Bullriders, cowmen and girls, and animal husbandry

[Front-Ranger]

Heard on the radio this morning: "Boards of directors are having a 'Holy Cow' moment." Vestiges of an ancient culture lurking in our humor, religion, pornography, all the dusty corners ...

[Front-Ranger]

In Pan's Labyrinth, the child was told to milk a cow and to put the bowl of milk under the bed where her mother lay dreadfully ill and pregnant. Into the bowl of milk she put a mandrake root, which is the root of a plant that looks like a human figure. Mother's milk is powerful medicine, and a man in a bowl of milk is reunited with his origins and made whole.

[Front-Ranger]

An interesting discussion this a.m. on Morning Edition about bullfighting in Spain, mentioning Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon.

[Front-Ranger]

Interesting that what "saves" Jack from being trampled by a raging bull is a rodeo clown. If only Hemingway had had a sense of humor, maybe his story would have been much different!!

[Front-Ranger]

We are always saying in the business world that we have to "take the bull by the horns." This seems to be a vestige of the bull-leaping practices of the ancient Minoans. Young men and women athletes performed these bull-leaping exercises, which were very dangerous, but yet did not result in the death of the bull as the Spanish bullfights do. The performers actually grabbed the horns of a charging bull and somersaulted onto the beast's back and then off, landing on their feet if they did it perfectly. This exercise still exists in modern gymnastics, and the equipment used in place of the bull is called the horse or the buck.

[Front-Ranger]

I'm reading some of the other stories in the collection by Annie Proulx which concludes with Brokeback Mountain. Here is a pasage from "The Mud Below."

"...[Jesus] was a cowboy, the original rodeo cowboy. It says it right in the Bible. It's in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John." He adopted a sanctimonious tone. "'Go ubti tge village in which, at your enterin, ye shall find a colt tied, on which yet never no man sat; loose him and bring him here. The Lord hath a need a him. And they brought him to Jesus, and they cast their garments upon the colt and they set Jesus on it.' Now if that ain't a description a bareback ridin I don't know what is."

[Penthesilea]

I'm reading some of the other stories in the collection by Annie Proulx which concludes with Brokeback Mountain. Here is a pasage from "The Mud Below."

You know, apart from BBM, People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water and The Mud Below are my favorite stories in Close Range. Somehow The Mud Below really stuck with me. I love the title, I like Annie's grim description of rodeo life, and somehow she even managed to make me feel for and like its hero, Diamond Felts, despite everything. He his far from being a likable person, in fact, he's a rapist and despicable for it. Maybe 'to like' is the wrong word, but damn that boy stuck with me. Far from the way Ennis and Jack did, obviously, but still.

Yet when I read The Mud Below for the first time, all I could think of towards the end of the story (when D got hung up on a bull and the following scenes) was Jack. The danger, the pain, the loneliness - it must have been like this for poor Jack in those years after Ennis and him split 1963  .
In my Wyoming travel guide I read this sentence: There's a reson they call it the suicide sport.


The part you quoted is so interesting regarding Jack being a Jesus-like figure. I totally missed this. Thanks for pointing it out.

[Front-Ranger]

You're welcome, Penth. My impression of the other stories in Close Range is that they are pretty weird. Definitely high-intensity reading! But reading them definitely enriched my understanding of Brokeback Mountain! I will post more about the anthology in The Culture Tent.

I have watched a lot of bullriding in the past week, since Denver's major rodeo, the National Western, is taking place. It often put me in mind of this illustration from the island of Crete:

[Front-Ranger]

In the story, Jack remembers a bullrider who was "checked by a horn dipstick" meaning he was gored, probably in the rump. A dipstick is uncomfortably close to a tire iron, so once more he is presaging his own death. 

[Front-Ranger]

More ancient bulls. People worshipped them once, and they do still. Every time I go to Wyoming, I drive past a huge cowbarn with a big sculpture of a Hereford bull on the roof.