Day 080f: A most sinful Swag … (July 03, 2019)
I had blissfully forgotten that Pamplona is one of the world’s many hubs of culture-excused cruelty, and yet this Running of the Bulls swag-shop sadly reminded me of the same … 🙁
“Courage and grace are a formidable mixture, and the very last place you will see either is in a bullring … I went to watch a bullfight in Las Ventas. I went there out of curiosity. I had long been haunted by the image of the matador with its custom-made torero suit, embroidered with golden threads, looking spectacular in his ‘suit of light.’ I was curious to see the dance of death unfold in front of me, to test my humanity in the midst of all the blood and gold, and to see in which state my Soul would come out of the arena, whether it would be shaken and stirred, furious and angry, or somehow even a little bit accepting of the life embedded in every death. So I went to watch a bull fight, and yes the play of colors was marvelous. The matador’s costume was breathtaking and to be sitting in an arena fills your lungs with the sands of time. But to see the amount of audience claps the spill of blood received was beyond what I could endure. To hear the amount of claps that such raw & flagrant injustice brought was astonishing – disturbing – repulsive, even. When you go and watch a bullfight, you suddenly understand a lot more about human nature, about the needless wars taking place every day, about wealth amidst extreme poverty and abundance surrounded by starvation. You begin to understand a lot about racial discrimination and abuse and sex trafficking and indeed everything else that repeatedly rips the wounds of this world wide open. You understand a lot more about humans’ thirst for injustice and violence as a way to empower hidden insecurities. Indeed, you can replace the bull and replace the matador, and yet the arena will still be there. And you’ll still hear the applause. In truth, you’ll be looking around your world back home and hearing them for the rest of your days.” ~ via Marlene Dietrich & Malak El Halabi
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