the drinking of a frosty, chocolate milk shake.  Once, in Spain, I watched a butcher remove a bloody, suckling-pig from the belly of its freshly-slaughtered mother, and prepare it for the oven.  The creature resembled a new-born babe but once it was roasted, crisp-skinned and succulent, I ate it anyway. 
	More than twenty years ago I began the study and practice of macrobiotics which is connected to oriental philosophy, and became the way I learned to enjoy, among other things, eating wholesome foods, whole grains and vegetables, on a regular basis. Nothing is forbidden within this philosophical system which is based on balance, and we pay for our excesses like everyone else.
	Most of the time I eat like a saint, but I don't always live up to my own reputation, nor do I really want to, especially when I'm invited to New York City's best restaurant, as happened on a recent visit.  The occasion was a birthday celebration and I, like everyone else, ordered the gastronomic menu - the works.  I got a lot of raised eyebrows when I started gnawing on my perfectly-broiled, succulent, pink lamb-chops.  Someone said, "You're not macrobiotic if you eat meat."  I just nodded and flashed my best Buddha smile without missing a chew.  I've heard this before and it doesn't bother me in the least.
     I once read in a book about Zen that flowering branches grow short and long.  Macrobiotic people come in many varieties too, as I learned in the 70's when I lived in London and witnessed macrobiotic orgies with my very own eyes.  Thinking about it today I'd say my friends were the avant garde.  They swallowed LSD, made love in all combinations, then sat down to fabulous meals of miso soup and brown rice.  What can I say?  They were my teachers and they proved to me that flowering branches grow short and long.  Why not give it a try, whichever you are.