We are dog-sitting a very rambunctious dog with rippling muscles and long legs and a nerve disorder that causes his back leg to shake. He is undisciplined, but handsome and powerful. When you let him out in the little backyard he leaps gracefully over the garden ("garden" in quotation marks, it's rather wild now) and bounds around the tiny fenced-in area, barking at all the other dogs in Sunset Park. He is a beautiful creature--one wonders what he'd be like if he'd been brought up with a little more discipline.

It's a mild fall day, characteristic of Autumn 2001.

I've been thinking about meat-eating vs. vegetarianism lately. Maybe it's true that certain body types respond better to a strictly vegetarian diet. I keep forgetting what my blood type is, but I seem to recall it's the kind that can handle any diet. All I know is that I've been eating the occasional piece of chicken these past two weeks, and I feel much stronger. Meat is a much more efficient protein than food-combining.

If meat can have this effect, then how can it be bad? Is "ahimsa" (non-harming) a policy that needs to billow out into the diet, too, even if by eschewing meat you're weakening your body? I have not drawn any hard conclusions, but I have all along had the thought that killing something to eat it may not be the worst thing you can do. Maybe this desire to preserve life at all costs reflects an inability to deal with death. Maybe it's more of an ego thing than we realize.

I wish I knew. I really enjoyed the challenge and the grace of staying vegetarian, but my body seems to be asking me for more.