I Cried Twice

Lila and I were riding the quad through the country road on our way to the beach.

I love these dusty roads. They give little indication that we are no longer in 1974 and this, from the first day, has hooked my heart.

As we were getting closer to the village, we saw one of the vaqueros (cowboys) a few meters in front of us. This man, one of my neighbors, often leads a herd of a couple dozen cows and bulls from atop his horse, seven or eight dogs closing the parade. He too is one of the reasons I chose to build my home here. Like I say, 1974. Well, except for the times when he is on his cell phone.

But yesterday, it was just him on his horse with, next to him trotting along … a tiny horse. A really small and almost heartachingly beautiful tiny horse. Perfect, really. Perfect and … something else. He was walking free, with no lead, next to the man and the grown-up horse. I slowed down wanting to be sure not to scare him with my engine and asked my neighbor how old the baby horse was. As I got even closer to the horse I could feel my heart start to fill up in an odd way.

The cowboy held up three fingers.

I, having grown up right outside of Paris and knowing very little about horses, nodded and repeated to him that the horse was three months old. Not even three weeks old, mind you. No, no. I offered three months. The vaquero without even blinking corrected me: Three days old. The baby horse was three DAYS old.

I knew I had sounded ignorant and instead of saying nothing, I thought it would be good to comment about how amazing it was that he was already walking. Then ask if the other horse was his mama. Babbling, you know? She was.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the animal. My chest was doing funny things, and I just wanted to ride alongside them, wherever they were going, until the end of the day or until I ran out of gas.

Eventually, I tore myself away by pressing gently on the accelerator and that’s when I realized what had affected me so much. Three Days Old. I remember Three Days Old. I remember holding my baby granddaughter when she was three days old just a few weeks ago. I remember how simultaneously strong and fragile she was. I remember too how it had felt as though part of her was there with us and part of her was still in the other world, the one she had just arrived from.

This baby horse felt the same way.

Precious, sacred, so pure and new.

Now riding through the village I was full of the Gifts of Life, the miracle of our baby’s oxygen mask having come off around day three, and the miracle of this perfect baby animal trotting along his mama in the dusty sunlight at the same age.

I was so darn happy that my eyes started crying a little, releasing some of that fullness into warm tears of gratitude for all of it. For all the little lungs working on their own and for all the skinny little horse legs trotting healthily.

And then, because I am human and sometimes humans can’t leave stuff alone, my brain started to ask some questions.

“How many babies did she have?” I wondered.
and then:
”How did she get pregnant?” I wondered some more.

And just like that, before I could even begin to formulate an answer to either of my own questions, BAM. A memory.

A terrible, awful, very bad memory. One I had been trying to forget for the last week.

Riding home on the same road, I had passed a small farm on my left, as I do just about every day. In that farm, there are roosters in cages - most likely fighting roosters - and a horse. A big horse who lives under a tree, tied from his head to a branch up above. Every day as I pass by I invent in my mind ways to cut him loose. Every day I force myself to keep driving and step into neutrality, and humility. Possibly into chickenshitness.

I tell myself, as I do very, very often here, that I don’t know. Which is correct. I tell myself that I have chosen to live in a culture that is different than mine, whatever mine is. Which is true. I tell myself that I am a guest here. I keep driving home over the river beds and into the open field where at least three animals are going to be very happy to see me, running around freely and making it easy for me to forget a little.

Last week was harder.

As I passed by the farm, instead of one horse there were two. There were also two men. And the two men, holding ropes and using loud voices were directing one of the horses to mount the other one. For a brief instant, I thought I didn’t understand what was happening. But I did. I think it’s called breeding and me seeing it as assisted rape wasn’t going to change anything. One of the horses was the one that was usually tied by its face to the tree. I kept driving and I cried. For so many reasons. And then I put it away.
Until the baby horse.

Once Lila and I made it to the beach, my mind was swirling around with words, each one crashing to the beat of the pristine foamy waves.

Contrasts.
Not knowing.
Choosing what to celebrate.
Humility, again.
Living here.
Being human.
Complicated.

The juxtaposition of this perfect baby animal and the way maybe he too had come to be in the world. My readiness to melt into gratitude for one end of the story and to be outraged by the other. How little I know. How little I often know.

I tossed the word hypocrisy around and auditioned it for a few minutes. I let it go, it didn’t feel quite right. It’s something else.

I think that living here makes all of this complexity, these contrasts much more “in your face.” In the States, there are layers in the way that soften a lot of the raw stuff. Interestingly enough, for me, these layers also soften the glory. I find myself gasping a whole lot more over here. Living a lot brighter. Crying more, too.

And so, here I am, aware that while I am delighted by the new art stencils that arrived yesterday, I know that they happened to come from a company in China whose practices I have not researched.

Here I am enjoying writing this story to you from the jungle using the super reliable internet service for which I send money to Elon Musk’s company each month (which is not very 1974 of me)

Here I am celebrating a baby horse while rejecting breeding practices.

Today, I invite us to be gentle with ourselves for the babbling and the bumbling we might do when realizing how complicated our integrity map is.

I invite us to be aware that it’s often not all that simple and to decide how far in the complexity we dare to tiptoe or trot in.

This life…