Page 76 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2

them. This kind of love is rooted in knowing how to keep company with. This kind of love is the

antidote to narcissism.

I wonder what I would come to know if I did stop and keep company with the dead on the scenic road

out of love rather than pity. I wonder what I would come to know about what they need. I wonder

what I would feel sitting next to them as cars drove by and drivers stared at us.

I think: Being in right relationship with has to be the first step of ceremony. Listening to what the other

needs, in death as in life. Let ceremony begin from that listening. Let all witnessing begin in the here-­‐

now of keeping company with.

To keep company with

The tyranny of narcissim is a disconnection so profound that one cannot see the other as it presents

itself, in its living fullness, as kin. A long European civilizational history has turned our animal kin into

surfaces for our narcissism. This history has twisted the meanings of reciprocity so much that the

ground for being kin has slipped away. I remember when this ground was restored for me, in a way

that I could fully comprehend. Here is the story:

Hank was a horse bought at auction. I met him at the Mitchell

Ranch in Watsonville, CA, where I had taken refuge in the aftermath

of a nasty divorce. He was big and handsome, a Percheron

Thoroughbred mix, bay in color with a thick black mane and a single

white sock on his left hind leg. A beautiful horse by any standard. I

liked him immediately. One morning I came upon him in a new

paddock. The paddock was long and narrow with two apple trees in

its enclosure. Hank stood at the far end looking at me inquisitively,

his head lowered. I was suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to

enter the paddock and climb on his back. “You’re crazy,” I thought to myself. Four weeks earlier I had

been bucked off a mare I did not know well and had broken a rib. But the feeling persisted, strong and