[Transcribed (in 2005may27, by Edrx) from a zine called "Green Living in a Grey Landscape", edited in mid-2002 at the Les Vivres (or "Aux Vivres") restaurant. This text takes pages 2-5 of the 40-page zine. All the texts there are unsigned / anonymous / collective. The Aux Vivres is at 4434 Rue Saint Dominique ("entre Mont-Royal et Marie-Anne"), Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Tel: 842-3479.] The first time I set my feet upon St. Dominique street some grey warship clouds were drifting in a blue, bruised sky. I looked to the north where the afternoon sun was caressing a church bell tower. I was hungry. It had been two days since my last meal. A black guy with dreads spoke from the veranda behind me. "Tu cherches du pot?" I didn't understand, so he switched to English. "You lookin' for weed?" "Naw, I'm broke and I'm hungry. I was hoping to work for some food." He lit up at the chance of offering me advice. "Hey, just go into that restaurant across the street. They'll hook you up." Yeah. That's what I was planning on. I heaved my backpack to my shoulder and went it, admiring the funny handpainted letters on the storefront window that said: Les Vivres - Cuisine Vegetalienne Extra-Nationale When I asked the waitress if I could wash dishes for food, she directed me to the back of the terrace of the adjoining house to talk to Marie-Pierre. I found her squatting over a basket of clothes that she was folding, wearing a tye-dyed half t-shirt and gypsy hoop earrings and smoking a joint. I tried to introduce myself and ask for work in broken gradeschool French but she just made me switch to English. "I'm broke and hungry, on the road... can I work for some food?" She took a long look at me, and I could tell that she wasn't sure about it, but her strong ideals, which I was to become really familiar with, won out, as they usually do. She said I could get a plate of food then work a half-hour to pay for it, and that I could eat first if I needed to. I dropped my pack on the spot, grabbed an apron from her hands and cruised to the kitchen. I didn't stop for even a bite, I was so happy to get work. The two cooks, Nick and Luc were cooking up a storm and kept giving me bowls of food to "taste-test" for them. I didn't stop working for almost 4 hours. Finally the regular dishwasher said that was plenty. Adieu. I'd never before eaten in a vegetarian restaurant, much less a strictly vegan one. Hungry as I was, and as good as the food tasted, I didn't miss the meat one little bit. I sat down for a full meal and Marie-Pierre approached me. "Wow, hey, you're still here." "I just finished working," I said through a mouthful of rich lasagna. "What? That was like four hours ago!" "Eh, I was having a good time," I shrugged... "Well, if you want to come back again tomorrow I can find some paying work for you... you need it for the road." I said that I would and asked where I might be able to camp nearby. She sent me to the mountain, Mont Royal, where I estimate 800 people were jamming on drums and dancing, a weekly event in Montreal when the weather is nice. The next two days I slept on the mountain and came down in the mornings to work. On the third day the staff of the restaurant had their weekly meeting, closed the restaurant and cooked a big group meal. During the meeting Marie-Pierre introduced me to thegroup and said that I'd been working hard and that if I was down with it, she'd like to see me hang around for a couple of weeks. The rest of the restaurant concurred and I said that I meant to make it to Michigan for the Fouth of July, but that I would [unreadable word here - maybe there was even an extra line after it, but it was cut in the photocopying.] I decided to stay. I looked around the colorful, energetic place to see where I fit into the social scheme. Two large, shepherd-golden retriever-mix dogs lived there, and I liked the way that they just grinned and didn't say much. I thought I'd try the same approach. I smiled, kept my nose to my work, begged for food when I was hungry and slept with the dogs at night. I was happy with my construction project and people seemed happy with me and the food was really changing me. I felt more open, more alert and quicker than I'd been for years. I had no dogma concerning food. Veganism was just a coincidental experiment. I decided that I would continue it just as long as I enjoyed it, as long as I saw benefits. In two weeks time I started to know food not just by the look, texture and taste but by the nutrients locked therein, by the way my body responded to each meal. I would eat and be filled with joy and energy. I started to taste food not just with my tongue but with my muscles, my brain, my skin, my heart, and my chakras. My body started to tell me what it needed and which vegetable had it. Before I left I was eating about 75% raw food only. My body changed, and so did my emotional composition. I first lost the layer of chub that had been insulating me from the world my whole life. Then the macho, beefeating ex-military muscles that were inflexible and ultimately weak began to wane. The fears that they were built on were exposed and with good, trustworthy folks around me, they began to be dealt with. My search for vegan nutrition on my hitchhiking oddyssey led me to congregate with all kinds of people in varying states of enlightenment; buddhists, doctors, philosophers, pacifists, activists and anarchists. It sharpened my mind, made my body more agile and steeled my ideals about ecology, economy, community and evolution. I'd never been an activist before, either, but I soon found myself cooking and dumpstering for food not bombs, guerrilla gardening, squatting a giant douglas fir for almost a month, marching in demonstrations and fighting every day in my own, private revolution. And to think: 'twas my stomach the first insurrectionist. Now I'm back in Montreal, to give back to the people who gave me myself, and to learn the nutritional shamanism that I believe will liberate and awaken the world. Change the plate, change the person (you are what you eat). Veganism, permaculture, anarchy and compassion. These are the ingredients to the reality bomb, Bob. We're gonna blowup reality.