I was doing some research for my book, Horse Dancing, and came across the Jacques Derrida book, The Animal That I Therefore Am. The book was sparked by Derrida’s experience when his cat followed him into the bathroom in the morning. He asks what this animal sees when it sees this naked man.
Derrida aside, I wonder about our emotional nakedness before our animal companions. I know that I feel more exposed and more uncovered with my horses than anywhere else. I have to be more self-aware, more vulnerable with them than I do at any other time. It doesn’t happen all the time, because I am not always that conscious, but if I let myself be seen, if I am listening, there it is.
I wonder if we mostly can’t get quiet or humble enough to really feel that sense of nakedness, if we are just too busy being the apex species to let that in. Or it is too much trouble to take off all the armor, all the habitual responses to our animal companions. What is it like to allow ourselves to be seen, to be observed?
I read in one of Klaus Hempfling’s books that humans get triggered into violence with horses because the horses uncover their vulnerability, their lack of skill, their awkwardness, their ineffectiveness. I have experienced that many times. You can’t ride for very long without stumbling into that tarpit.
So here is a question to which I would love some responses: how do you experience your nakedness with animals? How much do you let yourself be seen?
