MDMD(6): Eating Lambs, Bread, Mangos

[Terrance]

Michel Ryckx wrote:
> 
> The weirdest part of searching for information preparing MDMD, was the
> look on my regular butcher's face when I asked him about Mutton-Tail and
> Mutton-fat.  Then he burst out laughing.  He's convinced now I'm crazy.
> There was no-one else in his shop.
> 
> He said those two products are never used in a kitchen.  The fat because
> it has such a strong flavour and it cannot stand heat very well, as
> butter does (when you know how to use it) or olive oil (which get burnt
> only at 160 ° Celsius, sometimes even higher).  Slaughterhouses sell
> it.  And it's a fine ingredient, he said,  for candles, and in earlier
> times it was used in soap.  The tail contains hardly some flesh; and is
> hardly fat and it would take a long time to have it ready. (ox's tail
> can be used to make a bouillon for a very fine soup; but that's a
> different matter).
> 
> But back to the text.  When we talk about food, there's a minor tabu at
> work: from the moment an animal is cut op into pieces, we quite often
> change the way we describe it.  In English, usually, the descriptions
> change from anglo-saxon words into (originally) French: you never eat a
> 'cow-steak' or 'roasted cow', no, it becomes 'beef'.  It is also not
> done to refer to the functions the meat had.  'Kidney' comes immediately
> to mind. (in French, when talking about an oxen's tail, remarkably
> enough, the English word is used)
> 
> Mr. Pynchon transgresses this by referring to the 'ovine Flatulence '
> (79.22), which adds to the already rather revulsive description of the
> settler's food.

Language is used to disguise the connection between the meat we consume
and the animal from whose body the meat is taken. The use of terms such
as pork,
beef, shank, bacon, veal, and poultry veil the fact that meat is not the
product of factories, but the product of death and dismemberment. The
inclusion of
these terms in the English lexicon, according to feminist theorists,
express
approval by the dominant culture of such violent activity. The
legitimization of violence
is a serious obstacle for the legitimization of the force of
nonviolence.

And when Catholics eat the body of Christ? When they drink his blood? 
A Host? Bread and Wine? 

This is my body and this is my blood. In the Catholic mass, the faithful
eat the body and drink the blood of Christ. 


In the Manu Smriti, the great law book of Hinduism, and several other
places, it is written, "Ahimsa paramo dharma" : ahimsa is the highest
law. A crucial
precept of Buddhism is "Do not kill. Do not let others kill. Find
whatever means
possible to protect life and to prevent war." The sixth commandment
clearly states
"Thou shalt not kill." Each of these traditions states that the
avoidance of
unnecessary killing is one of the highest moral duties; in Hinduism it
is explicitly
the highest. Killing animals and eating their flesh clearly violates
these spiritual
prohibitions against taking life. 

This ideal of avoiding hurtfullness is the very basis for nonviolence.
Only with the avoiding of killing and violence can one develop the
compassion needed
for nonviolence. Ahimsa, sometimes translated as dynamic compassion, is
the
Hindi term for this compassion which arises when all desire to harm is
suppressed. Buddhist enlightenment and Christian agape are very similar
expressions
for the promotion of the others' well-being. The cultivation of this
compassion
is a first and necessary step in developing a nonviolent perspective. 

Genesis 9: 
3 Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the
green herb have I given you all things. 

4 But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye
not eat. 

5 And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of
every beast will I
require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother
will I require the life of man. 

6 Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the
image of God made he man. 

In these chapters of Genesis we get  the rainbow. So it's safe to say
that P knows these chapters. In fact, we can say that Pynchon knows the
bible "chapter and verse." 

There is a change that takes place when Noah becomes the second Adam. 
God here states that all animals would now be food for man (Verse 9;3).
The only prohibition against eating meat was that it was not to be eaten
with blood in it. In Genesis 1;29, God had given man plants to eat which
prohibited him from eating meat. During the period between Creation and
the Flood it Man had fallen into sin. In fact, Man had fallen into such
a state of gross sin that God had brought the Flood as a judgment to
destroy the evil men from off the earth. Man had disregarded  God's
instructions and it seems probable that Man was eating meat. I think we
can say that Man was killing animals and Men and probably eating both. 

So, we have a Quaker half way to a Hindoo, an Anglican who can't stand
the smell of Lamb (the Anglican priest at the Alter/Table holds up the
host or bread  and says, "this is the Lamb of God that takes away the
sins of the world, happy are we who are called to his supper, and eats
the body and drinks the blood of his god), meat cooking in oven meant
for Bread, and Rev.d  who holds up the Mango fruit as a Host and eats
its flesh.

Earlier we met the LED. Mason asked him about Metempsychosis, the
transmigration of souls. This idea goes back to Plato and the Classical
era. But it could take thousands of years for rebirth. In Imperial Rome,
people turned to  quicker methods, the rites of Isis and Attis, of
Cybele and Mithras. And the Egyptian Christians mixed Christ with
Osiris. In the Egyptian Christian rites, Adam and Eve were expelled from
the Garden and were dying of starvation (this is the ultimate in glib
oversimplification, sorry) and Yahweh told Jesus to give A&E some of his
Flesh to eat. Jesus gave some flesh to god, took it from his right side,
god did some magic on it, added his own spiritual light and "flesh" and
sent it down with the Angel Michael to be be planted as wheat. He taught
them how to make and bake bread. 

This is obviously part of the great cross-cultural exchanges regarding
the fertility gods and rites. As Christianity moves into different
Lands, where droughts and floods may not be the biggest hardship, but
winter or wind, these stories reflect those climatic and Land
differences. 

Gotta go, 

T