I did it just the same

A Permanent Season is the new slogan for the Town Hall for the new age of fifty-two years of peace and harmony the we now live in. Though his term is not going to last that much (mind you, in the country we never know, in big cities it is already so huge a chaos), he thinks that's a good tagline for his administration.

The Mayor was here on the farm Teixeira. He went away loaded with promises of help for the reconstruction of the town as well as requests for greater attention to the town's road conditions and the lack of intimacy of the Town Hall with the likes of CEMIG for new installations of electricity in rural areas of Taurinos and expansion for the existing ones.

Today, Renan takes me back to the Shed of Life and Death for a new session of Burmese python vs. defenseless piglet. He says I've got to witness wildlife at its finest. Worst of all, I can't indefinitely say no to all bizarre spectacles Renan wants me to witness. There is much more to see in it than just that. The treated animal does not matter to me. The handler does.

"For one like you that did that beautiful thing down in the arena for four hours, it's no biggie", he said grinning at me while we came closer to the shed. There, he excused himself and went to get a piglet for the show. Brought the poor animal shaking on all of its legs and was already filming. He smiled at me and threw the piglet into the python's dwelling.

The snake rolled itself to the piglet's body starting a new game of survival in which the pig had no ghost of a chance in. With a wooden stick, Renan controlled the pig's head so it couldn't bite back the snake. In impressive trance, he recorded it all, drooling with sheer pleasure. Delighted, he heard the noises of the pig's bones breaking one by one as the snake rolls around it got tighter and tighter. He heard the pig squeaking loudly and the sound of squeaking dying away until no more noises were heard. The snake started swallowing it whole with deliciously nauseating slurping noises, filling the camera with images to Renan's greater ecstasy.

"Here you are. Completely and totally owned! Now it won't take long for the pig to turn into shit…" And he turned off the camera, grinning non-stop at me.

Waiting for the pig to turn into shit. How poetic an outcome description.

Like the Mayor, Renan has also his plans for a permanent season. A permanent open season for battles of pets in the best tradition of rock, paper and scissors. Big toads own small toads and frogs. Snakes own big toads. Snakes own rabbits, frogs own mice and so the story goes.

He takes me to the Internet in his room's computer, back to the farm's house. Shows me his user page on You Tube™ and I like the background with the bulls and his will to customize his space there. I ask about the videos since he records feeding non-stop, but he says all the videos he himself did are in private, to be shown only to selected people. Like myself. He makes me promise not to say anything to anyone, and shows me one of the private videos there: his fight with the bull in the arena at the Mithraeum. I was astonished, since I remembered Andrés telling them not to film in the sanctuary.

"Andrés is a real pain in the ass sometimes", he mumbled, "the prick is always telling people what to do and what not. I had my brother record me over his shoulders just the same and uploaded in private. The book says nothing about the cameras in the ceremony, does it? So…"

"Renan, the last time the book was written — in 1957 — there were no people going up and down with cameras and camera cell phones, have you stopped to think about it?"

He looked at me as if it were the first time he had been confronted with the thought and for a while he was confused. I told him even though cameras were not welcome in many rituals — including the world religions — there was nothing in the book about it or consequently banning it, so I didn't think that would do any harm (or not more than the harm already done).

These precious things | Technical ecstasy

Radio Universal: Permanent Season