There is a small space.

Its carved out from both time and the contours of the universe. Its a small spherical volume that erected at any point in time and any point in space. The coordinates can change according to whim and chance or spiral around a specific location and time of day carved out by habit and force of will.

The space is a small, Perhaps it is clean. Perhaps it is well lit. Perhaps it is not.

In times past you could venture into the world and mark it out with a package of cigarettes on a rented table. You paid rent in the form of coffee or cake or a glass of wine. Then you smoked. You smoked to demarcate the boundaries of the ritual space. It was summoned from a cloud of ash and the geometrically increasing probability of a foul death. You smoked to push other minds away and their nasty, uncouth bodies. You smoked and drank coffee and tried to forget about your own body.

Today the cigarettes are forbidden and more of an invitation than a ward against strangers.

Still, we go out and try to find that space. In the world. Outside the place where we have a lock and a key and more control. Going out into the world and finding that place where only our own gravity exerts its pull is a challenge but one we imagine to be pleasant.

Artist’s rendering by Nicolle Fuller/National Science Foundation

For women its far more difficult. Despite every sign and signifier, despite every unsubtle demand for others to fuck off and die, others persist in violating the boundaries. I am not a woman so I can only believe what they say. Many say this and they say it often so I have no reason to doubt.

In the time of plague we are not given the option of going out into the world. The feeling of your own gravity is punctured by a microscopic entity that claws into the center of your body. I cannot find the space away from others as they exhale a probability of infection. Clouds of swirling risk. Even walking feels like moving through these unseen miasmas. Its no place to find refuge.

I’ve spent half of my adult life living alone. Its more difficult to find the space when you have possession of a key and a door and a certain square footage all to yourself. Perhaps that why we go out among others to find our own gravity. It requires an awareness of the presence of others to find your own space. You cannot define boundaries in a void. The walls and door defined the edges of the void. There was no place to be found within it. No other minds. No other gravity to exert your will against

We still need to find that space. Alone or overwhelmed by our equally entrapped family. That small sphere where you can only feel your own gravity. Find an hour where time is yours. Eat pickled herring on garlic toast. Feign demonic possession. Take a bath and glue the door shut. Do what you need to do.

I’m sitting here with my glass of tea, engaged in a battle of will with the cat. The 11 pound ball of fur, fangs, and indifferent needs for attention pushes against my sphere. Even the pale yellow eyes of the cat provides enough of an other presence to make the boundaries of my space clear.

 

Meat processing plants across the country are shutting down as employees fall victim to the plague or stop showing up due to fear of catching the plague. The close working conditions and general lack of concern shown by the owners towards the health and well being of their employees make it hardly surprising this has occurred. That a single workplace was responsible for over half of a state’s COVID infections does not bode well for the continued operations of other meat processing plants.

The scale of meat processing as an industry is horrifying when one looks into the numbers. The South Dakota plan was responsible for between 4 and 5 percent of the nation’s pork supply. Seeing that the per capital consumption of pork in the US was 51.2 pounds in 2019 makes the plant responsible for around 683 million pounds. As the factory turns out 130 million servings of pork per week (6.7 billion per year) that number seems reasonable. At an average of 285 pounds per pig, that means 2.4 million pigs per year meet their fate in South Dakota.

Pork, the wheel of destiny: Joseph Pennell 1917

With the plant shutting for an unknown period of time, this means there’s a backup of about 46,000 pigs per week due to a single plant shutting down. Other meat processing plants are facing similar outbreaks and must shut down. With limited capability to store carcasses in a frozen state this means the farmers are faced with animals they cannot move off their farms.   Animals will be in transit and will be stranded.  The smooth chain which lead from birth to death to a plastic wrapped portion is broken. Nothing in the current system allows for any disruption in the food supply chain.  A massive cull seems to be impending.  

The scale of death will go beyond even the largest of modern religious animal sacrifices. The Gadhimai festival is performed to gain favor from a goddess and the carcasses are then sold and used. It is also only held every five years.  Nothing will be offered from this killing.     

Tens of thousands of animals killed every week. The bodies left for the crows or burned. The scale of animal sacrifice will be enough to rip open a rift in the ether.  A new god will ooze out of the slit. Panting and tearing at its birth cowl in the middle of a field of dead pigs. Pigs slaughtered not for the table but because the gears of modern agriculture cannot stop spinning. It will be an offering to the complete unraveling of our own cleverness when a single thread is pulled away. 

What is this new god to make of all this?