I Have No Need For The Past,

I First Became A Vegetarian When I Was Nine, In Response To An Argument Made By A Radical Babysitter. My Great Change - Which Lasted A Couple Of Weeks - Was Based On The Very Simple Instinct That It's Wrong To Kill Animals For Food.

It Will Never Be The Case That People Won't Eat Meat. I Think It Could Conceivably Be The Case One Day That People Eat Very Small Amounts Of It. That It's A Special Thing, Rather Than Reach For It Because It's Cheap Or Reach For It Because It's Convenient, That It Becomes Something Festive Or Something Celebratory, Once A Week, And That Could Actually Be Achieved On Small Farms If We Really Changed Our Habits.

Only Now Do I Understand The War Against Boredom, The Lost Cause Of Empty Hours, Of Empty Days And Nights.

Oh, I'd Say I Like A Meal As Much As Anybody. But I Find A Certain Kind Of Foodiness Silly, Gluttonous And Embarrassing.

I Didn't Intend To Write About Totems Or People Searching. I Tried Not To Constrain Myself, And This Is What I Ended Up With. There's This Great Auden Quote: "i Look At What I Write So I Can See What I Think."