The woman I am currently crazy about was a vegetarian for a year

The words of Steve Albini — “The woman I am currently crazy about was a vegetarian for a year until I started dating her. As is the case with most vegetarians, she had never eaten properly prepared meat, only commercially packaged or otherwise abused flesh.” — resound like a whisper from the forge of truth, echoing not merely about food or love, but about the nature of experience, perception, and authenticity. Beneath the surface of jest lies the wisdom of the ancients: that one must truly taste the essence of life before one can judge it. For Albini, the meat is no simple symbol of appetite—it is a parable for the raw, the real, the unfiltered truth of living and feeling.

In the days of old, men and women spoke often of purity and corruption, of what was born from nature and what was marred by human artifice. So too does this saying draw the line between the natural and the artificial. The “commercially packaged flesh” speaks of what is stripped of soul—processed, distant, made convenient but lifeless. To “eat properly prepared meat,” then, is not merely to dine well—it is to engage fully with the thing itself, to confront the essence of life and death, and to savor it with reverence. Albini’s words lament that modern souls, though they believe themselves moral or refined, often know not the real taste of what they claim to reject.

So it was also in the tale of Diogenes the Cynic, who walked through Athens with a lantern in broad daylight, seeking “an honest man.” He scorned the comfort and vanity of his peers, who lived among illusions—just as many live now, feeding on manufactured experiences and calling them life. When he tore into a simple onion or slept in his barrel, it was not poverty he embraced, but truth unvarnished. Likewise, Albini’s remark reveals the hunger of one who wishes others to see beyond the processed world, to rediscover what is pure, though it may be rough, primal, or even bloody.

The woman in the story, once a vegetarian, represents the many souls who recoil from what they do not understand—not out of wisdom, but because they have only seen the shadow of the real thing. In tasting true meat, she does not merely change her diet; she undergoes a small awakening. For once we have touched the real, the false becomes unbearable. So too in love, in art, in thought: we begin with aversion, then curiosity, and finally surrender to the genuine, raw pulse of existence. Albini’s passion is not for conquest, but for revelation—to bring another into communion with the authentic.

Think, then, of Japan’s tea masters, who turned the act of boiling water and pouring it into a cup into a sacred rite. The tea itself was not the point; the way of tea was. So too does meat, in Albini’s telling, become a symbol of craftsmanship, care, and intentionality. To prepare meat “properly” is to restore dignity to what was taken from nature, to respect the life that nourishes another. The careless, industrial world gives us only “abused flesh”—the product of haste, greed, and disconnection. To eat properly, to live properly, is to honor the chain of being, to restore reverence where convenience has placed forgetfulness.

And thus the quote is not merely about food—it is about experience unmediated by the machinery of false refinement. It tells us that what we reject may not be evil in itself, but only poorly represented, mishandled, or misunderstood. As in all things, truth requires skill to perceive and courage to taste. The meat must be prepared well; the soul must be prepared better. For those who have only tasted the cheap imitations of love, art, or wisdom, life may seem bitter or hollow. But when one encounters the genuine—when love is honest, art is born of struggle, and craft is met with devotion—then all things change.

The lesson is this: do not turn away from what is real because it seems harsh or unrefined. Seek to prepare, not to reject; to understand, not to condemn. In your own life, refuse the processed forms of existence—whether in food, relationships, or beliefs. Make, touch, cook, build, and love with your hands and heart. Eat properly prepared meat, metaphorically speaking—that is, partake fully of what life offers in its raw truth, not the sanitized version sold to you by habit or fear. Only then will you taste not merely nourishment, but the divine savor of reality itself.