Practicing Agency and Watching Her Be

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

There is for sure agency imbued in the pursuit of a profession. I hear people talk about their “careers” and I literally cringe inside. Images of a marathon pop up in my head and so does the discomfort that running imposes on my internal organs–not sure which–but the bother is palpable. This conversation also brings forward for me images of trying to escape from a threatening creature in a nightmare, my legs giving up while foretelling the nefarious outcome of my face-to-face with the unknown. I would much rather walk at my own pace–in dreams and while awake– with nothing to go after, but guided by what happens along the road. An example of this is the virtual meeting that I am a few minutes away from entering. I have agreed to be in dialogue with a person I am completely unfamiliar with, except for our brief chat during a training that we took with an organization we belong to. There is no agenda. I have nothing to ask from this person and I am not in the least driven to “sell” this individual anything. I enter Zoom as I am, dressed in a black fleece decorated with many of the golden strands of one of the four-legged members in my family. I gulp down some tap water saved in my Action Lab bottle to clear my throat and soul as the camera lets me in.

However unnoticeable Zoom might make the cat fur embedded into my outfit, the conversation focuses on felines. The recently rescued ones take center stage as they have the power to elicit memories stored in the bodies of all of those involved in these events, tailed ones or otherwise. Then there are the stories that follow. The how. The when. The where. The narratives behind abandoned creatures or of neglectful “owners” seem to find common threads despite the disparate locations. Paws turn into wings and feathers transmute into tears. I reorient the computer’s camera as we ponder on how these beings have been arriving into our lives–how we have been landing into each other’s incarnations and departures. Their deaths. Silence. I sense mutual openness regarding this cyberspace encounter. Twenty minutes passed and I intuit no hesitation about proceeding with no maps in our hands. Is this how it might be to allow agency to make itself present unencumbered? I figure I can call her (agency) in by talking about where I am/we are now and hence letting us find each other in the telling.

Agency has no trouble securing a seat with us half into the hour. We have been online for a while. I start to describe the taking down and the chipping off in my life in which I am currently involved. Is that agency in reverse or is this a maturation phase of the process? Invisibility wants a word and I let her have it. The aging. The stepping back. The witnessing. The power within the non-visible is that which can make proud palm trees in the tropics bow down to the elements, or the force propelling water to sculpt herself into giant waves to seconds later dissolve. Just like that. Can agency be attuned to the now and nurtured by a trust in life even when I/we do not know what is next?

Cats return to the space. One of my familiars is in want of pellets. There is too the occasion–I am told by the person on the other side of the screen–when at a business meeting with a Japanese and US cohort, ritual etiquette was on the table of items to be properly implemented. But agency had it in mind to reroute tension in the room by unleashing cat stories into this otherwise formal gathering. No Global Positioning System (AKA GPS) could have worked better at that moment.

We say until soon to our Zoom visit with a phrase that goes something like this: “and so, we begin together”…