cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Tawdry, Melancholy Nature of Killing I am in such pain today. That fucking tendon in my left elbow. Today the pain is shooting down into my lower arm as well. There is a weakness and a stiffness which radiates outward from the elbow. And when something chances to brush up against that very spot on the outside of the elbow where the tendon lies, I feel a white-hot pain of almost blinding intensity. A few hours ago I took a few ibuprofen but it hasn't touched this at all. I need real pain killers. Very, very badly. Friday afternoon I left work early, partly because of the pain. I went home and picked up the kids to take them out for fast food and got them little toys and we had a good time. At around 3:30 I went out to hunt. And in fact about 30 minutes before dark I had a buck of moderate quality (although I do not seek out bucks over does) in my crosshairs. However, I chose not to pull the trigger when I realized that this must necessarily take the wind out of Trish's sails on Saturday, which was to be her first hunt. Any deer that she might get would be instantly compared to mine, probably unfavorably. It would be rotten to have one's first deer hunt overshadowed by someone else's success so I let the deer in my scope walk away. On Saturday my parents looked after the kids and Trish and I went hunting. It rained off and on, forcing us to run inside for 30 or 40 minutes at a go and then come back out for similar periods. She did not get a deer, but there was a bit of action with deer that did not come quite withing range. It was a productive day, giving her a generaly idea of what it's all about. Her father got a button buck over at his place, though. On Sunday Trish and her parents and the kids all went to Ikea for the day and I spent essentially the whole day butchering Bob's deer for him in exchange for half of the meat. I did a very good job but it took fucking forever. Usually I quarter the deer one day and then do the rest of the work the following weekend after aging the meat. But in this case, it was such a young deer that I did not find aging necessary so I forged on ahead right away. I have come to the conclusion that a small deer is no faster to butcher than a large deer is. It's just less meat for the same amount of work. The work does not disgust me anymore. It's just work. Hard work. I take pride in doing it well. However, the basic concept of what this is still leaves me as melancholy as ever. I think it's worse when it's a deer that I didn't take. Does that make sense? I have no idea what the moment of it's death was like. No idea as to whether this was the right deer to shoot at that particular moment. No idea as to whether there was any sense of the sacred involved in it's death. I have my private rituals, you know. Apologizing to the deer, thanking it. Etc. Working on someone else's kill, all of that is taken away and last night I could not get to sleep for hours and hours as I thought about it. As I said, I deal with these questions well enough when it is I who have done the killing. Because there is almost always evidence of something of the magical or even the divine at work when I have a successful hunt. Something that reassures me that what I am doing is proper and good and part of the necessary order of things. Incidents that beggar the boundaries of coincidence. When that is missing, I can and do refuse to pull the trigger. Take all of that out and I don't like what is left. Literally, I would sooner become a vegetarian. It all just feels tawdry. I must avoid ever having to butcher someone else's deer again. There are so many people whom I care about whose bodies and lives are just as fragile and tenuous as that of the deer which I butchered. We are remarkably frail creatures. The idea of death horrifies me. Is it not totally amazing that something as complex as the brain of a deer can arise more or less spontaneously out of the combined materials of the forest and fields without any involvement of humans at all? It's like wandering around on the far side of the moon and suddenly stumbling across the Mona Lisa in the middle of a crater. I mean, what the fuck? How in the hell does something that complex and intricate and perfectly designed just show up in such a place without a fingerprint on it? 11:09 a.m. - 2008-11-17 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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