TRANSCENDENCE THROUGH GOATS
I don’t live in the country but in a very average, even slightly run-down subdivision. Occasionally, though, it feels a bit like a farming community. I hear roosters quite frequently, and even turkeys, but one day I saw goats prancing. Yes, goats. Prancing. As I approached one of my neighbors, whom I knew kept ducks and turkeys, I realized the happy, playful creatures with floppy ears were not dogs but goats. And … as the neighbor informed me, they were miniature Nubian goats. They were delightful. We had a rather simple conversation about goats, feed, and their behavior.
Growing up in a small agrarian village in Siberia, we did keep goats … among other things. We could have been any two neighbors, anywhere in the world, and even anywhere in time, who met in passing, on the street, and conversed about goats—such a timeless scene. And then something remarkable happened: as I played with one of them, I put my fingers on its woolly coat and rubbed them over its lanolin-coated wool. Suddenly, I wasn’t there but back home, deep in Siberia, and then at a historic village museum in the US, where I worked during some of my college years, dressed in 1900-fashion garb and tending to Howard and Winston, the resident goats … among other things. Again, I was miles away, washing the wool, carding it, watching a woman spin it. Tears were blocking my throat. I thought I’d weep.
To the neighbor, who didn’t bat an eye, I must have looked completely normal. I heard myself talk, but as someone listening, not someone talking, as if I stood beside myself, the strange, somewhat unemotional interaction between this other me and the neighbor was unfolding, while this other me and my emotions, as the one observing, were reeling. At some point, the two collided, my out-of-body experience finished, and having said a polite farewell, I trooped home hurriedly, where I gave myself up to my weeping. What was that? I sat, drank hot tea, and thought. I described the experience to my husband. I missed the simplicity of life. The life I had. The life I wanted? Maybe. There was something so very basic about those playing goats and their woolly coats, so timeless, so unconcerned about anything in the world that it gave a temporary break … to everything. What would it feel like if every single burden, real or imaginary, simply went away?
A true and complete freedom, but only for a few seconds, maybe a minute. This strange encounter made me simultaneously elated and sad. Yes, I’m well aware of how basic tasks dominated one’s day in a simpler, agrarian society, and still do in some countries, tasks that could now be done in minutes or instantly. Here in the US, our days are still dominated by tasks, though they are of quite a different nature and are no longer the only master, having relinquished some of their authority and power to entertainment. I believe our lives were more wholesome when our concerns were along the lines of enough wool spun for winter clothes, enough harvest put away, and a good canning season. Wholesome? Yes. Harder? Absolutely. But still … I think … I’d rather the goats…
