Look at me
They say that we get used to anything. That any horror is less horrible and less painful in time. But the fucking show-business with deaths and lives of animals is just more and more ailing me. When I came back from a farm or a transport, I would sit at a computer and process the photos and videos in a few hours. Usually in one go. Today, it can be weeks. I’m getting up, walking in the room, there are photos to which I return all the time. I go through them again and again. Everything is dead. There are only few animals that we managed to rescue. To give them back their stolen life.
How could it be less painful now than ten years ago?
I’ve seen more and had more in my hand. I know more today. More about how the life and death go on at farms, in slaughterhouses or in laboratories. More about how much in the majority of people other animal species are just something for humans to use. More about the stupidity, fear, comfortness, lies, mystification, slanders and deceits that there are in the people in the animal defense movement. More about how difficult it is to shout to the satisfied crowd (both in and out of the movement). More about how little I know about the way out.
Sometimes somebody says to me that I am too extreme, going far too much. In those moments I imagine: I am in the slaughterhouse, standing at the execution line, and beside me a calf hangs down the line, and someone there is sharpening the knife. I ask the calf: “Do you think I’m too extreme? Am I going too far?” And the calf looks at me, with his eyes big and too soon lifeless, and says: “Well, look at me.”
And so I look and try not to shut my eyes.
( For Jonás Amadeo Lucas and Jose Valle )
Translation: Katina -veganskaetika.blogspot.com
