Sometimes a “real person” is hidden behind the exterior. I’ve kind-of known David Kherdian, almost twenty years my senior, for thirty years. He and his wife, Nonny, are Armenian-Americans. That in itself lends a mystique, as Gurdjieff was half Armenian. David’s grandparents died in the Turkish massacre of Armenians way back when. That history still haunts the living, much like the Jewish Holocaust. So, part of David’s persona is brooding, even curmudgeon. But then, he is a poet, and his restless soul rests in that talent. Poetry is a place David goes to process his inner work and he pulls you along there with him. Like most curmudgeons I’ve known, David has a soft, sweet interior.
This poem is one of my favorites, and just right for this time of year:
SOSSI
Whenever Sossi sees me outside
our house, she turns away. Or hides.
Afraid I might pester her with
love or attention—
or afraid I might call her inside
Or interfere with her play.
But whenever (and as soon as)
I go into the garden,
here she comes.
And when she is just the right
distance away, she sits down, facing me,
and watches me at my work.
For some time now I’ve watched
her watching me in this way.
Until now I had assumed that because
I was down on my knees she felt safe—
or felt assured that I wouldn’t pester
her, or take her indoors, etc.
But today, while I was weeding
the flower garden, I noticed her get up—
very intentionally—in order to change
her position, so she could watch me work
from a better vantage point.
Why?
I think, finally, I know.
She cannot work.
In one way she is my superior, and we
both know it.
She is contained and serene
in her being.
And she allows me to attend her.
It is an agreement we have come to naturally.
But then there is this business of work,
and its meaning in our relationship.
She doesn’t need to understand it but I do.
And today, very simply, I realized that
I can work. And she cannot.
While I was watching her today
watching me,
I felt for the first time
a real sense of pity for myself.
Because I could see she was transfixed
by something I so often try to get out of,
or take for granted. And almost never value.
But by her attention and interest
and fascination (cats are incapable of envy),
she made me see that I was engaged in
something very high.
So high that we humans do not see it—
do not see that it is both our privilege
and our possibility,
and that part of this work is to care
for the lower creatures, who will
cease to be lower—to our higher—
the moment we make this caring our work