Tea

I am nose-to-nose with Geronimo, my ‘gateway animal’.

I palm a peach, cupping all its bruises between my wrinkled lifelines. I edge closer and take a deep breath. Geronimo The Horse is the self-induced beginning of my journey to love animals. I like him because he mirrors splattered art- a flank of poured white patches and a deep cream brushstroke down his nose. I edge a little closer. My eyelashes flirt together the tiniest bit as fear squirms my face into a nervous grimace. I meet his nose with my peach, and he breathes warmth into my hands. Then he licks it.

I jump back as he grabs the last bit of the fruit, and I am gasping. He slurps on the juice while I retreat to the swing. My calves huddle in the tall grass as I watch him; we are getting better at this. The other day I went with my host mother, Claudia, and Geronimo to climb a mountainside in search of wild mushrooms. This was no hiking trail. It was steep and rocky and rugged at the seams. Geronimo followed us boldly, learning to place his hooves in strategic places. After we reached the edge of our property (70 freshly picked wild mushrooms in tow), Geronimo froze at the small canal of water. He is only a year old and has not learned to jump. When I saw Geronimo scatter back in fear, I felt a pang of something. I remember being shocked at myself: was I feeling empathy for this horse?

I have been thinking a lot about the idea of empathy. When I was traveling back home from La Paz the other week, my friend Evelyn started that she believes empathy may not exist. A professor once told her that it is impossible for empathy to exist. We may feel pain at the pain of others, but it is nearly always a manifestation of our own memories. It’s just like that one time. Or, it’s basically the same as this. It is impossible for us to know other contexts, and so the best we can do is refracture our own pain into attempts at comfort- incomplete and uneasy.

Of course, this theory leaves us both unnerved. No one likes to think that there might be limits on the power of love- it’s supposed to be infinite. A world without empathy reminds me of a theory in the field of international relations. The realist theory argues that states in the international system act as indistinguishable black boxes; each box will inevitably be entrenched in conflict with other states as each state only exists to preserve its own interests. Empathy does not exist in the anarchy of the international system.

I reduce the international system down to reflections of my own experience in Bolivia. So many times I relied on something like empathy to navigate the new environment, loving and listening and challenging and laughing and loving and dancing and splintering with new people in this new place. I don’t want to think that was all under false pretenses. And yes, I also know that I will need something like empathy when I go home again in just a few short weeks. It’s facing home again that demands the deepest empathy. Our smiles will be the same, but the tongues that press harshly against the backs of our teeth will hold new stories. In preparation, I have started to pack my mental boxes: a few things to be shared right away, a lot to be revealed over time and a small knapsack to keep burrowed in my heart. I think of home, and I can only picture everyone wanting their stories and their changed souls and their indignant rage about the Universe to reign the most infamous. Will it be impossible to see the change in others, to let people into my new closets- to empathize?

I’ve heard the saddest loneliness is when you are surrounded by people who love you, yet you can only seem to breathe the burning silence beneath short conversations. Are we all just destined to be black boxes? We will bump into each other every once in a while, feign interest in each other’s struggle for a just a moment before dissolving back into our own daydreams?

I am thinking of home. More importantly, I am thinking of you.  

No, we may never be empathetic, but we can try a little something. I want to try something with you because I am beautiful and you are beautiful and you, you are beauty and I am estranged by your beauty, and I think that you are so lovely. I hope to awake in your loveliness, and I know that I might sit there and only appear close- I know that my closeness may never be real because I may never understand you, but I am not moving. I am here in the fire with you. I do not understand, I will never understand, but I will be burned with you- we will have different scars, but I will burn with you because together we are so beautiful. I will taste your tears and I will summit with your ecstasy, and I will never know you, I will never get you. You are staggering beauty and I, I am trying to be staggering beauty. And we will leave with different battle scars, yours may be ragged and deep and mine might be so superficial, but there will be rotting tissue shared between us. Because we, we are beautiful. If it comes to this, if you ever truly need someone, I know that it might be scary. I know that I will probably never understand. I am here, as open as I can be. I have left my door ajar ever so slightly. Just turn the knob a little to the right.

I have left a cup of tea warming on the stove for you.