Egads, that's one ugly duck!

Did anyone see that matador receive his just deserts the other day? The promising young matador Israel Lancho was gored by one of his adversaries' pointed horns, the dying bull sunk it into his guts. I think he survived so it's fair to poke fun at him, to mock him with bitter contempt, which is what I'll proceed to do presently. I have no appreciation for bull fighting, it is a bizarre throwback to ancient times, when young men impressed one another by their ability to jump over angry male cows. "Wow, that was quite a feat of athleticism," one of the onlookers would say, secretly harboring a seething jealousy. I suppose the maidens standing further afield, away from the rutting, flared-nostriled spectacle of masculinity, might be a little impressed. "Well, he sure can jump over that large animal, I guess he might make a good husband."

Centuries of subtle change gradually brought us to a time when powerful bulls are as expendable as any other non-human animal. So the Spaniards grow them and harvest them for lopsided duals with tightly clothed matadors. "How romantic," Ernest Hemingway and Orson Wells thought, fat and drunk in the grandstands, probably glancing regularly at the bare thigh of a young woman sitting near by. These two monumental American artists were reportedly enthralled to the age-old battle between man and beast. They couldn't get enough of those lithe matadors' deftly flexed buttocks, their humorous skill in sidstepping the enraged, bloodied and dying animals before stabbing them with a final death blow to the neck. "That's the stuff of life," Hemingway and Wells thought, stroking their beards, chugging their wine, meditating on the meaning of the universe.

Their are plenty of people who do not stab injured bulls in their necks, and consequently it is rare for the non-matador portion of humanity to receive a goring. In fact, a large majority of human-bull interaction is a symbiotic working relationship. These animals are strong and stubborn; train them and yoke them and they'll till the soil until the job is done. There are probably untold friendships between man and bull, and probably more than a few between woman and bull too. I'm thinking of one relationship in particular captured in the moving documentary Old Partner, out of South Korea. It tells the story of an 80-something farmer and his beloved 40-year-old bull. They've gone out to the fields and back again since Hendrix was lighting his guitar on fire, and their souls somehow got wound together, never to be unwound. Try to find it, it will be worth it. I was thinking as I watched it about what that tiny old man would do if someone tried to stab his old partner in the neck. I suspect that no matter how elegantly dressed, no matter how striking the hair style, no matador would be able to kill him.

I can see it now: There in the afternoon sun, the old bull rests at the field's edge munching on some carefully gathered roughage, the old man is crawling in the shallow water planting his rice. Suddenly, a matador appears out of nowhere, his vest and cape displaying labyrinthine patterns, his epaulettes shimmering tremulously, there in his hand a shiny blade. The old bull bellows a strange grunt. The old man raises his head. The matador moves to strike! But there is the old man to check the would-be assassin's blow. Demonstrating a skill of movement cultivated in the sleepy fields of his farm, the old man would take the blade, and the matador's effeminate slippers would lose their grip causing him to tumble down into the mud, soiling his painstakingly cared for garments. The old bull calmly chews at his roughage, the bell at his neck harmoniously noting his gentle movements. The shamed matador would get up, pick up his mud-caked cape and begin making his way from whence he came. The old bull is safe, for now.