Interests

• animals

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

***WARNING - not for the faint of heart ***
While living in Cuba, I had the privilege of being invited to an animal sacrifice for the cult of Santa Maria. I watched a goat and a chicken be slowly, and painfully decapitated as their blood was dripped over pots full of bones, while those in attendance chanted, danced, drank, and prayed. Near the end, everyone, myself included, took turns licking the bloody neck stump of the former goat. While many of my fellow outsiders turned away from this gory scene, I refused, knowing that events like this, and worse, happen on a daily basis, and that just because I don't see them, it doesn't mean that they go away. I have always been one who prefers harsh reality to pleasant deceit. The entire four month Cuban experience changed me in a fundamental way that has unfortunately left me quite distant from the materially obsessed world of north America. Only now, after ten years, am I beginning to purposefully re-acclimate.