Bull Drama

(All photos in this post come from here)

Jesus Christ.  I've just read an article which predicts my early death, and there isn't much I can do to change it.  Fate.  I feel as if I am trapped in a Greek drama.  The Gods have spoken, and once the Gods have spoken, there is no un-speaking it, no taking it back.  It is odd now to be saddled with a thing in which I've never believed.  After all these years of extolling the manner in which one must meet it, I am now faced with doing so.  I'll try to better Oedipus, but I'm afraid I'll act like a character out of Beckett.  From Hemingway, of course, I learned about stoic grace (and if you think there is none in putting a shotgun into your mouth, I'll argue),

Man's Fate.  It is death, of course, but it is more.  It is to determine the meaning of things, especially of one's own existence.  A big job, really, that most choose to eschew.  I have not, but I must tell you now after years of practice, it is exhausting, and in the end, I can't say that I want to take credit for what has ensued.  I'm not sure I've done such a good job and less sure that I have been effective in any way.  Perhaps the masses are right.  I've always preached that there is wisdom in the group, but then I've acted otherwise.  "Go with the flow," was a popular slogan at some point in my life.  I never wanted to do that.  There were too many flows, anyway, and too easily I got caught up in eddies and backwaters. "I'm O.K., You're O.K." was a laugher, but then it seems that maybe that was right, too.

Yesterday started the Festival de San Fermin, but it was this morning that they began running with the bulls.  One can't help but think of Hemingway today, and if you haven't read it for awhile, you might want to pull out your sacred copy of "The Sun Also Rises."  It is a quick read and a fine book, and it will remind you of all the pitfalls life puts before you.  Jake has no penis and is in love with a "nymphomaniac."  That is what they called it then when a woman made love to men unapologetically.  Lady Brett Ashley started all of that.  She dressed "like a man" and drank and smoked "like a man" and made love to whomever she wanted.  And then the Vassar girls followed suit, as did others.  And maybe that is what comes of incomplete or incompetent readings.  I mean, who would choose to be Lady Brett Ashley?  Or anyone else in that novel?  A novel doesn't need a good role model to be a good novel.  And Jake certainly isn't one.  And, interestingly enough, he doesn't even run with the bulls.

But I did.  I was in Pamplona for the festival and the running many years ago.  I was there drinking in the bar at seven in the morning on the seventh day of the seventh month with my red bandana and a copy of the morning's paper rolled up in my hand.  With everyone else.  The piss slick streets were chockfull of people--right up until they let the bulls loose.  Then suddenly, most seemed to have lost their nerve and they began climbing over the barricades as the crowd tried to push them back into the street.  And just then I wondered what I was doing.  I could see the horns of the bulls coming up the street, the bulls being bigger than I would have thought, mythic in size, and in front of them the crowd was running and spilling away so that there were fewer and fewer people.  And then quick as that the bulls were upon us and everyone was running and people were falling down all about, slipping and tripping maybe but mostly just collapsing from the excitement and drunkenness and fear the way a man will go down from a single punch in a street fight just from the emotion of it.  And I was running and looking both ways in order not to trip over anyone who had fallen before me and suddenly I was wondering why I ever thought that I could outrun a bull.  And then they were there and they came running by me, some of them, for somehow the pack had gotten split in two, and I began running after the first pack now not liking being stuck between the groups.  And then suddenly in a great crash one of the bulls slipped going around a narrow corner and slid on the slick Roman cobble into a group of boys, and he was squirming and grunting to get up quickly and I ran by him with the bulls ahead and there were my friends and they were calling me to hurry.  We had gotten to the stadium and were about to enter the gates that would close when the last bull went through.  And there we were standing on the sandy floor of the arena filled to the brim with people shouting and cheering the group of us, maybe thirty of forty of us, who had gotten in.  I was standing on the sacred ground where matadors risked their lives all summer long, rock stars in Spain then where every tapas bar and restaurant had a poster of their favorites.  I walked around looking for the storied querencia.  Then suddenly everyone was lining up in front of two giant wooden doors, some sitting in front crossed legged, others standing behind until we were arranged like human bowling pins, and the crowd was going nuts, and suddenly the doors were flung open and out ran the bulls, not the bulls we had just run with but other, smaller bulls with balls covering the tips of their horns so that they could not penetrate us, and they ran right over the top of those sitting on the ground who could not move.  And then it was bedlam as the bulls ran around the ring and groups of people split up to follow.  One of my friends, a 6'6" two hundred and ninety pound steroid man, had gripped one of the bulls by the horn as we had beckoned him to do in the months preceding the trip, and now it was unbelievable but he was doing it and the bull shook him loose but for one hand with which the giant held on until the crowd was whistling loudly and men with bamboo sticks came running to beat my friend until he let go.  And then they took him away.  Apparently, such things are not allowed which they explained to him in a rough and excited Spanish to which he shrugged his shoulders in English until they put him out of the arena and back into the streets.  And all I wanted was to be pictured running with the bulls in the daily paper which would be posted in the windows in an hour or so, but every day I would look and every day there would be my giant of a friend and there would be my hand or foot or nothing at all as if I was not there and had not taken my life's fate into my hands.  And each day, after running, we would settle down at the same cafe in front of the hotel where Hemingway stayed and drank, the place called Montoya's in SAR, and we drank champagne like heros or survivors at least, the lot of us.  Such a thing it was.

But life is something else and is not like running with the bulls and slipping into the ring with thousands of people cheering.  That is not the hard part.  Rather, it is sitting home alone quietly reading that you are to die because you are the way you are and no one is cheering or even calling and people walk by in the street looking at the yard which needs attention with derision not thinking of the life that's led within, seeing really only the surface of things.

I should be in Spain.  Or somewhere else leading the life that is so greatly to be desired.  But as I say, I am having trouble putting together even a trip to California to see friends.  And now a long day full of things that I should do lines up before me.  Mundane things, the sort that you do for longevity and not for fun or adventure.  Different kinds of heroism, perhaps.  And it seems at one time I was quite capable of both.  But now. . . times being what they are. . . etc.

That is not at all what I intended to write about today.  I was going to tell you something profound about bosons.  But that can wait.  Profundity is best kept awhile just to make certain.