• Tag Archives bull fighting

  • The Contenda

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                       Bloodroot Moon

    First day, tired.  Ate.  Walked.  Got too chilly.  25 mph winds and 37 degree temps.  Came back to the Harrington after getting a sight of the US Capitol, white and domed at the far end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

    When I began to scout D.C. on the web, I got on a Washington Post website that featured restaurant critiques.  It wasn’t the restaurants that caught my eye though, it was a helpful graphic the Post staff had created to help you find “the homicides in your neighborhood.”

    That night I didn’t click through since I didn’t have a neighborhood, so imagine my surprise as I sat in Harriet’s, the Harrington’s restaurant and saw, on the now cliched plasma screen, “Murder by the Whitehouse.”  Sure enough, within two blocks of the restaurant and hotel somebody had shot a football player and killed him.

    The Whitehouse is only a hop, skip and a drive-by from here.

    Whitehouse, in fact, is the Harrington’s passcode for its wi-fi.  A  natural.

    Too weary to do sight-seeing with a wind-chill I went back to my quiet room, wondering what was happening on floors 2 thru 9, and flicked through the channels, reconfirming our decision to cancel our Comcast TV.

    But.  I did find a middle weight boxing match, a world championship in the WBA between Macklin, the contenda, and Felix Sturm, the champ. I haven’t watched boxing since they were sponsored by Gillette Razors and that was in the fifties, but I watched this one.

    No knock-out punches, but a lot of gamy attacking by the contenda and a lot of backing up by the champ.  There was blood, some.  Shots of faces crushed by left and right hand jabs.  Uppercuts.  The occasional clinch, but mostly strategic holding up of gloves followed by flurries of punches.  Boxing seems almost quaint with mixed martial arts, Ultimate Fighting, now enjoying popularity.

    The bout had a Hemingwayesque aura, perhaps a bit of the 1940’s.    The referees were all Latino one from the U.S., one from Puerto Rico and one from Spain.  They went with the German though the Irishman, Macklin, could have won it, too.  At least that’s what the announcer said.

    It was Hemingway and contestants bloodying each other up and the Spanish referee that led me to bull fighting.  There is, in both boxing and bull-fighting, a suspicion that you shouldn’t really be watching.  Two adults pounding each other with their fists?  A whole raft of folks against one bull whose only way to leave the contest is dead? (Yes, there are the rare exceptions where the crowd saves the bull, but most of the time the bull dies.)

    This wasn’t the I planned my first evening of this pre-Raphaelite immersion, but there you are anyhow.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Sport Travel US History 📎and tagged

  • Going Rodeoing

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                              Waxing Cold Moon

    The Rodeo!  Began with a bang.  Fireworks and laser lights.  The first event was bare back bronc riding.  These horses rear back, jump off, all four hooves off the ground, then plunge back to the sawdust.  It’s a brutal experience for a rider though the horses seem to enjoy it.

    After this big men with horses went after one poor calf with ropes, hoping to stop it–the header–and bind the rear feet with a lasso, the footer. Must have been hard because most of the teams failed.

    Somewhere in here Ruth said, “Granpop, this is fun!”

    Next came the saddled bronc riding.  This was very similar to the first event only with saddles.  Punishing.

    Then came a horse and rider against a calf.  The rider lasso’s the calf, hops off the horse and ties three of the calves feet together.  The horse pulls on the rope to keep the calf subdued.  This too proved difficult since most missed.

    Barrel racing had barrels with Qwest painted on them.  I thought this was appropriate because the contestants had to run in circles to win.  Just like dealing with Qwest.  The barrel race horses were fun to watch because once they’re around a barrel, they really dig in an move.

    The last event of the evening involved grown men attempting to stay on the backs of large bulls.  Just why they do this was not explained, but it takes the whole bronc riding thing and put a lot more weight behind it.  This too must be hard because only cowboy stayed on the bull the required amount of time.

    There were some novelty events.  Mutton busting involved children from 5-7 trying to stay on sheep as they run around the arena.  Most fell off immediately, but one 7 year boy held on while his sheep ran all the way across the arena.

    Another children focused event had 12 tweens, girls and boys.  12 calves were let loose and each kid that caught and subdued a calf would get a calf to raise and have an opportunity to show it at the next Western show.  In this instance all the kids received help from adults and all got a calf.

    While I was in Mexico City in the late 90’s, I went to a bull-fight at the Plaza del Torres, the largest bullfighting arena in the world.  Though it was, in a sense, more violent than the rodeo, the bulls die, I liked it better.  It had a sense of ritual, of grace, even elegance while rodeo seems almost entirely brute force applied in difficult circumstances–riders on bucking horses or bulls, ropers chasing down and wrestling calves to the ground.

    Maybe rodeo is too young as a sport to have much ritual, but to me, it lacked the gravitas of the bull ring.  Why does this matter? Well, again, to me, the rodeo seemed about imposing human will on animal nature with cattle ranching as the context.  Bull fighting, on the other hand, is a ritual involving life and death, even art.  It takes the bull and its death with great seriousness with the context of Celtic culture as the back drop.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Great Work Myth and Story Sport Travel 📎and tagged