The only thought you have as you swoon into that lustreless spread of all that was once contained, is "please, I want to wake up."

And when you do, when you are surrounded by smiling faces, concerned faces, do you start to cry?  Do you ask, "Is this real?  Have I been granted a phase two?  Has the balloon-animal that is my life twisted, lending another ligature to its knotty course?  Or are these avatars I see?  Crisp, crying signposts.  My consciousness's final projection, an easement into life's unseen depths?"

Oh, last breath.  Oh, second last breath.  Oh, the reversal of time.

The same textual deference that pleases old men confounds the young.  In either case, deference in place, you are safe to write on.  For you have paid a domestic debt to a foreign deity.  And the words, the words that might have limned a story, are lost to many, conveniently "de-centralized", and this too keeps you safe.  Safe how?  Safe in obscurity?  Safe in the anonymity of ambiguity and obfuscation? 

(Must every movement, every significant structural evolution of whatever inquirous mode, be plugged with a fused glut of detritus, its very own humbling and savage dust, the burnt architecture of all that came before?  Answer: No.  ;-))

And when, even now, in this collusion of letters, does the narrative begin?  To assume a narrative is buried in the artifact, in the sheer artifactuality of the item, this cold (warm?) page... is to assume almost enough.  To value narrative at all, though: this is what I call 'good'.  But eschew assumptive narratives, eschew those characters that consider a nested rest as 'received referent' to be the rite of their genesis.  Yet don't lose hope.

For there is a ladder—see it there—up out of this involuted heap, this sad (aching) heap of self-deconstructed text.  This ladder is beautiful, her rungs are overlaid in gold, silver filigree adorns her.  Or maybe, to you, she is of plain wood.  Or maybe she isn't a ladder.  Maybe she is a hand, coming up out of a pool, her wrist wrapped in wet green cloth.  And a voice from the still water says, "Pick a moment.  Pick a plea.  Pick a petitionary look in your friend's eye.  Hold that gaze.  Begin."

People do extraordinary things every day. For one, we look out our eyes and see more than exteriors. We perceive.

We are not startled by our surroundings. This wheeled shuck of glinting blue metal is a car. I see it and am not surprised. I enter it, and it moves me, or I move it, and I am not surprised. But this is not extraordinary.

We are not startled by our closeness. We enter or receive each other and are not alarmed. We grant transmission, and say, meaning the opposite, that it is a big f*ckin deal. But this is not extraordinary.

We hear each other's rendered tune, we apprehend that clipped orgasmic breath before our human voices plunge into song, and we are not undone. And perhaps this is trans-usual. Or, if not, than perhaps it should be. But on a case by case basis. Trespassers William is a good band, for instance.

We play through one another's art. We navigate worlds of each other's making. I crack this cardboard, I plunder the contents of this thinly-cut tree, I decode this statutory sprawl; I am walking hand in hand with a girl who exists now, but not in any corporeal sense. What is that? Insert adjective here—and that too is metanormal, is special, perhaps.

And what about love? Yeah, what about it. Am I suppose to say it's special? I'll say this:

Love is an idiot in the streets, whose rolling eyes meet yours, and so enlightens you.

I am this. And so are you.

She is standing on the lip of a very green hill, overlooking a valley charged with an overstock of gaudy mist. There are movements in that tumbling frock of drizzle. Flitting ears penetrate the hanging water like dancing flies. Ears trending into everlong faces, necks of nature's gel, some sort of body. Horses are below, and if this were a dream—for she has dreamed of this before—how much less would she see the grass below her—each distinct blade besmirched by a smear or drop of the week's deluge—and how much more would she feel a garish burgeoning, spilling as complex audiovisual into the phantast's sky? But she is here. She sees nothing above her but a thick compelling grey, echoes of a fallen hammer, a sound preceded by the cloy of impending release. And below is equus. And equus is moving. Writhing in the fog like a many headed leviathan, whose incomprehensible speech is a regular thudding on churning turf. They are running, the horses, if she can hear them correctly, towards her. Up the slope. Soon to be displayed. Arrayed in a filament of their own ecstasy, oxide joy rising off their backs as if the heavens alone could contain it. She will greet them then, smiling. She will call their names aloud. She will ask them to come to her, and they will, for they will see her as an avatar of protection amidst this aqueous assault. And the names they give back to her are truer than the names of her parents. And she will smile again, adding the crushed n' flavored discharge of her eyes to an already soused nature, tears the product of profound completion. For here she is: home.

I don't like seeing horses getting slaughtered. Working with horses my whole life, it's quite a bit like seeing humans getting slaughtered, especially because a horse wears its personality on its skin, its features dictate (or are highly related to) its character. Some horses that go to slaughter, you can see it, are what I might call karmically lifeless. They have very little potential; they could mean a small amount to a small amount of people. Other horses are clearly alive. Are fine.

It seems to me there are two major factors contributing to this situation, to the necessity of horse slaughter. The first of course is the demand for horse meat. If only that demand could go away. The second is the terrible overproduction of horses in North America. Many people, horse owners and lovers, are breeding their horses, and amassing large herds, when they cannot afford to take care of the horses or the offspring in the long run. This ethic of buy when the sun is shining and sell when its raining, and always breed breed breed, creates so many unwanted horses that it is very difficult for any agency ('the people', government, etc..) to regulate the slaughter industry due to the sheer number of excess horses. And yes, excess horses means homeless horses means dead horses.

As for regulating humane slaughter techniques, which is becoming a big issue in Canada, the challenges are more than just technical. Yes, horses are skittish and move around a lot more than cows, but that's overcomeable. If you could LEAD a horse into a NON-SLIPPERY stall, horses are trusting enough (unlike cows), and smart enough (unlike cows) to get along with humans. They will allow themselves to be obliterated with no questions asked. This IS a smart position for a domesticated animal to have. It's been known of ranch hands shoot to their dying horses in the face while the horse is giving them that last look of pure commitment and trust. But obviously this ideal can't be put on the slaughter industry. Horses are funneled into sticky, slippery stalls, are bludgeoned crudely into position, and are shot several times in the wrong place until they are dragged, twitching and conscious, into that stall where their legs are cut off and their skin is pulled as a curtain or a loose sheet from their writhing corpse.

One of the problems is: not many people want to pay any attention to the slaughter industry. Now that the US isn't slaughtering, all of the horses are being moved to Canada. The truckers moving horses to Canada should be stopped at the border for inspection, but are ducking this inspection by saying their load is for a feedlot. Government responds, "We can't regulate state of mind. If someone changes their mind once they have crossed the border, we can't do anything about it."

Here is one of my ideas:

Slaughter horses should be marked somehow. They should be tagged. If a horse is purchased with the intention of being slaughtered, it should be explicitly filed, somewhere, as being that way. This would make such horses much more visible to potential rescuers, the lay population, and to the government. It's all too covert, in a way. The industry (of horse slaughter) has too much plausible deniability, which can only evaporate with influxes of visibility. If "tagging" doesn't work or is already happening or what have you, other avenues to enhance "visibility" ought be pursued.

Also, the Canadian gov. should step up its game, and do all of the things it promises w/r/t horse slaughter (i.e. inspections, et al).

From what I've seen, the slaughterhouses in Alberta are being run similar to the way my place of employment is being run: with loose reins. That's unacceptable.

My two cents.

PS:  Thanks America for dumping your giant unwanted horse problem on Canada.