Saturday, December 2, 2006

To Watch Them Come

I’ve spent the majority of the past year reflecting, healing, lashing out, drawing away, embracing, and changing. It has been a year of happiness, stress, heartbreak, and unimaginable experiences.

I once heard life compared to a bull fight. Anyone who has ever been to Mexico (or Spain) and has seen a Matador in a ring with a bull will understand why. It is a wonderfully terrifying experience, not to mention embarrassing.

When I was around 15 years old my family and I went to the Plaza de Toros in Mexico City. Experiencing in public the fear and blood and death and the mad energy of the crowd was too close to images of terror and loathing I had concealed in my nightmares and fantasies.

This powerful experience has kept me attached to bullfighting over the years, though I have never again been to a live event. It is not that I like bullfighting as such, but it is the clearest metaphor I have in my mind for dealing with the dark, dangerous demon of death that runs loose in the arena of my mind from time to time.

With experience and practice, one may increase the odds in favor of triumphing over the bull. I respect the bull. I know that even the best Matadors come close to death. And sometimes – sometimes – the bull wins.

My bull is the beast of self destruction. I know he’s in there, always. As I progress through my life and become more adept at conquering him, I am at the top of my form as a Matador. I am confident in the presence of the bull.

This confidence is called ver llegar in the ring. It means “To watch them come.” It is the ability to plant your feet exactly so – to hold your ground and see calmly, as in slow motion, the charge of the bull, knowing that you have what it takes to maneuver the bull safely by. This is dynamic stability. Standing still is one of the steps in dancing, as moments of silence are part of music. Confidence lies in the stillness. It is the confidence that comes from many passes and many fights – you can control the bull and defeat it because you have done it before.

My bull comes at me when I have succumbed to examining my life with a microscope. Little mites become dragons under the lens, and fear makes me weak. Or the bull comes when I am hurriedly trying to collect and carry all the baggage of my life and haul it up the spiral staircase to nowhere, and I despair of the absurdity of my life. The bull comes then because he thinks I welcome him as a kind of solution.

I know him now. I can smell him, sense him before he moves. I welcome him. Yah, Toro, come on. I plant my feet and watch him come. He charges. I pass him safely with a swing of the cape of my confidence. The crowd in my head roars. OLẺ! – they are pulling for me - OLẺ! OLẺ! OLẺ!

There is always silence when the bull is defeated. I find comfort in the stillness.

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