Howdy, Pilgrims,
The rodeo ring in a high mountain town called “Fairplay.” I am not making this up. That rainbow cost me a fortune.
Maybe I should write something about the mythic West, “Death in the Afternoon” and bullfights, the terribly heartbreaking scene in McCarthy where the boy shoots his pregnant wolf bitch to keep fighting dogs from killing her before a baying Mexican village, thumbs up or down and some slave dies only to be romanticized two thousand years later by Hollywood, the intensification of life experienced collectively, perhaps reinforcing the polity, perhaps showing the cruelty and rot at its core and . . . no. I don’t feel like it, and besides, this was nowhere near that violent, though with big animals, ropes, animals and people thrown to the ground, jumping, turning under incredible forces, bones breaking and even accidental death are never far away. And there are plenty of weapons. However actual or implied the violence, this is a spectacle, an arena, where things are proven, shown. Even without blood, existential questions are asked of men, women, and even children.
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