Holding Onto Sorrow
My little note: I am a firm believer that things will get better, that progress will continue to be made for all oppressed beings. But this post is less about that and more about sadness. Just want to express that caveat – I think we have the right, have earned it, to feel what I believe are healthy emotions, like sorrow.
The horror of Harris Ranch, for me, is that I only ever really see the animals suffering on it after leaving the Animal Rights Conference held in Los Angeles. Nothing ruins a great weekend of inspiring animal rights activists like a barren drylot with thousands of cows and steers awaiting death.
You don’t see this feedlot – which can hold up to 120,000 animals at one time – while going south. You smell it, but can avoid (unwillingly or not) seeing, truly gazing upon, the thousands of cows* who live that smell.
Traveling north, unless you take a longer route, will take you directly by.
I hate the place.
I hate it not because it is run by people who profit off the oppression and abuse of sentient beings.
I hate it because it exists in the open and no one cares.
I hate it because no matter what I do, no matter how many vegan meals I eat, I know the fate of those beautiful creatures, know that nothing I do now in this very moment means anything to them, to their future.
If you drive up Highway 5 north from anywhere south of Coalinga or Avenal, you will pass by this place. Day or night, you can always see the living beings who sit, stand, mourn on a barren lot – a place that should be owned by the desert, not by animal or plant agriculture. There is no dark, starry nights for these steers and cows – large, industrial lights are always on, always highlighting in plays of shadow and light the tense animals beneath.
I hate that so few hate it like I do. Its existence right next to a well-traveled highway leaves no room for hope or light or goodness in this world, it seems. Otherwise, everyone driving by would at the very least stop eating dead cows – how could you, after smelling that smell and seeing those sad creatures atop an unnatural landscape?
Today I and my friend and colleague drove away from the Animal Rights Conference in Los Angeles and passed Harris Ranch.
I always slow down. I should probably stop. I want to take in their suffering, steal it from them and burn it away. I want to look them in the eyes and acknowledge them like no one else. For myself, I want to be a witness to the injustice inflicted upon them. There were probably several others like me leaving that conference who felt the same way.
Today I saw three black steers, making a triangle, noses touching. One lifted his head and gently groomed his brother.
I saw black and white steers, the male yearlings of the dairy industry. They live in separate pens, probably to accommodate their differing dietary needs and slower growth rates compared to the steers and cows bred solely for their flesh and skin.
There was a big, bold Hereford cross – all black but for a white blaze down his face. He stood and stared at the edge of one pen, gazed across the fence, and called. I could see his mouth form words. I wonder who he yelled for – his mom? brothers and sisters?
A cream colored Charolais laid in the dirt, an uncomfortable pose. His legs were coated brown, covered in manure. They should have been white (or at least a variation on the theme).
I saw a crowd of calves huddled together, perhaps newly dropped off from a cow-calf operation where all they have known is normalcy – a mom, aunts, family, grass. They shook, those calves, and my heart ached.
I couldn’t see them all. I desperately wished I could, catalogue their features, figure out their loves and jealousies, and share it with the world. So that everyone would know.
And then they were gone, 800-acres of pure, unyielding suffering left behind. For us. Not for them.
My friend began to cry. The kind of tears that express nothing but sorrow, a deep despair.
She turned off the radio and tried to explain, tried to express with her words.
But there are no words. There is nothing to say.
I wanted to tell her to hold onto her sorrow. To keep it inside of her heart and gut and soul. To grasp it with fierce talons and possess it. Feeling sorrow for another living being is soul-crushing, but it is something precious and inviolate.
I did not tell her this, though, because it is meaningless to say it outloud.
Feel sorrow for every individual animal on a farm or in a vivisector’s lab or in a circus or zoo or puppy mill, oh gosh, how tragically long the list is. Appreciate that experience of empathy and despair.
I won’t tell you what to do afterwards. I write. Others paint or make things. Others scream and rant and rage. Some cook delicious vegan meals or tell a story. Some cry and cry and turn inwards. Some introduce laws. Some speak up vociferously, others quietly with a determined passion. Lots of us, I think, do many of these things!
I can’t tell you not to give up, I would never blame you for doing so. I can’t tell you to hold onto a glimmering, tiny shiny thing called hope, I know how small it is.
I’ll go to my dreamworld remembering the amazing conference, the wonderful and cool people who taught me more about creativity, respect, and love. Mainly, I will remember the small brown cow who stood alone in a pen full of hundreds and breathed in shit and piss and dirt and who, I know deep in my heart, yearned and exhaled for something better. I want a greater world, and I will keep working towards it. But in this very moment, I am feeling that sorrow and shackling it to my core.
*Used colloquially to include both male and female.
Big sigh.
Your heart is big enough to clutch all cows from here to infinity and hold them close, Marji.
Beyond the endless sadness of the scene, I take away from your tribute to these beautiful bovine beings this thought: That vision has nothing to do with one’s physical eyes. True vision is a mental quality. Perception has to do with how one thinks, not what the physical eyeballs see.
Most people driving past Harris ranch have been trained to see in the cows their next dinner. “There’s the beef,” they must say to themselves or their car mate, smacking their lips over the prospect of a juicy sirloin burger.
The same indoctrination allows them to be figuratively — maybe even literally — blind to the suffering of individual animals in that feedlot. Animals who shake and huddle together and moan softly and look off in the distance and lie at awkward angles and get filthy dirty.
How to re-educate these passers-by? How to reach their heart? How to open their eyes? Those are the questions that perhaps speakers and attendees at the conference you were leaving had attempted to answer.
I’m reminded of the wisdom of Sengalese conservationist Baba Dioum: “In the end,
we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.”
Cows are not exactly wild tigers or elephants, so the word “conserve” may not be appropriate in this context. Maybe it could be said: “In the end, we will treat justly only who we love — or at least respect the rights of. We will love, respect only who we understand to be fellow sentient beings, not property. And we will understand the rights of these fellow sentient beings only when we are taught to understand.”
I hope your sadness lifts soon, Marji. May you take comfort in knowing that at least there are a few cows safe at the sanctuary you were heading back to, the sanctuary they gratefully call home.
Hi Olivia – oh how I wish I could literally get all those cows into my heart!
I don’t want to judge people too harshly. I remember even as a child, driving down to Disneyland, and feeling such sadness for these animals. But still, I did not make the real connection until I was a little older (13) and didn’t realize how much harm I was causing to dairy cows and chickens in the egg industry until later (22). So I know we are inculturated to believe this is all acceptable, but I guess I’m even more sensitized to nonhuman suffering and find it hard that others aren’t there yet.
I love your play on Dioum’s quote.
There is always sadness for me, because of this tidal wave of unyielding suffering. This was one of the first times I sat down and really wrote about embracing that despair. For me, it won’t bog me down, it cannot. But I also empathize greatly with activists and vegans where it DOES just completely overwhelm them, leaving them almost useless (and I write that with compassion, not cruelty). I want them to know that it’s okay to feel that way, that it’s a great form of kindness.
Thank you for writing this post. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who feels this level of sorrow that you describe. I don’t understand how people can’t see this as painfully as we do. Perhaps Olivia is right; all they see is a juicy burger and don’t relate to the animals as a feeling being. I feel your sadness and cry with you and your friend.
To those of you who are in denial, to those who drive by this and all the other place where so many animals are suffering in agony, I ask you . . ‘What are you pretending not to know?’
That would make a great billboard campaign of some sort. There are a few billboards along 5 near that highway. It would be a small way to try helping people make that connection…
Marji, your pain and sorrow are palpable. And shared. And yes, I like you feel it is important to feel the sorrow. Not to wallow in it but to feel it. And use it as a force to drive change towards a better, greater, gentler world.
As one drives from Hobart to Launceston (in Tasmania, Australia) there is a similar feedlot. Purposely hidden from the road but a true blot on the landscape when viewed on Google Earth. An ugly blot on so many landscapes – physical, emotional, spiritual. Many tears cascade down cheeks as gentle people pass it by. Most cheeks, unfortunately, are parts of immensely disconnected bodies that harbour disconnected hearts and so remain dry. But in time the tears welling up deep inside will burst the fragile seams of those hearts and will torrent down those once-dry cheeks making Niagara Falls look like a gentle mountain stream. And then, as the shame and the guilt and the hurt and the fear and the realisation of what we are doing coalesce into tears that soak the fragile Earth we stand on, we’ll grow into kinder, gentler beings.Your heart will then be filled with smiles …
Harry, you write beautifully. Your metaphor is extraordinary – how wondrous and amazing were it to become reality.
Marji, I hope you are already smiling a little bit, seeing the cute name and avatar of bunnyslippers (we know she doesn’t use real bunny fur!), contemplating the trenchant question posed by Neil, and feeling joy in the promise Harry that describes of “those once-dry cheeks checks making Niagara Falls look like a gentle mountain stream.”
I mean (see above) “… in the promise that Harry describes…” (oops)
I do feel better, thank you. I came home to one angry dog who would not “speak” to me and a dog who was so overcome with happiness, I am certain she nearly had a heart attack. :) One of the calves rescued from the dairy industry was also happy to see me and when I said hello to Sadie the cow, she lifted her head up in acknowledgement (which is practically a bear hug from Sadie). Now i”m just focusing on education and outreach and getting people to make those connections!
Marji, thank you for this post. It is too easy to close our eyes to the misery of these tortured animals and to open them once we are back in our comfort zones. We must hold their misery, torture, hopelessness in our hearts so that it pushes us to do whatever we can to end this insane evil that is being done to these innocent beings.
For many years I drove by this feed lot not thinking much about it. When I did think about it, it was mostly that it was disgusting and how hot the cows must be. I was young, and an omnivore.
Now, many years later I see the Harris Ranch trucks coming through my area on the east side of the Sierras. They are heading to the pastures to pick up the young calves that have been cruelly separated from their mothers. They have each other for comfort and when they first arrive in early summer they huddle together out of fear. Yes, they are in grassy pastures that look out on the high Sierra range, but they are sad.
Most people who drive by just think it is a beautiful scene. They don’t know. I drive by and offer them Reiki, love, anything to help relieve them the pain.
Come fall, before it really starts to snow, they will all be gone. The trucks will come and take them to the feedlot. And there they will be fed, a lot. And I will cry to know that they never knew the love of their mothers. That their one summer was only that, one summer.
Marji, thank you so much for helping those whose voices most do not understand. For being a part of this connectedness that brings both joy and sorrow.
In contrast I don’t live by a feedlot but I am surrounded by patches of land have a scattering of a few dozen bovines. I don’t doubt that some are complete families… They seem to have good lives – Trees dot the pastures so there’s always shade and the swamps here in Florida provide enough water. It is bucolic there is no doubt. Even decades ago, before my awareness, I was always struck with how peaceful these scenes were… And nothing registered when I passed the billboard that read “Beef – It’s what’s for dinner”.
As embarrassing as it is for me to admit, up until I was 50 I still (sort of) thought the cows were raised till they died of old age… Or were near death (and ancient) when taken to the “meat factory” to be put to “sleep”. So naive isn’t it?
Now when I pass a particular pasture that has been emptied I don’t know what to do with the anger or the sorrow… Rage and despair overtake me sometimes. Few who know me could even grasp the reasons why. It is that I know stealing a happy life is no better (perhaps even worse) then stealing a miserable one. But like your folks who pass the feedyard, mine in “free range” land are numb as well.
Still the feedyard with hundreds in their own waste and filth exposes an even darker side of this brutal business of cattle and “beef”. These beings are literally reduced to objects that could almost become disdainful for people to gaze upon. No doubt viewed like “swine”… Like “animals”. Those “dirty” cows and pigs… Such “disgusting” creatures they most likely think…
But if people could only see that those who stand in the gunk and fly infested poo-piles are there because of them! Those cows are a reflection of who we humans have become. They are a manifestation of human greed and gluttony. The cows can be washed clean… But what man has done seems almost beyond repair.
To have such shame for my species… Such regret for the innocent… I don’t know what to do with this kind of sorrow either. But I do know that hearing others face it too, lessens the load a bit. Being able to cry and vent helps… Please know that the next time you stand before a brown cow, or Hereford cross, or Charolais you are never, ever alone in your grief and sympathy. You have a growing multitude beside you also holding on to that tiny glimmer of hope. And that *is* worth holding on to.
An eloquent post, Marji. I live in an area where feedlots are common, though not as large as what you described. During every single commute I see livestock transport trucks. When I go to visit my family a little further afield there are even more feedlots, confinements, sale barns, etc. I ignored it for so long growing up, but once I really looked and understood the truth those things now slap me in the face, seems like they are everywhere I look.
Thank you for for writing this post, and thanks to the subsequent commenters too. It helps to know I’m not alone in my feelings.
Only bearing witness is a comfort only to humans. A luxury that means nothing to animals in cages and feedlots. Painting, ranting, writing donation checks to the animal welfare industry, buying more vegan cupcakes for the potluck by the lake are activities humans do for *themselves*. Opiates of privilege and disconnection in a dying world. That your white picket fence may still be standing gives an illusion everything is peachy. Know that the animal agricultural business concedes nothing. Every concession apologist activists toeing the line choose to make is a real victory for the killers. If your daughter was in a feedlot or slaughterhouse, would you be so casually compliant?
Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Willing is not enough; we must do.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
You are right – I do not slow down because I think it is meaningful to the cows. It’s not. They do not recognize me as friend or foe, I’m just one of thousands of strange vehicles traversing across a highway. I am not a blip on their radar.
At the same time, change does not happen because a person lives in a black and white world in which there is only one tactic. That is denial and it does not help anyone, nonhumans or humans. It is just as disconnected as thinking a vegan bake sale will stop animal exploitation. It serves just to make “you” (editorial) feel better as much as me slowing down to acknowledge the individuality of a steer on a feedlot.
Oh jeez. We put our Dachau and our Chelmno and our Auschwitz-Birkenau and our Sobibor and our Ravensbruck right out in the open and no one storms the fences or kills the guards. Some, like you and others, feel the sorrow and shed the tears. We have defiled our planet, our fellow animals and ourselves deeply and severely. I fear humans have gone too far and too thoroughly to the dark side for any meaningful redemption to occur. All these horrors may someday stop, in part due to the efforts of you and those like you…but what of the billions that have stood by and not objected, who have collaborated and supported this network of suffering and death. What of those lives taken, what of those seconds and minutes and hours and days and years of misery and suffering?
If there is a balancing in the universe, if such a thing is…then the balancing is going to be a fearsome and unwanted experience by human animals…make no mistake however…we will have earned every iota of horror.
Eloquent and heart-wrenching post. Thank you for sharing.
thank you for writing. as a vegan animal activist and a Christian i’m searching comfort in net. all the people i love are omnivores, there are no vegans. as my profession i’m teaching folks how to make vegan meals. i have a sense of humour and i like to do many sorts of things but it’s just so hard to be aware that we people make animals suffer so much. does anyone know if there is a site where i could get some support? i know i need to have strength to do what i’m doing but it’s just so heavy when everyone around think it’s the most natural thing in the world to eat animals, milk and eggs. so hard to live with barbarians who don’t care. sorry, i’m having a dark moment and English is not my mother language.
Yes, mea, there are answers to your cry for help.
Please go to http://www.all-creatures.org and find folks who feel as you do. The founders of that site, Frank and Mary Hoffman, would love to hear from you and help you: flh@all-creatures.org.
One of the organizations you can reach via that site is the Christian Vegetarian Society: http://www.all-creatures.org/cva.
You can sign up to receive CVA’s free e-newsletters by writing to stkaufman@mindspring.com (Steve Kaufman is the co-founder of the organization).
There are CVA volunteers who will help you learn how to educate other Christians and they have lots of literature to share.
If you are a Catholic, you can find Catholic Concern for Animals on the same site: http://www.all-creatures.org/ca
Looking for quotes from Christian animal activists? You can go to http://www.creaturequotes.com and find a plethora of them. Contact that website to be sent a list of the Christian-specific quotes.
Your English is very clear and understandable; if I tried to write in any but my mother language, you would see gibberish! :-)
Bless you for reaching out on behalf of the animals. Your prayers will be answered, abundantly!