THE LAST JUDGEMENT!!
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BULLS & SWALLOWS
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The subject of bull fighting has been in the media recently after three matadors were gored at a festival in Madrid, which led to the festival being suspended for the first time in 35 years. Ho ho ho!!
My immediate intuitive reaction to all this is that it tends to confirm my opinion that when human beings decide to use non human sentient life however they choose, they act like playground bullies who can't take it when the bullied actually manages to fight back. I remember going to see an exhibition of some of Francisco Goya's prints at Edinburgh Gallery in 2007, & the images I saw will probably haunt me to the end of my days. There were many on the horrors of war & although some were only about the size of a photograph, they were truly horrifying.
There were also many on bullfighting, & although it is probably wishful thinking on my behalf to believe that Goya himself was against bullfighting, the images themselves seemed to undeniably fall on the side of the bulls. Goya represented the bulls as proud, dignified creatures, whilst the faces of the mob in the audience were hideously contorted & they looked like they had crawled out from one of Dante's darkest regions of hell, completely lacking in empathy or humanity. One particular story about the fate of a bull named Barbudo encouraged me to write a short story about him which I dug out & re-read yesterday. I would have posted it on here but it has unfortunately not stood the test of time, as although full of rage & glowing with sweet revenge, it doesn't quite soar. However, it is a story I shall definitely return to in the future...
I guess the whole question of bullfighting is just part of a bigger picture about human nature in general, & in many respects, this past week has left me in no doubt as to what that probably is. It's as if the first half of the 20th century never happened as voters across Europe took a definite swerve to the right amid political dissatisfaction & economic depression. The obsession with immigration completely baffles me, I have to admit. People move around, some stay, some go. One of the main reasons for the success of the human animal has been its ability to move around the globe & exchange ideas. And after all, we're all human beings. Any other label is just cultural tagging & prejudice. Swallows don't need passports to fly from Africa, & I don't see them only allowing the first hundred in. "Sorry, Swallow Smith, but you were too slow. Shouldn't have stopped for tea with Mrs Swallow Smith on the top of that cathedral in Bilbao. I know it's a beautiful view but you can't waste time on things like that in this day & age. Have to leave all that to the pigeons. Maybe they'll let you stay in Dublin. But I'd hurry if I were you, & I wouldn't take your sick second chick with you. Better leave her to the crows & the magpies. That's life unworthy of life, you see."
Anyways, I'm going to leave the bickering to the UKIP & tory philistines & instead contemplate the wonder of those tiny birds flying all the way from Africa, without a sat nav, so that they can spend their summers with us.
And finally, it would be absolutely fantastic if bullfighting became unacceptable & was banned because of the dangers to the vile matadors. In a perfect world, it would be because gratuitous suffering inflicted on ANY species was deemed unacceptable, but in a world that deems it perfectly acceptable to kill 22 million animals per day in the UK alone to satisfy its demand for flesh food, I very much doubt that will happen.
Sometimes though, the bullies get a taste of their own medicine, & I hope it hurt like hell.
Stay Beautiful.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/is-it-finally-time-for-spain-to-ban-bull-fighting-9421502.html
http://www.viva.org.uk/what-we-do/slaughter/slaughter-farmed-animals-uk
