by John Kinsella
Graphology
Chronotype 24: Fantasias on Veganism (on the thirtieth anniversary of my
veganism)
(i)
I lift the word cadence but improvisation is Bottesini’s
different
calenture, differing application
of
eating utensils: one model
serves
all
this interview with materials used in
making an instrument
the
tip of a pool cue
all of it concrete
variations
remember those ballet shoes you had made? —
non-leather
to
dance with the troupe in & out of the wings
or gut of that doubling
I hear and integrate
what to do with, where to go
this Fantastic Voyage via
philosophies adapted to the way
they want to live ‘They’
belonging to philosophies,
not the life story
(ii)
Not mentioning the craft of insectivore
weebills
so
small
staying on track between wattles
in a high wind — you’d think they’d be
tossed
and buffeted and dashed on the granites
knuckling through this fast-eroding
hillside
but no, they are intact complete
and don’t need me
and my inherited subjectivity, my
wilfulness as they pinpoint
Not mentioning their craft, their
particularised
strength to make landfall, line-of-sight
flight to branch on neighbouring wattle
would be to close out web of myth and facts
that might or might not catch all
as
full disclosure
and though no person you know eats weebills
there’s autonomy beyond your ken
and walking into the wind —
shirt
a tattered flag
without denomination —
is cross-referencing, an experientialism
hunkering down against
the ripping sou’westerlies
(iii)
Ontologies Dreamed like the Benzene Molecule — an Address, of Sorts...
So, my
ethical veganism becomes your ontological
categorisation to offset your own
convenience store
of locality to qualify the ecology you know
is right?
Property
settlements. Pay-slips.
Factory farm of belief as if it needs to
fit your system?
These human dualists drawing animals into
the realm
of human compassion, the imposition of
separateness!
Flexible templates of locality. The
beautiful
hypocrisies of text. Friends and loved ones
will always believe up to a point, or stage
their compassionate interventions. Agency
of each cell is beyond the networks of
agriculture,
the grain plains of the Western Australian
wheatbelt,
the utility of kangaroo-farming? The
factories
of agronomy? See, I can oppose the out-of-kilter
of the plant-based — as much as you can
oppose the factories
of animal production and still excuse the use of animals.
Delineating consumerism’s many faces.
Threat of nirvana.
Fetish
of communication.
The interweaving of predators to tell a
story,
to sinew experience as declaration.
No ecology is above what makes it sounds
like an instruction.
Am I suggesting this? Am I ecology as
definition,
an ontology of pantheism in which animals
walk their way
because humans moved away, told stories
of human and animal selves separating and
morphing
and
separating? Our rhizomes?
Kernels and husks, germs and ears of grain.
The plains.
This tree arm, the rings of my tender body
shedding.
The space about ‘food’ in the mouth:
light trapped in darkness, pockets and
cavities
of air and darkness, the watery
universality.
Pure
as the driven –ism. Re-
framed as signature terminology. Reference
in any contemporary discussion of veganism.
This infiltration of self. Of
self-justification.
Wholly
holy ouroboros —
snake eating itself a dream invented to fit
the new mode of living. Here in the West.
(iv)
The choice
is made
and was made
outside product — each fad that means
fewer animals exploited and killed
is good; but we must
be wary of the product
that brings down
the ecosystem, feeds the state
which will eat animal and plant,
vegetable and mineral,
with an insatiable appetite,
shit out the planet.
An example? Palm oil?
Jungles are cleared
for the sake. These vegan snacks
can mean the death of so many individuals
that the term ‘species’ (as in extinction)
is the only collective noun
that is translatable
here.
So ‘product’
packaging of planet
will salve only desire:
ontologically or otherwise.
And all product is local
at this point, and that.
A mirror.
John
Kinsella
