Misericordia Is a Virtue Provided It Is Not Mere Passive Sentiment or Sentimentality

The lobsters lie piled one atop the other in the aquarium at the supermarket where for $12.99 a pound you can buy a fresh! one for your dinner. Thick red and yellow rubber-bands clamp the crustaceans’ front claws together restricting, thereby, their mobility. Those of the uppermost animal layer lurch hurly-burly across an agitated landscape while the lowest tiers of the living or dying lie mostly immobile in their own handicapped state. I stopped for a moment to admire what I might eat at some future hour and I noticed the colorful rubber-bands, the massive hob-bled front claws, the strata of light-brown bodies, the jerky movement of two walkers as they pitched toward the glass and away, each animal an unholy merchandise available at the supermarket from 7 in the morning until 11 at night three miles from where I live one hundred and eighty-seven miles from the coast.