Animals Are People
A chapter from Animals Are People by Peter Morville
Chapter 25
Eleven days after our last lecture, Mom entered my room with cries in her eyes. “Jo, I have sad news. Inari is gone. They ended their life — on their terms — I am so sorry.”
Mom began to sob.
“What? Mom! How? Fuck! Why didn’t you stop them?”
“I didn’t know. I just got this email a few minutes ago.” Mom pulled her phone from the back pocket of her jeans. “Jo, it says, ‘Dear Abi, If you are reading this, I have ended my life on my terms. Abi, please use those words when you tell Jo. I am attaching a letter for each of you. Love, Inari.’”
Mom handed me a folded sheet of paper.
“Jo, I’ll leave you alone to read your letter. I’ll be downstairs when you need me.”
A photo of a handwritten letter, barely legible, it must have taken Inari much time and effort to write. “Dear Jo, I agree with Stephen Jenkinson who says, ‘Dying wise is a moral obligation,’ and ‘Dying is active. Dying is not what happens to you. Dying is what you do.’ In ending life on my terms, I have done my best to die well. I hope you will forgive and eventually understand my actions.”
Oh God, I was angry! Inari tried to turn their suicide into a philosophy lesson. What the fuck?
I read the next paragraph. “Jo, let’s dispose with the practicalities first. The Death with Dignity Act allows a person ‘suffering from a terminal disease that will cause death within six months to end his or her life through the use of medication.’ Pronouns aside, it means Medical Aid in Dying is unavailable to folks with ALS, since total paralysis makes it hard to self-administer medication.”
I hadn’t thought it through. I was in denial. Inari knew.
“So, while I do not yet have a life worth leaving, I must act while I still can. Inspired by Sallekhanā, the Jain ritual fast unto death, I aim to die by not eating or drinking. And if I run into trouble, I have a drug cocktail as backup. My cat is with a friend. Emails are scheduled to be sent to my brother and my neighbor. I’ll have a green burial, no headstone, no service. It’s all sorted.”
Maybe Inari isn’t dead. That thought did cross my mind. And I wondered whether or not it hurts to die of thirst.
“Jo, I know you are angry. I understand. I have taken me away from you. For that, I am truly sorry. I love you! I love being your teacher. As I once told you, Robin Wall Kimmerer says, ‘the most important thing each of us can know is our unique gift and how to use it in the world.’ Jo, I want you to know, it has been an honor and a pleasure to help you to find and cultivate your gift.”
Inari was right. I was furious — at Inari, my parents, myself, and the world. For two weeks, I spiraled. Unable to sleep, I lay awake, well past the itching hour, head throbbing, out of place in my own body, enraged. I became obsessed with my visions. If I am able to inhabit another’s consciousness, then what is reality and where is Inari?
Día de Muertos says, “the dead are not really gone.” What if that’s the truth? What if Inari exists beyond their body? Maybe our minds can cross the void.
A package arrived in the mail, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a gift from Inari. An inscription on the inside cover read “To Jo with love, Inari.” Beneath the inscription was a heart. Inside the heart was the number 332. I flipped to that page. And the words Inari had underlined in red made me shiver. “When you live in the shadow of insanity, the appearance of another mind that thinks and talks as yours does is something close to a blessed event.”
I sat there in bed in tears feeling seen and loved and lost. Then I read the book. I’m sure I ate, slept, did chores. But I recall nothing of the mundane. I dissolved completely into the beautiful mind of Robert Pirsig. His book is hard riding. The philosophy is as deep as it gets. Yet, driven to understand, I rode on. And from time to time, leaning into a corner, I’d catch a glimpse of Inari.
“To go outside the mythos is to become insane.” Why did they highlight that? Is Inari saying that I’m crazy? Later, I see that they underlined “the mythos is insane.” Is that good? I’m so desperate for a whisper of relief. Inari bracketed a handful of lengthy passages. I circle back, again and again, trying to make it all make sense.
The application of this knife, the division of the world into parts and the building of this structure, is something everybody does. All the time we are aware of millions of things around us…these changing shapes, these burning hills, the sound of the engine, the feel of the throttle, each rock and weed and fence post and piece of debris beside the road; aware of these things but not really conscious of them unless there is something unusual or unless they reflect something we are predisposed to see. We could not possibly be conscious of these things and remember all of them because our mind would be so full of useless details we would be unable to think. From all this awareness we must select, and what we select and call consciousness is never the same as the awareness because the process of selection mutates it. We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.
We use words to wield the knife. Yet Inari says words are categories are maps are traps. Is that the message? Are these words helping me, or driving me crazy? I don’t care.
I can’t stop riding.
But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.
The ghost is realer than the machine!
Not just the ghost of rationality — which was what Phaedrus pursued, and what ultimately led to his insanity — but THE HOLY GHOST OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
The mind is more real than matter.
The mind is what matters.
Deep beneath the cellar, below all the splendorous erections of Omelas, underpinning the fathomless suffering of trillions of sentient beings, lies the bedrock rationality of Dominion.
The root we must strike is sanity. It is the mythos of supremacy that’s insane.
And it’s not okay to walk away. We are beholden.
We can’t think our way out; that’s using the master’s tools.
To dismantle the definitions and hierarchies of Reason, we must cultivate ancient, indigenous patterns of feeling.
It looks like I’m losing my mind. But this is me feeling my way. After a wild ride, I found myself whole. Angry no more, I felt blessed by the wisdom of Día de Muertos. Unfettered by the cold logic of space and time, across the void, Inari had reached out and touched my soul.
Two weeks later, a letter arrived. “Dear Jo, I am gifting you my inheritance. You may use it as you see fit. Yet my dream is for you to realise your dream of Sentient Sanctuary.”
Beneath Inari’s last words, stuck with red tape, was the business card of a lawyer — the desert dry wit of a Brit.
Today is the anniversary of Inari’s death, and let me tell you, it’s been a wild three years. Inari left a hefty sum, enough for Mom and Dad to quit their day jobs and help me to start the sanctuary. For a year or so, it was hard riding. I rushed into rescue, and we were soon inundated with sick and injured animals. The vet bills were astronomical, as were the costs of fencing and housing.
It’s not that I didn’t seek help. I asked the nearby sanctuary if they’d take a few of our animals. But there was no room. I discovered a dozen or so local animal sanctuaries — all were in the same boat — space, time, and funds are limited, yet the reservoir of animals in need is bottomless.
We went from wealthy to worried in a heartbeat. I worked my ass off to write the book while running the sanctuary. I figured its publication would bring us attention and donations. But when Animals Are People dropped, nobody cared. The royalties were barely enough to feed a goat.
I was desperate. In addition to the original goats, chickens, and alpacas, we were now guardians of cows, pigs, sheep, llamas, turkeys, and horses. And, in less than a year, we were going to run out of money. Mom was job hunting. Dad was drinking. It was horrible. So one night, tormented by anxiety and chiggers, I got out of bed and made a video.
I told my tale in tears with Ghost at my side — how I got us deep in trouble by rescuing too many too fast, and why I care so much. To explain my perspective, I told the story of Ghost — how I looked through her eyes, how I knew the geezer with cold eyes was abusive, how I saved her, and how she saved me from loneliness and gave me a purpose.
When I awoke, it felt like a dream. Did I really make a movie? Did I really tell the world that I inhabit the minds of animals? I opened my laptop, searched YouTube, and holy fuck, my video had over a hundred thousand views!
I skimmed the first few dozen comments. Lots of “crazy wolf girl,” but also tons of “this girl is an angel” and “donating now.” I checked our dashboard. We pulled in ten thousand dollars overnight. More than we’d made in a year. Long story short, my video went viral.
I became a celebrity of sorts. I made videos for all my animal dreams, and I related them to ideas in our book. Animals Are People rose from obscurity to become a bestseller. Our book got banned in a handful of states, including Virginia, and grew ever more popular as a result.
I built a following — some call it a cult — on the tenets of spectralism: the ghost is what matters, sentience is a spectrum, animals are people. And with our volunteers and advisors, we were able to grow our animal sanctuary responsibly and sustainably. Inari would be proud.
Sentient Sanctuary is a community of creatures who are bound together by place and purpose on 48 acres of field and forest. On a summer’s day, you may see folks seek shelter in the shade of a solar barn. Cats, dogs, chickens, horses; it’s a little like Noah’s Ark. As a boy plays with a goat, and a girl with a robot, we all explore the meaning of sentience. Each of us inhabits a unique umwelt. Each creature experiences a different garden. Yet we are all here, alive, awake, aware, in this time and place, together.
The sanctuary is a refuge from and for change. Folks may visit for an hour or a week, for tours, classes, conferences, meals, art, concerts, and experiments. It’s a sacred space to plan together, so we can’t know yet what it might become. Our mission is more happiness and less suffering for all sentient beings, including humans.
To that end, into each and every tour, we weave the gospel of spectralism — animals are people — consciousness is a continuum — the ghost is what matters — all beings are multi-spectral — and the sanctuary is sentient, obviously.
Spectralism is the lever that I use to enact gentle change. And it works. Inari was right — words are spells.
I sit on a wooden bench by the pond. It’s been a hectic day, and I am relieved all our visitors and volunteers have left. Ghost is nearby, resting in the dry grass. My wolf rests and sleeps more these days. I hate to admit she’s growing old.
A sunfish breaks the surface. Her rainbow scales sparkle in the setting sun. Ghost and I watch as the ripples fade.
Three years ago, Inari and I sat together in lawn chairs on this very spot, and I told them of my dream for an animal sanctuary. An inscription on the bench — memento mori bene, remember to die well — is dedicated to Inari, my dear friend, who taught me how to live well and die wise.
I was so angry when they died. But now I understand. And the tears in my eyes aren’t of sadness but of gratitude. Inari helped me answer Mary Oliver’s question, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
I am living my dream, as best I can, and it is beautiful.
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A chapter from Animals Are People by Peter Morville