The Animal Hope & Wellness Foundation
The PetStaurant
Sherman Oaks, CA.
Founder, Marc Ching:
The Compassion Rescue Mission
Survivor: Holly #22 - Seeks a Home in June 2016
"I aged a lot in
these last five months. When I stare at my face, I barely recognize the skin
that I was born to.
When I lift my
hands to catch tears that dry into the earth, I barely remember what it is like
to feel my face. To press my flesh against your lips. To breathe in moments. To
have my mouth consume your sweat.
We die trying to
find ourselves. Die - in the same blade that cuts bone from skin. I cannot see
straight. I cannot think. But I know in the end, I cannot give up on them. I
have come too far. Sacrificed too much.
This morning when I
woke, I decided one last trip. A final break into the abyss. Into blood that
divides and pulls from the night, words that have no definition or end.
There is no way for
me to describe, the toll this has taken on both my soul and my heart. At night
sometimes, I sit alone in the dark. My hands at war with shadows my fingers
animate. The way we prod. The way we use silhouettes. The way I think I deserve
to die in torment.
I remember the lives lost. I remember the mouths I could not save. And no matter what I do, I know you cannot change it. I know we cannot go back into time. I know we cannot unbirth death.
My last stand. June 2016. The final breath. My peak into the sky. The breaking of the horizon and my mouth into the dying. After this, there will be nothing left. No name. No face. But with the one life I live, if who I am can save them.
History. Fucking
history.
(The dog in this
picture, I named her Holly. A survivor of one
of the most extreme torture and cruelty situations. I will bring her back with
me in June 2016. Where she will live as a symbol - of how light overcomes darkness. Destiny.)" ###Marc Ching
In the eight months that I've known Marc, I have forced myself to glimpse the razors edge of his first hand experiences of horrifying, barbaric, heartbreaking torture of our beloved Dogs---through the visual account from his journey's of the underworld of slaughterhouses in Asia. I can no longer turn a blind eye or deaf ear---if all he asks in return is awareness. While he is blanketed by the numbness of suffering, muffled screams, splatters of blood---the agony brought about by meat cleavers that not only penetrate the bones of these defenseless, beautiful forgiving creatures--but reach the marrow of their Souls.
If he can stand stoically in his conviction, like a Viking on the battlefields, and not ask anything from us except to view what he has absorbed in his flesh, drank with his eyes, and sacrificed his heart and psyche for---the sites and sounds glued to him, the muck of darkness and devastation, the mire of evil that haunts him hours, days, weeks after he comes home.
If he can withstand that, even though his heart remains raw, his knees wobbling---then "I can" look, watch, see, hear, cry, obsess over the images, their furry bodies, their innocent faces, their hollow eyes as death hovers over them---with the same love that Marc has---that propels him forward to recue the ones stolen in the night, awaiting for someone, anyone to find them and bring them.....home. ---R .B. Stuart
If he can stand stoically in his conviction, like a Viking on the battlefields, and not ask anything from us except to view what he has absorbed in his flesh, drank with his eyes, and sacrificed his heart and psyche for---the sites and sounds glued to him, the muck of darkness and devastation, the mire of evil that haunts him hours, days, weeks after he comes home.
If he can withstand that, even though his heart remains raw, his knees wobbling---then "I can" look, watch, see, hear, cry, obsess over the images, their furry bodies, their innocent faces, their hollow eyes as death hovers over them---with the same love that Marc has---that propels him forward to recue the ones stolen in the night, awaiting for someone, anyone to find them and bring them.....home. ---R .B. Stuart
