Shel Graves' Sensorium

Taste: sun-ripened blackberries   Sight: Old Man of the Mountain, Hippie on a Stick, Pasque Flower; a skull, sunken cheekbones; pigs wagging tails-her perfect spiral   Sound: a river of pigs munching carrots, sonorous grunts   Touch: behind a pig's ear   Smell: fresh hay   Extra: telle est la vie drôle; biofactories; biots; jamais vu; walking with the little girl in the midst of chaos, left and left, left and out left and out an explosion, huddling in the bathroom - a premonition dream of Elysium Grateful for: Pigs Peace Sanctuary

Taste: oatmeal; The Naked Grape Malbec   Sight: a rabble of Anna’s Blue butterflies, lycaeides anna, fluttering around my hiking books; in a panoramic view: Mount Rainier , Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams; wildflowers in the fairytale meadows of Mount Rainier: Avalanche Lily, Beargrass, Rosey Spirea, Pasqueflower, Bog Orchid, Lupine, Valerian, Columbine, Magenta Paintbrush, Alpine Aster, and Pink Mountain Heather  Sound: bleating elk; whistling marmots; bees buzzing in a wildflower filled meadow; clinking rocks sliding Touch: hazel wood hiking sticks; an easy stride; walking on shale Smell: fields of Valerian   Extra: "...the most luxuriant and extravagantly beautiful of all the alpine gardens I ever beheld in all my mountain-top wanderings." — John Muir, conservationist, 1889   Grateful for: mountains, meadows, waterfalls and living in the Pacific Northwest

Taste: Stumptown coffee as served at Cafe Flora , Seattle and Sweetpea Baking Company , Portland Sight: the bald man in a baseball cap massages the neck of the long-haired Chihuahua on his lap Sound: Róisín Murphy - Primitive; The Knife - Marble House I Touch: walking downhill Smell: petrichor Extra: inside a mall a slope down to a hallway leading to a buffet table, colors: sherbert yellow, peach, and lime green with windows overhead light streaming in and then the screaming begins a tattoo of "no, no, no, no, no; no, no; no no," a loud roar, precisely at the epicenter of an as yet uncertain tragedy Grateful for: long books — 1,000 pages

Thank you for reading my vegan fiction posts . I'd love to hear more suggestions especially short stories and poems. In The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis Jeremy Rifkin says Charles Darwin wrote "...of a coming age when humanity will stretch its social instincts and sympathetic impulses, 'becoming more tender and more widely diffused until they are extended to all sentient beings'." We're still working on it and fiction — reading, writing, and talking about it — has a part to play. Here's a summary of some favorites and some recommendations: Most heartbreaking The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro Recommended listening Never Let Me Go (2010) soundtrack by Rachel Portman The Smiths Meat is Murder Favorite work of vegan fiction Carmen Dog by Carol Emshwiller Best recommendation: overall We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler Best recommenda...

I love these inspiring works of fiction. Carol Emshwiller, one of my favorite authors , writes amazing fantastic, freaky no holds barred fiction. Richard Brautigan's writings are gentle and sublimely creative and his poem finally adds a utopia to this vegan fiction list. Carmen Dog , Carol Emshwiller (2004 ) — A delightful, playful, artful exploration of what it means to be human and how we treat animals, women, and mothers — fantasy with philosophical underpinnings. The story begins in a world in which women are turning into a variety of animals (wolverine, swan, snapping turtle, pig) and animals (including many pets: dogs, cats, guinea pigs) are turning into women. It follows the journey of a Setter named Pooch who is becoming a nubile young women and desires to be a opera star. She loves Carmen . See my review on Goodreads . Quotes: "She makes a silent vow to be a vegetarian from now on even if she has to starve to do it. Better that than even the remote possibility ...

There's a strong argument to be made that if we treat animals as units of commerce and deny their right to live and to be happy it makes it easier to treat people as units of commerce as well and deny the intrinsic value of life and living. Also, systems that are brutal to animals also brutalize the men who work within them and weave brutality into the fabric of society. This week, I'm posting about vegan fiction . The Jungle , Upton Sinclair (1906) — This is a heart-wrenchingly tragic, empathetically written, and beautifully composed story about a family of Lithuanian immigrants working in the stockyards of Chicago in the meat packing industry. It offers still timely commentary on social justice issues including food production, corporate control and graft, worker's rights, home lending, and prisons. See my review on Goodreads . Quote: "There is but scant account kept of cracked heads in the back of the yards, for men who have to crack the heads of animals a...

Why be subtle? These books lay down the case for veganism like a hammer. The way we treat animals is cruel and unconscionable. This is the fourth in my series of posts on vegan fiction . Babycakes , author Neil Gaiman, illustrator Jouni Koponen (1990 ) — This comic asks whether we'd treat babies the same way we treat animals. Hell, no! Interestingly, people have debated in the past about whether babies can experience pain! See my review of the Better Angels of Our Nature : Why Violence Has Declined (2011) by Steven Pinker. The kind of arguments used today in discussions of abortion, animal rights, stem cell research, and euthanasia were earlier (and horrifically) used to justify infanticide (the merits of which people also used to debate!): "In 1911 an English physician, Charles Mercier, presented arguments than infanticide should be considered a less heinous crime than the murder of an older child or an adult: 'The victim’s mind is not sufficiently develop...