Guinea pigs and eternity

Photo: reflections on Lake Fletcher, Oct. 10.

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The food of the future might be guinea pig. Ursula K. LeGuin predicted it in Always Coming Home. The Kesh, a people of the far future, will raise himpi in cages. A search of the book's glossary reveals himpi are large guinea pigs.

Well, now Peru is exporting the beast to the US and Japan. Churches in Peru depict Jesus and the disciples eating roast guinea pig for the Last Supper. Peruvians have been eating and venerating them for thousands of years. Incas used to sacrifice them by the hundreds, along with llamas, to keep sun and water from destroying the fields.

That's what we need to keep things in their place: a little sacrifice. What can I kill and eviscerate to make sure my life turns out the way I want? No, I shouldn't think of myself. How can I keep the world turning on its axis?

I better tell my daughter about the Peruvians so she can go hide Tig from the butcher.

At the end of grade 1, I got to keep the class pet, a guinea pig named Skippy. I had to bring a note from my mother.

Guinea pigs learn quickly. It starts when they hear you rustling in the crisper drawer. They recognize the sound of plastic wrap and start to squeal. Within a few days, they start squealing every time you open the fridge. Soon they're vocalizing at the sound of footsteps on kitchen linoleum. Finally, their enthusiasm begins as soon as you tiptoe downstairs in the morning. They're not happy to see you, it's just that they thoroughly understand your cosmic relationship with the crisper drawer. They make an annoying sound, and soon your pink hand will poke through the door of the cage with succulent vittles.

Skippy lived for another year or so, then he died. He lay breathing heavily in the bottom of his cage. I believed that death could be vanquished, but couldn't bear to wait by the cage, so I ran back and forth between living room and bathroom where Skippy's cage was kept. Finally Mom brought me the news, and I sobbed into her skirt. That's the problem with pets.

The character in Always Coming Home learned, as a little girl, not to name her himpi. And if she sold one, she would kill it quickly, because she knew most people did it improperly causing unnecessary pain and fear. That's the problem with suffering: we never know how long it will last. It isn't the fact of death that is fearful, so much as the process. How does it feel when your consciousness comes to the wall? What does the pool of oblivion look like?

A quiet place under the mountain, a wide expanse of water, unrippling. If you wait on the shore for a thousand years, will you hear one drop of water falling from the roof? When it strikes the surface, will you see any light? And how do ripples feel in the breast of eternity?

I want my molecules to swim across fields and forests, notes in a hidden symphony no one has written.

I would rather not wake up as a roast guinea pig on a plate, staring at the knife and fork of an apostle. I wouldn't care for potatoes and gravy either. No rodents at all, please.

Endless music would be better. And let us have wings.