pig slaughter – Page 2 – don't confuse the narrator

harvest

I’ve mentioned before that there’s an old guy who keeps cerdos on the plot of land alongside the olivar. Just two pigs, each year: one for each of his daughters. I’ve started taking the windfalls across for them when I walk down to the village.

When the guy isn’t there, I leave the bag by the chair where he sits each day, morning and evening, watching the pigs get fat. Sometimes one of the other viejos del pueblo joins him and they put the world to rights while the old burro grazes patiently, tethered to an olive tree.
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winter approaches

When the white clouds lifted, they left behind
a hint of snow along the mountain ridge. The sky
is blue as any summer’s day and I walk to the village
in unbroken sunshine. On the way back, a neighbour
eases his donkey from amble to pause and greets me.
He wants some windfall apples “pa’ el guarro”. I agree,
but would so much prefer to let the patient burro
mumble fruit from my palm, not help to fatten
the squealing pig for Martinmas.

(First draft – which means I’ve only rewritten it half a dozen times and juggled the line breaks back and forth and to and fro, but haven’t added in additional material or stepped back from it very far.)
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self-fulfilling prophesies

I always check the stats page to see what people are searching for that leads them to the blog.

I already commented in pictures of pigs that I get a lot of visitors looking for “pig slaughter” – some of whom I hope go away satisfied that they’ve seen butchered swine on several pages, although, as yet, I’ve not actually been present at a matanza. (I do love the fact that Spanish doesn’t seem to distinguish between the idea of “slaughter” when it applies to approved animal killing for food, and “massacre” when applied to B-movie horror, e.g. La Matanza de Texas.)

Note that I’ve not been an eye-witness, but I have heard: there has to be a pun about “pigs’ laughter” and “squealing”, but I’m leaving that for another day.

Recently, though, there have been more searches for “science and technology poems”, and I think I am failing those potential readers. So I’d better do something about it (hence the post title).
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la matanza

Today I came across the Asociación Cultural “Tradición Arenense” , and discovered that at least one of the “cultural traditions” of the town of Arenas de San Pedro sounds quite bloody.

This weekend, according to a poster I saw in a bar window, they are celebrating “la matanza, dios mediante, en la plaza de las víctimas.” They could hardly have chosen a better venue, could they?

Presumably dios mediante doesn’t mean that God will be officiating at the upcoming slaughter; it must be the local equivalent of d.v. – deo volente – God willing. Personally, I’d always hoped the Spanish phrase might be con dios al volante – “with God at the steering wheel.”

don’t confuse the slaughtered pig

list of search phrases — blog standard searches

WordPress – which is where this blog is hosted – provide statistics so bloggers can see how many readers they have and what brings them to the site.

I’m intrigued by the readers who arrive from search engines looking for specific things.

Or, more accurately, I’m intrigued by the things they are looking for. The image on the left shows the most popular search strings from a couple of days ago.

The variety of ways that people think of for searching for the same basic idea fascinates me. But, after all, if there’s more than one way to kill a cat, there’s probably more than one way to slaughter a pig.
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