Working steadily on the dissertation. That is to say, finding myself ever more disturbed at what ‘humanity’ seems to entail. I don’t know exactly what we are, despite all our posturing about what we would like ourselves to be. I wonder about morality and relativism and the boundaries we allow ourselves to cross daily, so long as we have a moral excuse for them. While this comment applies to literally every territory of human existence, I want to discuss our treatment of ‘other’ creatures. The usual line I hear is that opting out of factory farming, and choosing instead to purchase meat from local farms allows the animal a ‘happier’ life.

We all suffer pain in our lifetimes. But we still visit pain upon these animals, despite their heretofore ‘happy’ existence. I wonder if cows learn to trust those who care for them, and if, at that final moment, when the cow/chicken/pig is still slaughtered despite all that ‘humane’ care, they feel a level of betrayal along with the physical pain that their particular death will bring. Chimpanzees are nothing like cows, but it’s clear they feel those kind of emotions (watch “Project Nim” if you don’t believe me). It’s not a hard stretch to find other animals who do have relationships of trust with humans, as well. And I don’t know about you, but I would prefer a much more peaceful death than having my throat sliced open or a bolt stabbing through my skull.

So tonight I am ambivalent about “who” we are. We are capable of inducing happiness and pain, of creating misery and kindness, of loving and hating. Our moral compass, if we have one at all, seems to come from what serves our existence best (and if I go all Darwin about it, it seems that helps us to survive–more about this quandary later). But we decide what best serves us. For me, I simply cannot swallow the excuse that the cow had a happier life until the moment the farmer took him out back and used a bolt gun to stab him through the skull.

I know this cow will die, someday. Or, if we didn’t practice the production of farming animals for slaughter, it might never be born at all and other varieties would be given the chance to evolve. So many varieties of animals have died or are dying out thanks to modern factory breeding techniques, as it is, that our lack of biodiversity is a serious worry. But, I do think there is a moral difference between forcing the animal to become my meal and allowing it to live a life unimpeded by our egotism.

In other writing news, I finished a new draft of a story about a sheela-na-gig, am at work on a YA fantasy novel about runaway teens, and in general brood every free second of my day. Nothing new here, except, perhaps, for my growing cynicism. I don’t want us to be horrible to each other or to our partners on this earth. The kind of pain we visit upon each other (both human-to-human and animal-to-animal) rattles me.

Today I woke up at 6:30am to find an email from Scape e-zine, buying my story, “Double Dutch”! I’d been having a pretty terrible week/month, so to find this wonderful news in my inbox kicked me straight out of the doldrums and into writerly ecstasy. It’s my first actual sale, though I’ve placed plenty of work in other pubs (gratis). I’m so excited I could throw up.

I wrote “Double Dutch” during week three of Clarion West, and it began a string of absolutely weird ideas I never thought myself capable of writing. This story taught me that I should never, ever let my internal censor tell me something was too weird to write. After “Double Dutch” came an absolutely frightening story that still hurts to think about. But “Double Dutch” kicked off a new way for me to explore fiction, so I couldn’t be more excited that this is the first story I’ve sold.

Please check out Scape and embrace all its glory:

Consider sponsoring me in the 2011 Clarion West Write-a-thon. I’m going for 1,000 words a day, five days a week, and I’ll smash your favorite color and bug into a terrifying monster in my current YA dark fantasy, Throwaways. C’mon! It’ll be like magic. And you know you want yourself immortalized in bug form.

Click here to access my page. Thanks! The money raised here goes to help new writers attend the Clarion West Writers Workshop, held in Seattle, Wash., every year.

Last year I attended Clarion West, which, incidentally, may go down in history as the number one best thing I’ve ever done. It belongs in the Top 5, at the very least. But Clarion West was not without its pitfalls for me, as my diet is insane. I’m vegan, and not only that, I often have digestive problems, so needed to avoid gluten as much as possible.

Before I talk about my experience at the workshop, I want to say one quick thing about my choice to be vegan. When I say “kindness to other creatures,” I do not simply mean non-human animals. I mean people too. I understand the anger other activists feel toward people who participate in the slaughtering and/or exploitation of animals, be it for food, research, etc. However, part of my outlook means that I don’t condone any kind of violence. When I say I’m vegan, I mean I want to live a life that is kind to all of our fellow creatures, be it human, cow, cat, dog, etc. If you’re a vegan and you try to hurt someone or something for the “betterment of animals,” you’re participating in a hypocritical and cruel action that will have ripple effects you may not even dream about. We’re here on this earth together. Once someone told me that “nature is here for us” (meaning “people”), and I disagree. All of us are here for it and it is here for all of us. It’s a rippling continuum of give-and-take that we can barely begin to understand. But I digress. I want to talk about how being *that kind* of vegan worked while I was at Clarion West with seventeen other students, a teacher, two workshop administrators, and a very gracious cook.

One of the coolest things about shacking up in a house with seventeen other strange souls is that we were fed, and we were fed gooooood (spoken in my best Texas drawl), friends. But the problem with that is that few of my wonderful, excellent classmates ate a vegetarian lifestyle, and even so, vegetarians don’t have to watch out for dairy or eggs. I quickly realized I had to tell Joni, our awesome cook, that veggie burgers weren’t all equal, and so on, when during the first week or so, I had to point out that the patties she was about to feed us contained egg whites. I know that makes me sound like a jerk, but I had to quickly explain that I couldn’t eat that way for six weeks. But all I had to do was talk to her about it and we quickly solved any problems. She even made vegan banana bread muffins toward the end of the workshop. She had to deal with different food allergies among several of us, and she was a champ about it. So, lesson one: be nice to Joni and she will cook delicious food that both you and your omnivorous classmates will enjoy.

Lesson two: It won’t hurt to cook some vegan craziness for your classmates on Sunday nights. Even if it’s only once. I made them all chocolate cupcakes from Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero’s Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I don’t think my classmates were expecting much, but one of our more eloquent members turned to me and said, “Holy shit, these are good!” That being said, I noticed something happening during the workshop. One of my classmates stopped eating meat. You can read about it here: “On Veganism.” She’d been a vegan several years before, but for several reasons, had stopped. But that’s not all. Not only did Tracie move away from meat eating during the workshop, another classmate went home and started a “vegan for a month” exercise, another has been asking for tips on how to move away from a meat-heavy diet, and still others have told me that they’ve become much more conscious about their food choices.

This does not mean that jokes were not made at my expense; on the contrary, they were. Most of them were good-natured, though. But still, after years of avoiding meat, to be in a household where people ate meat around me all the time was difficult. I still get upset when I think about people plopping down beside me with giant slabs of chicken on their plates. Of course, they couldn’t know this would upset me, and to me it was inappropriate to acknowledge it, but still it gnawed at me. I couldn’t very well reach out and say, “this slab of leg, or breast, or whatever, was part of a being that felt pain, that may have been in touch with the world in a way you might be.” So, I struggled with watching people eat it. Every day. All the time.

So when jokes came, I retreated into my shell a little bit. I’m a patient person and I’m definitely not a quack (this may depend on who you ask), but I’m fairly sensitive and sometimes felt extremely uncomfortable when someone would think it was so funny that I’d chosen not to eat meat–as if the animals I want to save are not worthy of kindness, or that my life choices are something to be scrutinized. All people are different. We make different choices, different mistakes, different life paths. I think the workshop opened this avenue for myself and my classmates so we could see just how many options exist in writing and in life. But still, there was a learning curve involved. Sometimes my feelings were hurt, by very well-meaning people.

To me, veganism isn’t a joke. It’s a way to pay my respects to creatures who don’t ordinarily receive that respect. But because I know now, afterward, that people were paying attention, and that some of them have told me how my behavior influenced them, I’m so glad I was able to sit at the dining room table with them and listen and be part of a group. Because in the end, I still sat at that communal table. I refused to separate myself. We did not eat the same food, but we were part of the same circle. And that, to me, is sacred.

Lesson Three: Yes, I know the dinner table is sacred. Sometimes, though, you do need a break. During the afternoons, I would sometimes take walks down to the Ave and visit the vegan convenience store (listed below), where I could talk to the volunteers. One of them told me to send a story into an advocacy magazine, and we began talking about activism in literature (which, incidentally, is my dissertation topic). I was able to still be part of my Clarion West group, but also explore beyond it and find people who did understand, who were working toward the same goal as myself. Once I even went to the zoo to research a story about animal experimentation (only one of my CW stories was about animal activism, thank you very much. I am not a didactic story teller, nor do I hope to become one). In any case, I was able to get away when I needed to do so. Below, I’ve included a list of easily accessible vegan or vegan-friendly joints around the CW house. Some of these places can ease your sanity on the days when you just need to get away, I promise you.

Ultimately, this is what I take away from my experience as a vegan. Treat others as you would be treated (this is the golden rule, isn’t it?) and they will respect you for it. So often have I heard negative vegan stereotypes, but I didn’t (and don’t) want to propagate that idea. I wanted to be part of a group but also to save the creatures I could. And I did. You can too. Good luck!

Vegan World!
Seattle offers a TON of vegan options, and this website will help you discover them: http://www.seattlevegan.com. Some of my favorites, like the Flying Apron Bakery and Mighty-O Donuts aren’t quite within walking distance, but here’s a list of vegan-friendly joints around the Ave that I highly recommend:

Sidecar for Pigs Peace
5270 B University Way NE
Seattle, WA 98105
(206) 523-9060

Sidecar offers vegan convenience food items, but also cute shirts and stickers (and yes, I *am* the jerk who bought the “What kind of asshole eats a lamb?” shirt) and facial moisturizer, etc. If you’re stuck and really need something that you know the Safeway or Walgreens can’t provide, this is the place to go. Not to mention, vegan twinkies. ALSO–you can get Mighty O Donuts from Sidecar on the weekends.

Pizza Pi
5500 University Way NE
Seattle WA, 98105
(206) 343-1415

A VEGAN PIZZA joint. No lie. Every time I ate there I thought I’d stumbled into paradise. They’re a little slow, but you won’t be sorry. And try the Sunny Day pizza if you ever get a chance. It’s hands down the best pizza I’ve ever had, vegan or lacto.

Wayward Vegan
5253 University Way NE
Seattle WA, 98105
(206) 524-0204

Offers breakfast foods, and they also have a gluten-free menu. If I remember correctly you can get down-home “fried” favorites as well. They’ve got cinnamon rolls and other delicious treats as well.

Full Tilt Ice Cream
4759 Brooklyn Ave NE
Seattle WA, 98105

Offers vegan flavors. You can also eat their sugar cones. My classmates and I were addicted to ice cream, and we went there almost every Tuesday (and maybe every Wednesday? who knows how often we went!). One of the only times I could partake in dessert along with everyone else without worrying where it came from.

Chaco Canyon
4757 12th Ave NE
Seattle WA, 98105
(206) 522-6966

Chaco Canyon offers some great raw treats, brews its own in-house kombucha, and generally has a great vibe. They’re a little more expensive than other places, though, so watch those cash dollars!

Araya’s
1121 NE 45th St
Seattle WA, 98105
(206) 524-4332

A Thai Vegan place with an amazing lunch buffet. I accidentally traumatized myself while I was there, though, because during a bathroom visit, they had several rolled-up posters from PETA sitting on a bookcase. Of course, I picked one up, and there staring back at me was the head of a skinned cow, its eyes still in place. To this day I can’t forget it.

Starlife on the Oasis
1405 NE 50th St
Seattle WA, 98105
(206) 729-3542

Killer coffee shop. They’ve got vegan cookies and sandwiches made of pure excellence. Most coffee joints in Seattle are quick to veganize their coffee selections, but Starlife’s chill atmosphere, free wifi, and hella good mocha make it tops. It’s also connected to an old movie house. My classmates and I took that place over last summer–several of us would sit together and write. Makes me a little teary eyed thinking about it, now…

Flowers Bar and Restaurant
4247 University Way NE
Seattle WA, 98105
(206) 633-1903

Offers a vegan lunch buffet (Mediterranean and Indian). Flower’s is kind of hip, but honestly, their food underwhelmed me a little. But they do have Indian food as part of the buffet, which is usually a favorite with me.

My poems “Jumping Point” and “the velocity of the fall” have been accepted for the 2011 issue of Oracle, the journal published by the University of South Alabama. I wrote “Jumping Point” while at Naropa University’s Summer Writers Program, and “the velocity of the fall” came about one fall afternoon as the leaves swirled through the creek in my backyard. I feel privileged to have my work forthcoming in this journal!