“We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if we could only arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful.
How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.
So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall.
Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.”
On a day that, once again, feels rather apocalyptic, I remember well the other September 11th that felt like it would change everything. John and I were in our house in Portland, John on the computer browsing the news. I was in the kitchen with the refrigerator open. He said something about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. I said, probably another small plane incident. We weren’t too excited about it at that point, but we turned on the TV to check. We stood, my mouth literally gaping, as we saw footage of the towers collapsing. In the hours that followed, as we watched image after image of the unfolding tragedy, I thought often about the times I frequented the World Trade Center buildings during my summer job as a telephone systems repair person. I’d known people in those offices, up above where the planes hit. I used to sit in the concourses below ground, eating my lunch as I watched people, hundreds of them, coming and going as trains came and went. People who often frequented the shops and food centers on their way to wherever they were heading. Those images came back to me, time and again, over the days and weeks and months that followed.
My mother was late to work that day. She worked in a building not far from the World Trade Center, and she was on a subway heading down that way when the planes hit. She was caught in the debris clouds, filled with toxins and smoke that choked her and caused fits of coughing for days afterwards. She made it home okay, but I’ve often wondered if that was the day that, almost sixteen years later, might have resulted in her stage 4 cancer diagnosis in late December 2016. She was gone a month and a half later. This was a woman who ate like a monk and spent many hours walking all over Manhattan. She was incredibly healthy with no family history of cancer. No way to know, of course, but it’s something I’ve thought about.
I wrote my dissertation a few years later in order to earn my Ph.D. at Princeton. It was titled, “The Phenomenology of Evil,” and I used material from 9/11 in my research into the effects of that kind of intentional act. I read transcripts and watched videos, including a documentary titled “Faith and Doubt,” which was a powerful reflection on how an intentionally malicious act such as 9/11 challenges our faith, whether that faith be in God or in humanity or even in ourselves. I spent months pouring over transcripts and watching videos of those who’d lost loved ones or had been in the midst of the chaos or who had had to deal with the aftermath of the buildings’ collapse. I watched people jumping or falling from windows, listened to the grief of those who survived, read the words of those who attempted to find something meaningful in it all. I’m sure I, myself, took on such a subject matter in my own attempt to understand what we call ‘evil.’ I’ve seen much of it in my life. I still do. Not metaphysical, supernatural evil. But man-made, human-caused cruelty at a level that is incomprehensible.
So here I am, at home, with air outside that is not safe to breath, reading stories of unimaginable loss pouring in from many sources, with fires that still threaten so many. Still trying to understand what this world is all about. So many acts of kindness and selflessness, and so many hate-filled words and bizarre theories about why we are where we are.
I don’t really care to hear more of this, so not looking for anyone’s opinion. This is my testament to that day, in 2001, when we all felt, in our own way, that nothing would ever be the same. It is my testament to the people who died that day, who lost someone they loved, who were traumatized by the rescue efforts and anyone who was deeply affected by what happened. As I was. As my mother was.
I often wonder how many of those people I met in those towers survived. I have no way of knowing. But I think of them and remember them and hope they made it out.
This child who looks so much like my dead mother. Standing hesitantly at the foot of a giant. Perhaps she’ll enter into that dark wooden cave, or at least look into it. That’s what so many of us aren’t willing to do. Look into our own dark cave, at what drives us, at what pushes at us without our even knowing how or why. I also wonder how long will that tree exist, how long before it burns or dries up from drought or whatever other man-made disaster might cut its life short.
These two thoughts are bound together, because without the willingness to look into that cave, we are destined to be consumed by it. It is darkness that is killing our planet. Our inhumanity, our wanton and careless willingness to use what is given to us without any thought to what role it plays in our own survival. We don’t give a thought to ‘should’ we use this or destroy this or wipe this species out. We fail to question whether what we consume and destroy is beautiful, does it add to the quality of our lives, does it add, just by its very existence, to our spiritual or emotional or even our physical well being.
We don’t question our right to use up every resource available to us, co-opt it from other human populations, destroy habitats, forests, wipe them out in the name of our own sustenance. Aren’t there other ways to live? Aren’t there other ways we can survive or have a quality of life?
I too am culpable, and this is something I struggle with daily. I drive a gas-guzzling truck. Much to my grief, I drive a car and have run over and hit animals with it on the road. I buy my food from a store, mostly without knowing where the food came from.There is no connection between me and the animal or plant that I’m eating. It’s effacement at its finest. Eating an animal that was killed by unknown means, in an unknown way, in an unknown place. Probably killed under horrible circumstances I don’t even want to imagine. Of course, I could never eat an animal I knew personally. Is this the height of hypocrisy?
Yes, I have my own cave. I have been dancing around it for a long while now. I’ve explored many levels of this cave for a lot of years, but lately, I’m weary of exploration. Nothing in that cave feels very good and I’m tired. I’m weary of self-awareness and life lessons and digging deeper. I once dug ditches, literally, for three days and I hated it. I’ve likened exploring my internal cave to opening up long-forgotten tombs and letting the light in. A nice image, but my pick axe has become dull and my arms are tired.
But something keeps nagging at me. That dark place, and the little girl, standing hesitantly in front of it. Or is she coming out of it? Watching me, wondering what kind of being I might be, trying to get her bearings after being in all that darkness.
Maybe that’s the truth of where I am now. Too much time in the dark. Coming out into the light and trying to get my bearings. Maybe that is what has put me into this limbo, this place of waiting. Maybe I’m waiting until I know what kind of being I might be.
My brother, Christopher Kaufman, is a brilliant composer and he often writes about the beauty and power of the natural world. This piece is quite powerful and it’s one of my favorites. Performed by the American Quartet at the National Opera Center.
I read a comment on Facebook (not always a good idea) from a woman condemning those of us who ride horses instead of letting them run “free” in a pasture. I’ve been working with horses for almost fifty years, and I have questioned the relationship between horse and human many times. But when you have a realistic, balanced, and loving relationship with a horse, you realize, let me say I’ve realized, that it is very much a two-way street. My horses and I have a covenant, at least that is what I call it. It’s a visceral thing and quite profound.
I love riding. I love studying horsemanship, dressage, jumping. I love the bridle horse path. I study or have studied all of these traditions and more for a long while. I ask my horses to do what they were bred to do–work for me, try hard, be willing to do what I ask.
All I can say is that when I go to pull one of my horses from the pasture, they walk up to me to be haltered. My primary riding horse, Dakota, sticks her head into the halter as if to say, let’s get to it. My horses are intelligent, sensitive beings, and they seem, at least, to be eager to have a job. They work hard for me and I ask them to. When they aren’t being ridden, shown, worked by me, they spend time in pastures or in their stalls at night eating and being with their ‘herd.’
I get up at dawn each morning, put on their fly masks if needed, feed them, let them out, clean their poop. Every evening I bring them in, feed them hay and mash and mineral supplements. I bathe them. I get them the best hay possible. I buy them shavings, supplements, beet pulp and alfalfa pellets. I groom them, clean their feet. I treat their wounds. I get their hooves trimmed and shod. They get regular health checks and vet visits.
Dakota and I, in the trailer for the ride home.
So really, who is serving whom here? When I was bringing my then new filly home (who is now nine yrs old), I rode with her in the trailer because she was fairly untouched and she had climbed into this terrifying metal cave just because I asked her to. I thought the least I could do is stand back there with her and keep her company. When she was worried, I was able to look her right in the eye and try to comfort her. At one point, I blanked out for a moment and when I came back to myself I heard myself saying, in my mind, “And I’ll always take care of you.”
Think what you want, but the response I heard myself giving to my horse in the trailer was my part of an agreement. A covenant formed in that moment that enabled me, after working with horses for decades, to finally understand the true relationship between myself and the horses under my care.
The only word that comes to me to describe what I felt as my horse’s part of the covenant was ‘surrender.’ But in reality, there were no words. Simply an agreement formed between us, the foundation of a connection that has strengthened through many trials and challenges.
I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything, but this is what is real for me. I don’t dominate my horses. We are partners who bring very different elements to the table. They are horses, I am a human. And while our roles and responsibilities are different, somehow, through some incredible miracle that has been forged between our two species, we have found a way to take care of each other and to honor the covenant we formed that day.
This film on anti-fascism was made during WWII. It’s all still right here. Nothing has changed. We keep coming to this same place, over and over again. Are we doomed to keep repeating this endless loop, or will our culture, our species, be able to evolve into a deeper understanding of each other and who we all really are?
I once had a writing teacher complain when I used the word ‘family’ to describe the band my mustang once led when he was living as a wild horse. Her objection revolved around a body of literature that sentimentalizes the horse, makes it a kind of human on four legs, or describes the sad tale of how a horse was ‘rescued’ from neglect or even death. Families are a human term, she said. We deprive animals of respect when we anthropomorphize them and give them human attributes.
I understand the objection, because I too tire of sentimentalizing animals and not letting them be what they are.
But what they are, to us specifically, is the issue. Horses, crows and other animals are not human. I agree they don’t experience emotions in the same way we do, nor do they care about us in the same way we care about them. Horses are not humans on four legs.
But describing them as living in families is as arbitrary as saying they live in herds, or that other animals live bands or flocks. Language shapes the way we feel about things, how we experience what we do, how we frame our relationship to other people, beings, the world.
So why not call a group of beings that live together, bear young, teach their young the ways of the world, protect and look out for each other, forming bonds of friendship and, dare we say it, love each other in some fashion, “families”? How does it take away from a horse being a horse to use the arbitrary human word “family” instead of the arbitrarily devised human word “herd”?
Alexandria lives on a ranch with her husband, horses and other assorted critters. She has a Ph.D. in philosophy and an M.F.A. in creative writing. An avid equestrian, Alexandria spends many of her days riding in the mountains and hills of southern Oregon.
