Janelle

Ex-Veganism and the Inflexible Design of Social Groups

The trouble with being a spokesperson for something is that you’re criticized if you take any steps off the path that you were advocating. I remembered this when seeing how many vegans were outraged at Ginnifer Goodwin’s announcement that her foray into veganism has come to an end.
It’s interesting and somewhat ashame that we judge so harshly the people who seem to give up good causes. It just seems more logical and thoughtful to acknowledge and appreciate when people dedicate any part of their lives to something rare and admirable. Changing into new patterns doesn’t make all your past behaviors for naught.
Furthermore, who are we to judge what people do with their lives? Vegans every day have to practice the art of understanding – that all people are coming from different places with their food. Why is it so hard to apply this thinking in cases like this? Can we believe that people are trying their best when they say they are?
Perhaps that’s just it — we think that if they did it before, we won’t believe that they can’t do it again. So, these hypocritical folks are thought of as the worst not just because they are hypocrites but because they are clearly abandoning something they know to be ‘right’ and that they know can certainly be done. Perhaps this gives the group something similar to a feeling of being personally abandoned. And rightly so. But give a girl some credit.

Her situation is a reminder of why I hate to put people into groups that create all these strict expectations and inflexibilities in the first place. Groups help you forget everything else that you have in common. It is why I don’t like the idea of pedantry: it assumes teacher and other are in the very same context. And why I enjoy, instead, the ideas of expression of self as a way to connect with others in a mutually developing way.

Ginnifer, I don’t care. I think you’re great. You give me more motivation to cut my hair and to feel even better with my decision to start eating chicken and eggs again. (My body still ain’t cut out for this!)

Plus, having a pretty girl image added to my blog is a nice bonus. Thank you.

Beautiful Women of the Year.

To the beautiful women of 2011, I have been thinking about you a lot lately. I could clearly be crazy, but I think it means something more than happenstance that you lovely ladies have been able to share with me, with no intent and only few words, some essences of your being that resonate with my future, past, and present selves.

Perhaps this means that I’m focusing on what’s important to me in the world, and, as the natural forces would have it, finding myself upon it.

To the woman in the Green Goddess cafe, nestled away at the chair by the counter which my arrival made even more crowded. With your calm demeanor, dark clothes, and solid-shaped rings, you waited patiently for an order that took too long. You were going down to the river for the festival. You, like me I think, got a late start. It was already 3 o’clock. You mentioned “interesting flavor combinations” and that “that dish looks heavy for such a hot day” in such a way that I could tell you had some wealth. You lived in Oklahoma now, which had “lots of poverty” and the cooks talked about you after you had left. It could have been the 20 dollar tip you left them when they comped your delayed order, or it could have been that you were just so naturally captivating. I went to the river, to the festival, where you said you were going too, and didn’t see you; I never expected to.

You, woman who set me first in trance, with your fully clad in floral cotton, tall, thin, frame. I noticed you in the airport from afar and as expected you sat next to me while we waited to board. I thought up close, you were even more fantastic. What wonderful bright green eye makeup, what lovely bone structure and gleaming white hair. I thought “surely, this woman’s on her way to New Orleans!” But you were not; it was to Hawaii with you, and your husband (who also had quite lovely white hair)…and I liked the sounds of the two of you conversing…….   When I got to my seat on the plane, you laughed that we were sitting beside each other again. You said “I was just thinking how funny it would be to sit next to the same person on the plane!” And I jumped inside because I was thinking the same thing. But then, I wasn’t sure if I was just making up that memory for the thought of it being so incredible. You said “the lord works in mysterious ways”, and I heard that phrase more often than usual for those several days that I was in NOLA. At moments both then and now, I thought you might be my fairy godmother; if I believed in those sorts of things. The way you slept on top of your husband by the end of the flight, his legs holding yours, gave me hope for an eternal love. I thought about you a lot that flight. I was sad and disappointed in myself that I took my way off the plane so quickly once we landed in order to catch a short connection, instead of saying farewell, take care, to you. I looked back a couple times, to try to catch your eye; I will have to believe that you saw me through your periphery.

The last of you beauties on that same wonderful trip only came to me as a beauty much afterward. You were a bit self-involved, with your nonstop drawing through that miserable flight home. Your bags overstuffed, items dripping down the sides. But the pencils and you that afternoon created on the page a young girl, eyes closed, lying somewhere. You were so open and deliberate with your creation. It was the only thing that the person stuck beside you for hours could see, and at times I thought you were drawing it for me; like you were showing me something of myself. You were to say, “Hi Jennifer, this is how loving and beautiful you are on the outside. You will be ok.” And you weren’t just showing me myself in the drawing, but also in your own actions. You showed me that I am you, an artist, for as long as I acted on a desire to put pencil to paper…… I remember I liked your earrings, and I knew you weren’t intending to be drawing “me.” But that was ok. I still believed in it.