Day 26 - Liberal, KS

The sun was out. On and ever onward.

The weather was pleasant for the duration of the day. Another easy rider day - the silky complacence of the Cruise, with the road ahead, and little to do but ride it.

We crossed into the northwest corner of Texas. On the outskirts of Dalhart, the first major "city" in the area, were miles and miles of black spots. As we drew nearer, the spots took form - countless acres of stockyard, cows separated into 10x10 pens. The air was rank with methane, so much so that I held my breath as long as possible without choking. It was the embodiment of a moral dilemma. The cows didn't appear any more phased by the cramped quarters than their free-range kin we had encountered elsewhere, and there was no evidence (at least passing through) of flagrant mistreatment. It is a fine line between animals' sentiments of well-being and our anthropomorphization of their concerns. Aside from this trip, where I have had to make exceptions out of lack of options, I don't eat meat often, but it is more for reasons of health than any sort of ethic. It is certainly difficult, when one breaks it down, to rationalize eating something one couldn't kill oneself - but we did not choose to be born into a community where we are twice-removed from the sources of our sustenance. This being said, my guiding principle of what I choose to eat or not eat finds it roots in my own definition of what constitutes life. I have frequently referenced my guidepost aphorism, the terse summary of the great mythologist Joseph Campbell who, when questioned by one of his students about his conception of vegetarianism, humorously responded that they "couldn't hear a carrot scream." The great debate over eating meat is largely fueled by the treatment of animals in large-scale food production - it does not follow from this except through extrapolation that it is inherently wrong to kill and eat animals. Plants too, by our same narrow definition, constitute life. Just because a carrot doesn't have four legs and two "windows to the soul" - just because we can't identify with it in the way we might with a cow (and this is coming from someone who grew up with a wooden cow on his wall marking his love for the docile creatures), does that justify its death? At the farm, I have met neighboring animals who live happy, healthy lives - although the idea of bonding with an animal that later ends up on one's plate is startling, even horrific, to many of us, one has to question the origin of this sentiment. Is it because something is inherently wrong with killing animals, or is it a product of a perception shaped by the twice-removed culture in which we reside? I am strongly inclined toward the latter. At the same time that I have great difficulty with the idea of killing what I eat, I also have tremendous reverence for the indigenous population who hunted bison - sacred bison - and used every part of it. They understood that they were taking a life to perpetuate their own, and had overt cultural expressions of gratitude to celebrate that life. The moral fragmentation of our own cultural carnivorousness seems ultimately a matter of the "how" rather than the "what" - how we do it, rather than whether or not we do it. At the same time that I would never impose my own sentiment on others, I only ask the same - this tangent is devoted to all the vegetarians and vegans who flare with moral indignation at those who don't follow suit. I have great respect for people whose personal, cultural, or religious convictions dissuade them from the practice of eating meat; but, as we all must find our own way to the center of Being, I have little patience for those whose preaching is devoid of the reciprocating this respect.

We stopped in Dalhart for lunch at a little place called Martha's Home Cookin'. We had burgers. At least we knew they were fresh. I overheard our waitress say to the only other gentleman in the joint - an older man, a bona fide cowboy, hat, accent and all - that she traveled an hour and a half each way to work. Her face was painted with exhaustion, but not just the "up all night last night" type of exhaustion - the exhaustion of long-term unremitting routine. When I thanked her for refilling my coffee, she walked away, then turned around about 5 or 6 seconds later, and said with a hollow gaze, "oh, you're welcome." Her conversation with the cowboy was wrapping up when he said to her, "keep on behavin' now," to which she replied, "oh, that's all I ever do." As he walked out the door, she had a brief soliloquy within earshot: "sometimes I wonder if I'm better off bein' like other folks." I turned around (Snake had gone to the restroom at this point), and, just being the two of us there and her eyes - the vacuous gaze of one who lives mostly in dreams - meeting mine, I replied with sincerity, "well, not necessarily. All depends on who you're asking." Her dreamscape interrupted by my response, she stared into space with a slightly different expression while what I said processed, and uttered as she walked away only, "hmmmm..." I remembered again why the road had beckoned to me so strongly. It wasn't a vacation from routine, or a frivolous whim to eschew responsibility - it was to return to the shadowy but nonetheless fortitudinous recesses of why life was livable for me, and what I wanted to devote my time toward. Everyone has their own way of giving back (or not), and at the end of the day, when faith in existence is conveyed with undeniable sincerity, the conduit of process is largely irrespective. Whether one is saving lives through surgery, poetry, or through being the constant affirmation to others serving coffee in a small town, this faith is all that really matters.

The prairie was smooth and the weather fair as we passed through four states - New Mexico, the corner of Texas, the pan handle of Oklahoma, and the destination border town of Liberal, Kansas. Before even nearing the border, we referenced endlessly the Wizard of Oz and Kansas (the band). It was much to our surprise when we found out, upon checking in to our motel, that Dorothy's house was literally across the street! Right before sunset, we ventured over to the site - a dedication to the Wizard of Oz and to Senor Coronado, the Spanish conquistador who had "first" explored the territory now known as Kansas. We snapped some pictures of the bronze statue of Dorothy and the replica of the house, and examined some of the contributors to the project immortalized on the yellow bricks of the path.

It was a full moon tonight. Before bed, I popped out with a set of binoculars to stare awestruck for awhile. Alan Watts returned into my train of thought - mutual interdependence, the All in each and the each as All. It was a bizarre notion to consider: that the moon was in some way just as dependent on me as I on it. But, as Watts so eloquently summarized, differentiation is not separateness. I am not simply a soul caught in bag of flesh - an organism "in the world." I am - we all are - rather, born out of the world, as inseparable from it as it from us. The more one plumbs the depths of Being, the more that this notion passes from absurd incomprehensibility to near-perfect harmony. But this, too, like all else, is inconclusive - the firmest ground on which we stand, literally and mentally (as if the two were indeed separate), invariably preserves a degree of openness. And isn't that the wonder of it all?