A COMPLETE HISTORY OF GERMANY AND JAPAN
Richard Brautigan
A few years ago (World War Two) I lived in a motel next to a Swift packing plant which is a nice way of saying slaughter house.
They killed pigs there, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month until spring became summer and summer beacame fall, by cutting their throats after which would follow a squealing lament equal to an opera being run through a garbage disposal.
Somehow I thought that killing all those pigs had something to do with winning the war. I guess that is because everything else did.
For the fiirst few week or two that we lived in that motel it really bothered me. All that screming was hard to take, but then I grew used to it and it became just like any other sound: a bird singing in a tree or the noon whistle, or the radio or trucks driving by or human voices or being called for dinner, etc.
“You can play after dinner!”
Whenever the pigs weren’t screaming, the silence sounded as if a machine had broken down.
Found the temple in Sanxia, thanks a million Mucha man. The only problem is that I arrived too late and only saw one pig and it was dead and gutted with obly the skin left.
I know the temple now and will wait patiently for Chinese New year when they’ll have them again. It’s the Tsushih Temple in Sanxia.
Last night I walked into a drug store while the owner was busy saying his bye bye and smogging up the joint with ghost money. He looked at me like I was some evil being come to pull his ancesters into the firey pits of hell and then proceeded to rip me off on Ibuprofen.