Vegan-Eyes

I went to the supermarket this afternoon to collect a few staples for the coming week: apples and bananas for my lunch at work; peppers, onions, celery, squash etc for dinners....I also threw in some chickpeas, a bag of dried great northern (white) beans - presently soaking so that I can cook them tomorrow - and a few other general bits and pieces. Lately I really find it difficult to browse and enjoy thinking up meals on the fly as I have started to be really bothered by the smell.

I had never noticed it before but grocery stores that sell meat and fish...Smell. Really. Bad.

Truly bad.

So I now rush past the counter displays of butchered carcasses and of fish with their unseeing eyes, averting my own eyes and trying not to breathe in the stench. I guess it makes the trip quicker anyhow, now that I don't linger so long....

Anyway, at the checkout a woman and her young son stood in line behind me. He was maybe 7 or 8 years old and had the crucial job of holding her credit card and store loyalty card while she unloaded her groceries onto the belt. Pack after pack appeared of shrink-wrapped cow flesh, ground up turkeys, frozen pizza topped with chickens, sealed bags of machine-expressed, ready-spiced potato 'fries', a gallon of cheap full-fat cow milk...you get the idea. Omitted from her cart were vegetables, fruits, grains, breads...anything wholesome and sustaining. Just an orgy of the Pre-Processed and the Putrefying.

I looked at her son standing next to me at the belt and wondered what he'd look like in 20 years time. And I felt incredibly sad.