The Spanish Fighting Bull. Toro Bravo.

 

The bull’s life begins like many other forms of cattle; grazing in wide, open fields and fighting its kin to prove dominance.

 

Then one day, the trumpet sounds. 

 

The bull is drugged and transported away from its home.

 

Trapped in a cage, distress begins to mount before a light finally shines.

The bull steps through that light into a confusing environment of noise and activity, the arena, its hooves sinking into the hot sand.

 

The matador stands before them.

 

A cape is flashed, its movement agitating the bull to charge.

 

But the matador is never truly alone.

 

The bloodshed begins with the picadors. Stabbing the bull with lances from the relative safety of their mounts.

 

Their work robs the bull of its full vitality.

 

Tercio de Varas.

 

Next, the matador draws the weakened bull in close, supplied with a pair of pointed flags to stab into its wide, powerful shoulders.

 

The same features that were once prized by its breeder.

 

Tercio de Banderillas.

 

Finally, the matador approaches the tired and succumbing bull; a red cape and a sword in hand.

 

The final passes are made.

 

With each desperate charge, the crowd roaring with cheers of Ole as the cape flutters overhead of the pointed horns, the bull drawn closer and closer into position…

 

An experienced matador needs only a single, swift thrust of the blade to pierce the heart.

The bull collapses to the sand, bleeds out, and dies.

 

Tercio de Muerte.

 

And yet, despite every advantage a matador has in preparation, skill, and bravado…

 

Even within a bull bred to meet an aggressive but certain end. 

 

The will to survive, nature itself, prevails.

 

It only takes one unexpected movement of the head, one pass too many, a sudden charge when the back is turned… 

 

That’s when the heart of the matador is met with the horn.

 

You know that all too well, don’t you, Santiago? 

 

You claim The Temple chose you to be its avatar, but from my vantage point, the truth is clear.

 

You were not selected; you were assimilated. 

 

It was in the corridors of that very Temple where I, for a brief moment, felt vulnerability creep through my body.

 

The work of a cowardly man’s deception.

 

There, brought down to my hands and knees as my vision blurred and my heart raced, poison burning me from the inside, I was brought back to that fateful night on the Serengeti.

 

I didn’t allow myself to be consumed by my environment.

 

I conquered it. 

 

Santiago, my senses are not dulled. My heart is not afflicted with fear.

 

Instead, I look at my feet and see the African plain shift into the arid sands of the bullfighter ring.

 

In that moment, I am like the final bull you faced, resisting the urge to succumb to my wounds, my eyes seeing past your provocation.

 

It will only take one moment for the Temple to again be bathed in red.

 

The red of the kill.