I’ve found swine to be tolerant creatures, trusting, sincere, and completely honest. They repay kind treatment—an extra apple, a bellyrub, a squirt from the water hose on a hot summer day—with real joy. And if they mainly associate me with breakfast and dinner, that’s my fault. I don’t spend nearly enough time in the pen hanging out with them, trying to see things as they see them. They see me coming and, frankly, I look like a bushel of pig feed. But the moral is really this. You don’t want to hoard your pearls unless you’re sure they’re pearls. And you don’t want to decide that the world is full of swine until you’re sure you know what you mean when you say “swine.” I’d be proud to think that my pigs saw only the best of me.
stem: verlyn klinkenborg
perspectief: who needed the intellect of the pig – its radical smartness? farm animals are the product of coevolution with humans, or rahter we’re the product of coevolution with them. they are twinned with us. the word that applies to our link with them is neither bond nor contract: it is convenant.
title: year two, november 28
bron: more scenes from the rural life (2013)
mopw: meerstemmige encyclopedie / appel