The buttocks.
During dinner at a steakhouse the other night a friend produced a map of a cow. It was not a physical map that she produced from a pocket or purse. She found the map on the Internet — which does not necessarily mean that the map is not a "physical" object, but that this friend did not carry a map of a cow on her person at all times.
She found the map in response to questions about what, precisely, we were eating. As an aside she stated (without preaching) that she was vegetarian because she is repulsed by the idea of eating dead flesh.
I share no such revulsion, and in fact would say I crave the stuff at times.
I was eating a large Flap Steak (it was listed as "Flab Steak" on the menu) when another friend asked from where on the cow does this cut of meat come. None of us knew so off to the Internet went one of us to find a diagram of a cow illustrating where the various cuts of meat are located on the body of the cow.
Even as I ate the Flap Steak before me this diagram of a cow and my friend’s descriptions of where the cuts come from made me ever hungrier and ever more grateful that such beasts exist for my consumption. Flap Steak comes from the stomach, or the belly, a fact which filled me with earthy comfort.
I remembered the living cows I saw up close in Tennessee. I had seen cows from the highway and from afar but never from right up close. I felt a strange carnal respect for that enormous beast — the cow was far bigger than I might have expected — and I somehow felt the respect was mutual.
Who can say if, between links in the food chain, there is a knowing bond beneath the puzzles of human language.
