Who Cares?

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

Anukampa is a concept new to me, the same way art was until I was about 8 years old or so. This lack of familiarity did not prevent me from drawing while resting on my belly on the cold tiled floor on a Caribbean porch. It did not prevent me either from building puppets together with a plywood theater to invite neighbors to gather for an afternoon function. And there were times when both anukampa and art would mingle in my vicinity unknowingly. On Valentine’s Day, I would walk to the paper supply store to purchase red cardstock to trace and then cut out hearts out that I would give away.

The Buddhist term anukampa refers to care and points to the act of caring, which can involve physical or spiritual caregiving. In other words, it is the act of giving attention to oneself or to others. In my novice’s understanding this is an exercise in seeing and holding (without judging or grasping) that which is in front of me, but also that which can be far away into unquantifiable distances, or simply deep within. The subject receiving anukampa can be a living creature, or an inanimate thing–like my blue kitchen counter. This week, for example, I have been carefully tending to the faux granite surface in my kitchen that houses the sink, and where I also place the cutting board to chop vegetables, and where I have some of my meals in silence, while facing the wall connecting my neighbor’s home with mine.

The practice of being present with my counter entails wetting a fuzzy towel with warm water and wiping oily spots or gathering tiny bread crumbs. I similarly move the towel along the edge of the surface in question for the sake of caressing it until I see it shine. From time to time, I lift baskets filled with cosmic messes, including a set of new combs and expired prescriptions, and I lift the flowered-printed tray holding a bottle of cat laxative to go under it and clean the area thoroughly. But what does this have to do with art? I initially treaded into this field in search for meaning. Perhaps it was while looking for tools and a term to name my eccentricities. For similar reasons, I welcomed art as channel through which I could co-create community and be able to express care for strange ideas or ways of being. When I was 7, I could have used art and anukampa to explain myself when building small wreaths out of yellow and orange calendulas to travel to the municipal cemetery to place these offerings on the graves of those who did not have any candles, plastic flowers or photos on their tombs.

Art would arrive for me formally through my studies of theater at 8 or 9. Anukampa, although already in motion then, has only become fully understandable as I am entering elderhood, at which stage the meaning of art is starting to crumble like the specks on my counter. Meanwhile the performing of care is taking center stage in my life. Art for me has been replaced by creativity, whereas I now understand of myself as a creative funneling an energy that is available to everyone, not just artists. Gradually, I am finding less meaning in art, as it relates to the making of objects to trade in the market, and as it speaks of the persona that I am expected to assemble for the consumption of an industry that churns one person after the other, as it seeks to deliver shiny goods and sparkly excitements to a public 24/7.

The layers that held together the meaning of art for me–like an onion–have been disintegrating in my hands to expose its core; pure emptiness of the kind that opens up to All and nothing concomitantly. I now have my bare hands to care for and to care with. I can put them into motion in an ongoing, perhaps continuously unfolding performance that could expand the scope of my relationship with creativity into the unmeasurable; starting with an old kitchen counter in a late Victorian house in the Bronx.

Meaning is pointing into the meaningless. There are unwholesome relationships to release myself from while also caring for them; and the goals that I visualize like stepping stones that I can polish for the mere sake of watching them glow under the full moon. Nothing else. More appealing now are becoming the countless minute things and beings in all dimensions who can use my care and have not gotten it before because of distractions provoked by Instagram likes, and the grant-writing tasks that have syphoned years of life force from my body with the enticement of a little bit more recognition…a few more lines to add to my 20-page CV, which I would be selfish to print when actually wanting to care for the present and presence of trees and bees and rivers and rain and the future of all. In the next panel I am scheduled to participate, I will introduce myself as a student of caring and proceed to care for those in the room, one by one–myself included–, our loved ones at home or on the road, our departed ones, and why not our future selves too–without having to explain anything to anyone or necessarily having to lift a finger. I will aim to talk with empty hands and an aging heart moved by care.

Who Cares? ©2024 Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

No More Goals

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

Imbued in my professional artistic training was the practice of setting goals. I would hone this as I also read the densest texts for my postmodern theory classes, and while developing new recipes for ceramic glazes to test. At the time, the late 1990s, working with clay was the domain of a subgroup of creatives that read Ceramics Monthly and Studio Potter and whose artwork inhabited a nebulous space between crafts and fine arts. And the skills to learn to project into the future, or to strategically discern on what specific stone to step on to reach the desired side of the river, was thought by my professors to profit both the ceramicist and the academic in me. One particular exercise for a seminar I took entailed writing how I saw myself three years from then, then five years, and finally ten. “I want to live off my artwork, I want a house in New York City, I want an exhibition at a major museum in Manhattan…” With the wants visually planted into the ether of capitalism, I forwent the essence of life, even when I wrote copious statements about how my praxis existed within the day-to-day. Years were measured in regard to projects, a term that I have come to distance myself from, perhaps more so for semantic reasons than for what it might mean: an enterprise connected to an aim. Nothing wrong with that. However, my interest is centered on the everyday as a door into creativity and yet, reducing life into a project is, in my opinion, a disservice to the mystery I seek to engage unencumbered.

With no clear understanding of the detour I was taking, one day like any other ordinary day, I pulled a hard plastic binder out of one of the filing cabinets in the room I call my archives. The scissors were in the desk salvaged from the corner of Banana Kelly Highschool in my neighborhood in the South Bronx. The job of cutting up unpassionately months of past writings and years penciled into a future was not at all difficult. I did put on the breaks when I came across my obituary, knowing that what I was doing represented a death of sorts: the end of goals. How was I to move from here and still make meaning out of my life? Afterall, I had been schooled to draw the road I intended to take, the salary that I imagined myself entitled to receive as payment for my thirty years in pursuit of higher education­, from medical school to art school and, eventually, to seminary.  Without stones to step on, or steps to climb on the ladder I was left with the freedom to jump into the river and befriend the muddy current, or to trust the branches of a tree going in all directions. Did this liberation from goals open up the possibility for autonomy?

With no goals in sight, I started to experiment with meaning as a compass for moving out into the world; and with the world itself as a collaborator. Purpose in this choreography, rather than being a synonym of goal, has become a motivator to remain attentive to caring for self and others in the web of life. One example of this has been my involvement with Bodies of Water: Fluid improvisations Along the Bronx River, a series of actions on the banks of the only fresh water entity in New York City of its kind, and where I have sought to co-generate social/movement-based responses with the ecology of the place and in relationship to other human-animal creatives. While there is a defined statement describing where we might go together, the emphasis in Bodies of Water: Fluid improvisations Along the Bronx River has been on mutual explorations and on learning in partnership with all beings. What would otherwise be goals are gestures that are invited to remain in constant motion, sustaining me (and I hope everyone involved) in the present, instead of forcefully pushing me/us to shape a future deprived of the now and its teachings. This has allowed for compassion to come forward during tender encounters, and for intention to rapidly shift course for the sake of everyone’s wellbeing. At this stage in life, the purpose that propels me is one that arises from interdependence and that is deeply rooted in dancing with All at the core of the moment. I become one with the wet Muskrat swimming under the Amtrack bridge over the Bronx River. This creature’s fleeting presence becomes purpose to me; everything there is to attend to. I give this graceful rodent my full devotion.

No More Goals ©2024 Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

Off I go. But Where?

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

Before the advent of cell phones, and even a while after it, I fully relied on people along the road to guide me through uncharted territory. I mean, this could pertain to locations like Zagreb in 2012, in the middle of the night, in the dark, where I had never been before and was looking for the host who I had yet to meet, and who had rented me a room in his apartment. I had no internet connection on my device, so talk about taking chances and trusting the universe. The same could apply to the Dominican city of Santo Domingo in the 1980s, where I arrived one late morning from my art school on the eastern section of the island without one single peso in my pocket. Procuring from a stranger the basic funds to pay for a ride home was an exercise stretching my limits on surrendering to the care of others and, at the same time, testing the autonomy with which I had initially embarked on this uncertain journey. But how can these two seemingly opposite ways of engaging life coexist in one single occasion like the one that I am illustrating in this last example, or in the first one?

Of all places, I live in a Euro-American dominant United States, a society/culture that, generally speaking, prides itself on self-reliance and in instilling independence in individuals starting at a tender age. This obviously collides with any expression of vulnerability, let alone soliciting passersby for help with a cab fare. And there can be a degree of isolation in autonomy that makes this a challenge for me to trade for the expansiveness that can reside in the fortuitous. Now, where is freedom in all of this and what is its connection to autonomy? After all, the United States is said to be the Land of the Free. A drink of carbonated water comes in handy here. It is good for settling my upset stomach, as well as for giving me the energy to untangle the mess in which I find myself at this moment, in this reflection. The image of freedom that comes to my mind is that of the “American” supermarket with its deceptive stock of possibilities orchestrated to please the wants of every single consumer. When I think of autonomy, if there is truly any in this context, I get a saccharine response. Almost all comes down to sugar.

Anything can be sprinkled with confectionery powder or decorated with sweet crystals and marketed–sold quickly before crypto currency tanks again one more time. This is how false decision-making, masked as autonomy, permeates most aspects of life. However, for me as a creative, the capacity to tread wisely through the unknown relies on collaborations and partnerships that honor a search for personal meaning, but that are also linked to the collective with the care that this calls for. I opt out of applying to a sizable art grant that will go to a single person. Why not distribute these resources equally among several creatives, I ask myself? Autonomy in me kicks in, and kicks me in the butt, urging me to focus my attention on what will bring me regeneration, restoration and happiness. I listen to it and dispose of the link to the life-consuming grant into my computer garbage bin. I exit the competition quadrangle to catch an inner glimpse of freedom… it feels rather good.

Where does the aqueous being in Fluid Improvisations: Bodies of Water Along the Bronx River end in the experience that I have been co-generating with a cohort of five other creatives? Is it on its banks delineated by cut stones? Is it at the edge of the greenway, or does the Bronx River non-visible presence somehow encompasses Westchester Avenue until it reaches the Bruckner Boulevard and meets the far reach of the industries that provide much needed jobs locally, yet still pollute Hunts Point? Does the River conclude where it is no longer wet and muddy or does it continue into me and into those I am collaborating with? This is the autonomy that I am interested in bringing into motion; the one that makes me confront my porosity. The one that gives me the strength to cross boundaries with respect. Not the one trying to bestow an artificially sweetened sense of freedom in me that sends me home with a plastic bag full of empty calorie items. The autonomy that I am slowly starting to embrace is one that does not thrive in seclusion, but that is actually activated and comes alive within the relational. Yes, at that very core where rough contours and sharp borders grate and grind stridently, seeking a way, although not necessarily with a destination in mind­–in solitude, maybe, but certainly not alone. Autonomy might in fact be the meandering road into interdependence with all beings, with all I meet with and who meets me.

 Off I go. But where? © 2024 Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

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”…

Practicing Agency and Watching Her Be ©2025 Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

Identity as Relational Practice

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

The question of, "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” pushes me to ponder on identities as being in inseparable connection to relationships and as in continuous conversation with the collective. This reflection stems from my identitarian pilgrimage through several decades at the crossroads of art within the day-to-day, and as part of creative activations that are interdependent with life and hence inextricable from it. Born in the Dominican Republic to Lebanese and Dominican parents, my initial understanding of the world was shaped by foods, languages, spiritualities and phenotypes. I was the kid who would eat foreign Middle Eastern lunches on class breaks, and who many times was mistakenly referred to as Turkish, to the frustration of some of my Lebanese family at having their nationality confused. On the streets, walking with my dark-skinned Dominican father, people would shout to my progenitor the unkindest remarks about his ties with the white-looking boy he was traversing the city with. And at home, I would work on crafting a Vodun altar in my time off after Catholic school in the mornings. From birth, I could say I swam in a syncretism in which I felt completely at ease while yet navigating a convergence of perhaps the most contrasting currents. I would metaphorically swirl between streams of cold, warm, and even burning waters. This mingling adjusted some of the extreme aquatic temperatures that I encountered. I was mostly happy, and the clue was for me to get out of the waters when spasms would hit, when my skin wrinkled or when my lips turned purple *The Taínos, first inhabitants of the Island of Quisqueya/Haiti, are said to live now in a realm underneath the rivers, and sometimes can claim bathers into their domains. The reality is that many of them are alive and among us, and not in a ghostly reality*

In my early twenties I would forgo the plunges into the see-through Caribbean Sea and relocate to a perpetually cold and dark blue Atlantic Ocean in New York City. It was again in relationships where I continued to investigate identities. In Anglo-Saxon dominated “America” I was no longer the person I was raised to think I was. Abroad, the white-looking boy from the Island was deemed almost immediately a person of color. With this sudden shift arose alliances and partnerships with classmates who compassionately embraced me as one of them. I had never before heard of the acronym POC–until already part of a POC group who supported my path through graduate school. The majority Black and Brown country I arrived from, although riddled with racism, performed this in somewhat different ways than the USA. Back home we could seemingly sit wherever we wanted on the bus, and reality was that the lighter the skin, the more opportunities opened up. In New York City, I diligently partook of the education on social justice and activisms that the African American communities I would interact with while a student generously shared with me. Later along the road, I came to understand Dominicaness from the perspective of living with one foot in each place–for the time being: Manhattan and the Dominican Republic. Together in a circle of relations in Washington Heights and within the city at large, I became Dominican-York; a Dominican from New York City. On visits back to the Dominican Republic I would notice how the space I had left was no longer available–it has been occupied–, and with this, some of my previous identities had transformed, others made no sense anymore, or had simply crumbled. It was as if I could hear the tree fall and intuit the sound, but not hear it with my ears *Upon Mami’s death in Upper Manhattan, her personal altar to San Expedito was moved by her relatives to the hallway outside her apartment*

In the South Bronx the sound turns louder, even without any trees falling onto the pavement. This is because we do live in the most musical borough of our City, and perhaps our whole country. I would leave Manhattan 21 years ago to settle permanently on the US mainland. In the South Bronx I would cross paths with children, young adults, elders, activists, anarchists, nuns, the dying and neighbors, who would in turn guide me into my baptism as a Bronxite. This is the place where I have come of age and where I am slowly traveling into elderhood with many others. No one here inquires where I am from because it is obvious that this is where I am now and where those around me see me belong. I close my eyes then pause to notice the wholesome feeling of an arrival *At Raney Park in the South Bronx, deep-rooted trees become altars for those killed in our streets and families surround their imposing trunks with heartfelt offerings*

Identity as Relational Practice ©2025 Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

What About Letting It Build a Nest?

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

Taking something into my hands elicits a considerable degree of assertiveness. Doing this preempts any teachings involved in waiting, and seeks to set things in motion of my own accord. In the case of this reflection, I propose to ponder on the possibility of simply allowing dignity to build a nest in my hands without forcing anything. I can already picture the straws for the nest slowly giving shape to a sort of round, but maybe more like oblong abode where the incubation period will unfold. A strand of plastic here and there attests to the fossil fuel-ridden world in which we live. Perhaps a long braid from a discarded wig is added to the weaving, and hopefully it will not cause any harm to the creature of my story: dignity. I have heard from some of my ornithologist friends how a mundane strand of human hair can get tangled in a bird’s leg and sever it, and how these occurrences become more prevalent in areas where beauty salons and barbershops abound. In talking about dignity in connection to beauty I must use caution not to fall prey to some of the outer trappings. This is not to dismiss the value of aesthetic appreciation, and yet the beauty I am interested in is one I can actually feel myself, in myself. With this arises a sense of self-worth that does not need to wait for others to name it, but that nonetheless thrives in relationships, hence in discovering the beauty in me I find the beauty in others as well.

 My cusped hands assist in the process of nesting dignity and suggest a container for it. I watch it come and go in its busy forays for materials. From time to time, I am left alone trusting that it will return. When the absences are prolonged, I can hear my inner voice concoct stories of how I am just holding a bunch of junk, and to how I have been duped into thinking that what I have amounts to anything. In those moments I am tempted to drop it all onto the ground, but dignity manages to be back before I act upon my urge. A shimmering strand of purple foil flaps in visual dissonance to the rest of the muted colors that make up the nest: browns and greens, blacks and mauves. This object becomes the focus of my meditation. Eyes open. I recognize in me beauty being tied to curiosity which has taken me places where I have been pushed to find myself in the midst of the most daunting unfamiliarity. On such occasions, I must carve my way out, having gotten lost and left to rely on dignity to meet me at the crossroads–in the dark–candle in hand. I was once living in a place where I was surrounded by a multitude of graves of those fallen in war. I would walk around the site not knowing how to respond to the collective loss. The burden was heavy enough to affect my posture. One day I paused midway on a sidewalk to release the weight from my shoulders while expressing my sorrow for the dead. It was difficult to think of dignity in connection to such devastation, and I had to make an effort to reconnect with it.

Hands can tire easily, especially when assuming a bodily stance that does not come about naturally, but I would still hold onto my posture, hoping dignity would land in my hands regularly. However, I am aware that the nest would run its course and that the comings and goings could eventually stop and with them the sporadic visits. By then, I hope to have gathered the courage to live fully in beauty, hence welcoming dignity as a steady companion and not just as seasonal bird.

What About Letting It Build a Nest? © 2025 Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

A Party that is Not a Party Yet / Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

It would involve courage, dignity for self and others, empathy, compassion and care. This is just to begin with. The experience I have in mind is one that would shape itself as my graduation as an artist (creative) curious about everyday life and whose practice manifests itself in a transdisciplinary way although, in the end, this practice has actually been doing away with any and all disciplines. Its unruliness comes less from from a place of defiance to a pyramidal system such as the art industry, and more as an intention to work from the heart, the organ which name in English contains the word art. In any case, I have been entertaining the prospect of calling all of my relations into one single gathering, be it a fancy room, a garden, a humble patio in the South Bronx, or a location of public use in a city. Or perhaps a nomadic situation where we move through the geography inspired by the pilgrimages that I have been orchestrating during the last 25 years. But, why is this idea such an issue and how does this relate to the understanding of community/communities? Let me explain, this is given the polarization that the advent of social media has only magnified, thus generating echo chambers that are relatively comfortable to inhabit and where ideologies align, for the most part – existing within the confines of the meticulously trimmed hedge or boundary. Here the opportunity to meet those I disagree with can become a matter of choice, although not always. I must admit that opposition can raise its head in any almost context, from the table to the bathroom. However, if I am to defy algorithms and venture out of safe spaces, the world becomes rather complicated. A hot mess. You bet.

Ever since I can remember, I have had a keen interest in community, which Latin roots lead to words and concepts such as: common, public, shared with all or many. I recall how at the age of 7 or 8 I would draft guidelines and develop lists of activities for organizing children in my neighborhood into a club, and I did not yet have the skills to move this forward. My older cousin, on the other hand would pick up the idea and help this materialized during one Caribbean summer. 20 or so youngsters would gather every afternoon under a tin roofed garage to play games, sing songs and even put on a play, which premiered in our living room. The audience was accommodated on every conceivable piece of furniture we could find around, including a Danish Modern parlor set. A curtain sliced the space into two sections, one for actors and one for audience, and the rest of the house served as dressing rooms and whatever us thespians needed. By the time I reached my thirties, travel, work, and the pulls  and pushes of life had added to my repertoire of tools that would become the backbone of the work I have been doing focused on gatherings and encounters. 10 years later, I would gather the courage to travel to Calaf, near Barcelona, with the impetus of meeting all of the inhabitants of this Catalonian town of 3,500. After this, there would be no point of return for me. I would find myself in communities almost completely out of my social locations and with no option to retreat given the search for transformation I have been involved with.

Circling back to my original questions about community/communities and the complications that their meanings pose for me, I still wonder about the possibility of an action or happening kindled in the day-to-day for which I invite people of all backgrounds with whom I have shared moments of connection and/or have been in relationship with. In my mind, they would come together under one roof or below the same sky. What would it take for those involved to cross boundaries while abiding by consensual engagements? What are the border-crossings that would need to occur to move us beyond prescribed social safety? None of these attempts propose a situation circumventing the value of love/compassion-based ethics, nor water down its embodiments. What are the links that might emerge organically from conversations between some of my friends, which include cloistered Roman Catholic nuns and eco-sexuals in love with the Earth; or with dominatrixes fully committed to their jobs? What would my radical and anarchist colleagues and the handful of right-wing supporters in my blood family have to say to each other? Do differences preclude community or can community exist within a frictional space, even if temporally, or in a choreographed event like the one I am discussing here? What these questions ask of me is about the parts of myself that I have opted to leave out in order to be in community – to belong – and what would it entail to allow all of these parts to show up in one room, as a whole however patched together this whole might be. I can see how a movement of this magnitude would require painstaking consideration. I might have to trust that once our party is over, the dishes washed and the broken glasses disposed of, new alliances would have been made – maybe – and that I would let go of entering community/communities in parts, but in my full, imperfectly radiant, presence. This will mean wearing a floor-length habit (no underwear), putting on spiked heels (vegan ones), and holding a sensuous purple calla lily in my hands. Next time I knock on your door all you have to do is open the peephole and see me.

A Party that is Not a Party Yet © 2025 Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful                           

The Rat’s Eyes and the Kinship Continuum

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

I often speak of bubbles. As someone who grew up in the Global South, I got to experience the glorification of gated “communities”, exclusive country clubs and places guarded by the customary guachi, the watchman, hired to protect the goodies of those in power. Loaded rifles at the entrance of banks, shopping malls and grassy urbanizaciones, suburban developments, were meant be treated as inconspicuously as the omnipresent palm trees; another familiar element in a steadily colonized landscaped and society. All of the above go hand-in-hand with capitalist economies, of which the Dominican Republic–where I was born– is among the rising ones in Latin America. For decades, Dominicans living abroad, mainly in Upper Manhattan, were called Dominicanyorks and seen collectively back home as culturally contaminated as a result of having “left” our country. Call it economically, politically, gender-wise or sexually driven immigration or, in some cases, cultural and intellectual forms of exiles. Dominicanyorks were to be avoided at all costs although, in 2022 we sent to the Island over $10 billion worth of hard-earned remittances. Those in the diaspora were referred to as Dominicanos Ausentes, or absent Dominicans. Most of us visited once a year, and some returned to the homeland to educate their children or to enjoy retirement. In the midst of this influx of “Dominicans,” short for Dominicanyorks, many of those who flocked back to our country of origin in the 1980s, would deal first-hand with the culture-clashes that entailed trying to enroll children in a private school or enter a fancy restaurant or nightclub as a patron. As someone whose creative impetus lies at the core of relocations, sometimes, far away from any of my social locations, the subject of kinship is key to me and, within this, are the identities that I have been born into, inherited, embraced, elaborated upon, or that have been imposed upon me, and that includes being Dominicanyork: a Dominican from New York City.

Kinship might be one of the terms being overused these days, just like ancestors, somatics, trauma and healing. However, its meaning at an emotional level is worth examining, at least for a creative like me who has devoted three decades to being in communities and to the relational, be it encounters or exchanges of the most unexpected kinds. An example of this was my relocation in 2019 from the South Bronx, my home, to the City of Albion, Michigan, with the intention of living for two months in this Midwestern post-industrial place an hour from Detroit, and hence to connect with people from all walks of life at a time when politics were beginning to be polarized in the United States at its very core. Kinship was not a topic I brought forward in Albion because I was actually in the midst of putting it into action rather than articulating it intellectually. In any case, I found myself there connecting dots that up to this date speak to my understanding of a field that unravels like an infinite and endless continuum, that of the kin and of kinship. My mind visualizes this as a thread that is constantly linking with each other one life form, and even forms perceived as inanimate. This field, I would argue, is even more expansive than that, and surpasses any definitions that might seek to satisfy my perception of space/time–two useful constructs. In Albion, the Dominicanyork in me was able to bring together in my memory’s landscape the fact that my deceased Dominican father in the Dominican Republic ran a business that used Fords made in the Motor City and near where I lived in Albion. I was traveling full circle, on foot, since unlike my father, I never learned how to drive, and relationships are best when not forged at 55 MPH.

Back in the Bronx in 2025, kinship was something I was about to actualize thousands of airmiles apart from the Caribbean island of my youth. Walking around the Hub, the Bronx’s Times Square, I took a detour away from the congested 149st Street to guide my brother into one of the less trafficked side streets leading us to our destination. Upon the sidewalk, we came across a young rat dying in the rain. The creature would slither on the concrete trying to free itself from the suffering it was undergoing. The gash on its right side displaying a puncture and an injury that seemed to have paralyzed most of its body. Looking around for a heavy rock I locked eyes with a UPS delivery man, dressed in a uniform the color of his skin: brown. His smile showing a set of gold teeth and an advice to me to bring an end to the pain of the rat. “Man, it is suffering.” He pointed to an orange traffic cone blocking a doorway, assuring me that it was heavy enough to euthanize the furry being rapidly. I wanted to bestow the job onto him, but he read my mind and argued he could not do it because he was at work delivering packages.

I prodded the rat gently. I examined the wound carefully. I let the UPS man turn the corner and this time the rat and I locked eyes in private. What I learned through its gaze was not something I could have elaborated on, and it was a complete cosmic download on kinship. I was one with a rat dying in a busy street in the Bronx, in the rain, alone. The rat was me. We were one in what shaped itself as a timeless instant, a Kairos microsecond. I took the cone in my hands and went for the neck. Once. Twice. From there on, I could clearly see the kinship thread ramifying in all directions. I also became conscious of when I broke this. The thread was something I had to live with from then on and that would become tangible, like when I dismissed a man outside who asked for a meal as I left a food joint, or when I raised my voice at an elderly airport traveler and perceived the rupture that I had generated. I saw the thread of kinship mend upon arriving at a community garden near my home and receiving from the Nuyorican manager the gift of a basil plant. Kinship had suddenly, in one drizzly afternoon in the South Bronx shifted its meaning for me beyond any possible groupings or embodiments of the term and even beyond ancestries, nationalities, and communities. Kinship revealed itself as a field always in flux being activated by the myriad beings/presences/entities/forms in contact with one another, including this Dominicanyork turned Bronxite and a dying rat turned ascended master. Many of the teachings I have sought to access through long journeys were contained in the wet pupils of my urban teacher.

The Rat’s Eyes and the Kinship Continuum © 2025 Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

Aleh / Notes from my Book of After Dark Dreams

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

Aleh / Notes from My Own Book of After Dark Dreams

In my effort to do away with the word healing I try different combinations for the letters in it. My hesitation stems from how overused this theme has become, at least in the arts; almost void of significance. Coopted. Capitalized. The recollection I have is of those in the arts with the afront to approach anything spiritual, having to decide between surrendering professional validation on behalf the institution/industry or simply making room for our visions in the margins, outside the center of conceptual and aesthetic prescribing. This is how I come up with Aleh, which I imagine more like a sound calling forth an intention for restoration, recovery, ease, wholeness–even if in fragmented form-,and all of those states that I and many usually associate with healing. Aleh, I find through the digital oracle named Google is a Hebrew word for leaf or foliage, and I am glad to see that my “neologism” is not that far from the source where healing can occur: through communion with Earth. Let it be Aleh and let us proceed from here.

Elaborating on Aleh from My Own Book of After Dark Dreams: I see an older man who purports to be in charge of everything, and everything means all and everyone. He lies in bed as a result of a significant health crisis. His bloated body speaks of years of self-neglect and for this reason, at this late stage in his life, he requires support to keep going. A woman has the task of administering food and medications. His red face and floppy blond hair are in great contrast to the bleached cotton sheets on which he gives the impression to rest; but there is no ease in his demeanor. I must say early on, that I have no clue of who I am in this scene or what my role in this plot is–perhaps simply that of a witness to my own projections.

Despite the caregiver’s disposition to be of service, the man in bed screams at her as she offers him a cup of water. Unable to resist the anger at seeing how the woman is being treated I scream back at the bed-ridden man using a voice larger and louder than his. To this, he gets up from his confinement and lashes out at my insolence, inquiring as to how do I dare to recriminate someone of his stature. Reading his mind, I run out of the room, but realize that he is already after me. In my desperation to escape I look for safety in the streets of a city, while trying to confuse the persecutor by weaving in and out of several urban alleys. However, I soon understand that the place is all his. The city and everyone who inhabit it are this man’s subjects and, subsequently his objects. A white cat with grey markings disrupts our circling around. The creature in question bleeds through the mouth and his testicles are somewhat detached from his body, yet they remain in place. I am not sure how to act at that moment. The ethical choice would be to get a hold of the cat and have him receive immediate attention. The feline and I pass each other twice. I think of veterinary costs, so I attempt in vain to get him out of my mind, but ponder on karmic debt. I am fully aware of his suffering and how our healing is tied together. I continue to run knowing that I have been robbed of my own space, if there is any space I can really claim as mine alone. There is no exit from the sick man’s reality and both his and my world have collided in this dream. Should I call it nightmare?

My partner David assists me in distributing yards of thin silk. I cut and hand one-two yards at a  time to a group of women participating in a workshop that I am teaching. They themselves wrap around with the material, after which they hide in the bushes. The interactions take place on a back porch. The owner of the house is the same woman who tends to the man in the bed now chasing me. She is nervous about having him discover that I am on his property. She therefore wants me out as soon as possible. The fear in her face is as palpable as the fabric I am slipping through my fingers before feeding the sharp scissors. 

I return to the streets to retrieve different items from an old wooden bureau. These consist of power objects, shamanic talismans, made out of clay and fabricated by my friend Reinaldo. I offer one of them to a person watching me forage through the drawers. I give him an oblong sculpture painted red at its base and boasting a dry texture. A wire secures a ceramic frog to it, which springs at any motion I make. The search yields several pairs of wings. I opt for the two that fit my unconscious dream search. They act as a set of keys. I wake up to write Reinaldo from David’s desk, my desire is for him to materialize for me my chosen pair of wings, or the ones that have chosen me. I give with complete appreciation for what has been gifted to me and ask my friend for wings with this understanding of this process. A WhatsApp voice message ensues with my strange request to Reinaldo.

Sitting by the windows near the sidewalk, my hand articulates the rest of the message. I am further awake and a bit more awaken. There are hidden gifts in panic and anxiety, and there is the speed of light and that of the almost annoying pace at which turtles go about life. The call to move at the pace of the four-legged reptile will give me the pleasure of getting to comb the skin of the planet, as well as the amorphous body of water. Mud becomes the sacred tablet on which presence can be recorded, that is, before movement eventually becomes mud and mud finds its way again, quite parsimoniously, into turtle. In the time being I wait for my pair of clay wings while practicing what I thought was my made-up word, over and over, because through dreams and nightmares I attempt to heal: Aleh

Aleh / Notes from My Own Book of After Dark Dreams © 2025 Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

Reconciliations? Penrhyndeudraeth is it!

The airplane flights and the rail rides, combined with the thousands of steps taken daily put the visuals into motion. Something is being weaved between the larger-than-life San Pancras International Train Station in London and the modest stop in bucolic Penrhyndeudraeth, Wales. Visions of the elaborate tapestry in the making materialize mentally, as I rely on angels along the way when internet connection is not an option. I picture myself gathering remnants of the most variegated kinds. Is this how reconciliation could look? Bits and pieces of found materials giving new meaning to what is already here in place, and yet awaiting to be seen in its fullness– and in its wholeness as well. First of all, no matter how many times I try, I cannot not get myself to pronounce Penrhyndeudraeth, so I pull out the printed confirmation of my train ticket to inquire about directions. I make peace with the realization that I will not always be in control of my destination, call it destiny if you wish. An elderly Welsh couple sitting a few rows behind me make sure that I change trains at the right stop, otherwise I would easily end up in an unknown town or find myself back in London. I thus become aware of the collective, almost cosmic, effort that my visit to Liz Munro entails. Each person helping pave my arrival to this friend I had only communicated with through email, and who I was introduced to by performance artist, mentor and friend, Linda Mary Montano several years ago. The reconciliation as it pertains to the first leg of this journey involves bringing together elements that are not necessarily visible, and takes shape as I practice trust in the act of asking for help. HELLLLLLLP, as Linda Mary Montano taught a group of us to articulate at a symposium in Manhattan a while ago. Therefore, asking for help is the very first step in getting there/here, figuratively and literally. Were it not for the young train ticket collector, I would not make it to Penrhyndeudraeth as he hurries me to step back onboard and exit at the next stop. Liz’s cottage appears as described in our online correspondence, on a gentle hill.

I spot Liz waving from one of the windows high up and I know that I have arrived. But is it I or we? Haven’t we arrived concomitantly? The detailed emails, the folded printouts of Google maps, the photographs of the cottage, and the directions shared by those I encounter on the road and who I might never see again. These are all strange strands of reconciliation, if I can entertain uncertainty for more than a few minutes and imagine a meeting of these seemingly unrelated parts. Liz and I greet each other. I then put the weight of my bag on the bedroom floor to befriend my surroundings, including a promontory populated with a crowd of youngsters having fun in the mild Sun. They are teenagers having a blast, I tell Liz, referring to the hundred or so Daisies in back of her cottage from where I can take a glimpse at the estuary far in the distance. Rosita (Linda Mary Montano), as Liz affectionately calls her, sits with us for salad at the table. She looks at us from an open book I have brought as a present: Life as Material for Art and Vice Versa. More reconciliation over time, through space, even though both of these concepts are a construct. Liz and I use time and space as a container as stories emerge anew from many corners of our pasts: betrayal, greed, abuse, separations, and reconnections. Women dressed as nuns Upstate, New York, wander in our conversations side by side with memories of forged documents. Instead of needles, crochet hooks, or looms we find ourselves mending fabric scraps with tears and laughter. One to soften the material and the other to bring some of the colors back. Mist and drizzle. The weather in Penrhyndeudraeth joins our sewing circle. All of these images are to be approached figuratively with a pinch of the celery salt that Liz hands me to season the greens.

An aimless walk in Penrhyndeudraeth yields a lost magic wand that I retrieve from the wet streets. I opt for taking this with me after reconciling my urge to leave it behind. After all, what is the purpose of an inactive magic wand? The stroke of it to restore health, to rewrite violated agreements, to address ancestral trauma, to delete the abuser from the picture, to bring ease and to efface the collective evilness that cloaks us at this moment. But no. The magic wand can serve to offer the unconscious a tangible image and yet the work must be done for the magic to take affect–so to this extent magic is not void of effort. I allow my walk through the almost empty sidewalks of Penrhyndeudraeth to assist me in metabolizing these concepts at a somatic level. The light rain prepares the ground for this journey. I purposely leave the borrowed umbrella unopen and reconcile with the elements at play.

Liz’s neighbor has a beautiful Welsh name, Aneurin, that like Penrhyndeudraeth I am unable to pronounce. I let it remain a vocal mystery and remember him by his hospitality. He tells me how to get to the estuary. He checks on his cell phone for the train schedule. The train is rather quiet, he expresses to me. I breath in then hold my breath as I look left and right of the train tracks. I make it to the other side in one piece, a bodily reconciliation of faith, my mother’s prayers from afar and the curiosity for life that drives me forward. The lambs part ways as they see me traverse their territory. Some try talking with me and I respond to the best of my abilities. Small clumps of wool hang from wire fences. I find a handful of plastic debris that I collect for recycling. Expansive stretches of sand, big formations of rocks, water molded into undulating sculptures. I ponder on reconciliation as a planetary process. The gusty wind connecting. The same wind threatening to bring it all apart. No idea of when the train will reappear on the tracks, as I cross again. I experience a life review in a matter of seconds as I leap over the tracks. I reconcile with death and dying, for the time being.

Vegetable soup for dinner. I save half of the bread topped with kimchi for my trip back to London the next day. I plan for a second walk to the estuary. However, I let go of this idea upon waking up at 5 AM. A premonition. A one-time experience. I hear an internal message telling me to be grateful for what has been given instead of trying to replicate the gift. I reconcile with the voice of fate. My realization is that there is no way back to places or situations. While I am more familiar as how to return to London by train, I know that I am embarking on a whole new trip. Liz helps me assemble a care package: fruit, vegetables, bread and water. I fetch the magic wand from the bedroom and invite Liz to think of a wish. I tap her head as she bows. She brings her hands together in prayer/thankful position. My turn comes to ask for a wish and Liz touches my head with the wand. We vow not to disclosed what we asked for. It continues to drizzle in Penrhyndeudraeth. The town looks like a flower in bloom, welcoming each tiny drop of rain like a blessing. I let my face get wet and join the place in a symphony of the gratitude that comes with the ongoing score of reconciliations experienced.

Reconciliations? Penrhyndeudraeth is it! © 2025 Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

The Ocean Within

Growing up, my mother would use to warn me that I would eventually run out of tears. Her words were related to the frequency of the crying in which I engaged. My progenitor’s prediction did not come to pass—thank God—and here I am still letting the river in me run its course. This is not to say that the nature of my discomforts remains the same. No. It is no longer sweets or my wish to skip school what I cry for. Much less so than before, what I sense as distressful does not remain solely personal and becomes relational. And I would not imply that I have reached a degree of consciousness that supersedes the self-centered child in me. However, the crying I am doing is happening with, as opposed to for, and the emotions activating this present to me as a field where I can receive and offer company. To this end, Karla McLaren, an emotions and empathy expert, speaks of grief as a “…river that flows underneath all life.” She goes on to explain this metaphorical body of water as one that can cleanse us and renew us, as well as a “river of all souls.”[1] I see this image serving as an example of the realms that, while distinctively entered individually, have a collective counterpart. Hence, the pain that might arise in me at any given dawn is as mine as much as it is planetary. I am thus practicing into wading my way into that vast lake of sorrow, even if for brief intervals, as I also learn that no rescuer in sight will airlift me out of it when an emotional ache turns into an inconvenience. What does it mean to become aware of the ongoing and nonending crying of the multitude that comes in and out of these waters? There are no Kleenex available to daintily hand to each other—like an old-fashioned embroidered handkerchief— so tears are meant to be left unhindered to evaporate then condense, to eventually return to us from above as cool rain.

In “Crying With” as a form of Compassion, a father requests the intervention of a Zen master in helping his son get back on track with his reckless life. Upon the son’s visit to the aforementioned sage, it appears as if the authority had missed the opportunity to send him on the right path. Nevertheless, before the young man leaves, the master’s tears reach the visitor, physically. As he ties his shoes to depart, the salty drops serve to catalyze a major detour in his life. The crying in question seems to point to the master’s plunge into a shared experience of suffering, and through this action waves and currents intersect. Days after reading this Zen story, I dream of one of my cousins walking along an urban setting that acts as a third space between New York City and Santo Domingo, in the Caribbean. In the scene it is difficult to tell where one city ends and the other begins, and I understand that the dreamscape can be rather fuzzy. From a distance, I notice a child attacking my family member. I read my cousin’s intention as a practical one; to make it to the nearby subway station and into safety. I opt for distracting the person on her back, who is actually not a child, so she could free herself from the danger. As it usually happens when dreaming, the linearity of the plot can quickly shuffle, and next time I see the culprit, he is stationed on a second-floor balcony talking with me from above. Suddenly, his and my pain enter a dialogue, but there are no words. The language in use is one that cycles back and forth from heart-to-heart— unseen to the eye, that is, non-visible—looping from source to source. Our tears circulate from one of us to the other, pretty much like the air we breathe does. I realize that my mother’s saying did not go to include crying after falling asleep.

A piece by Spanish poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, written toward the end of the XIX century, alludes to McLaren’s XXI century compelling depiction of grief as a river, and brings in conversation two unlikely masters: the Zen teacher in the story and the Salsa musician and social activist Willie Colón. The latter, born in the South Bronx of Puerto Rican/Nuyorican parents. Colón’s interpretation of Gitana, composed by José Ortega in 1984 includes stanzas from Bécquer’s Rima XXXVIII:

Sighs are air and go to air!
Tears are water and go to sea!
Tell me, woman, when love is forgotten
do you know where it goes?[2] 

The destination of both words and tears are vital elements for our survival, air and water, which corroborates the relationality of crying. Moreover, the stanzas in question prompt me to revisit the concept of a field, that river of all souls of McLaren, and to acquaint myself with journeying to this place. In New York City it is not unusual to come across a crying person in the streets. It has happened to me more than I can remember: in the subway, on some stoop, and on a park bench. Resorting to the Zen master’s approach would not be appropriate in these circumstances. In the case of New York City, there are implied social rules regarding privacy, and still there is the urge to ask, “How I can be of help?” I have circumvented this by simply stating “I hope that you will be ok,” or, “I hope things get solved for you,” and I have had to leave it at that—in the unknown. My mother might have been correct, to some extent. It could well be that my Crying With takes a silent form, where the river flows inside and the tributary washes me into Bécquer’s and McLaren’s junction where all tears meet and where I/we must dive from time to time to be alone yet together during the pangs of life and the sorrows of our world.

[1]. “Grieve: The Deep River of the Soul,” Karla McLaren, accessed October 4, 2025, https://karlamclaren.com/grief-the-deep-river-of-the-soul/.

[2]. “Poems: Sighs are air and go to air... [Explanation in International Sign],” Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, accessed October 5, 2025, https://www.cervantesvirtual.com/portales/ver_la_poesia_en/709092_sighs/.

The Ocean Within ©2025 Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

Mami’s Mustard Seed

The glass pendant I received holds a mustard seed floating in blue liquid. I would imagine that this delicate ornament was meant to be secured by a slender gold chain that would hang from my neck. However, because I am not into any kinds of chains, do not support the market for gold, and do not believe at all in the bogus value of this metal, I fasten the pendant from my garments with a humble safety pin bought from an establishment like Walgreens or the long-gone Love Store. I have been wearing the aforementioned piece of jewelry as an amulet and have thought very little as to its spiritual symbolism as it might relate to Buddhism, that is, until now. To me, this was simply a gift from my dear friend Mami, from Manhattan’s Washington Heights, before her departure from this earthly plane. Mami, took life with a grain of Caribbean sea salt, as well as with the precautions that living in the Heights entailed in the 1990s, the tumultuous period when we met in the Big Apple. Even today, I can picture Mami, resting in her fabulous bed boasting a headboard of, quasi life-size, white lacquered palm trees. I also want to picture her handing me the mustard seed ornament from her throne and place of comfort. As it happened, Mami had several health conditions that required considerable rest: a heart transplant, a kidney transplant and a bypass. Yet, do not get me wrong, she would surprise us from time to time, get in her Saturday best and head to one of the clubs in vogue in Upper Manhattan. But the mustard seed?

I grew up Catholic and hence listening to priests and lay people alike refer to the Parable of the Mustard Seed. Matthew’s Gospel discusses how latent within this minute subject is a shrub that can eventually develop into a large tree, that can serve as a home to many birds. The kingdom of God is similar to this, explains this canonical text, to which the message seems to be that the teachings, wisdom, or dharma can arise from the most seemingly insignificant item, and take roots, deepen and expand (Matthew, 13:31-32 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition). For years, I used this Christian “koan” to find meaning in the gift from Mami, while visualizing the abundance that she might have wished for me in my new place of residence in New York City. I would need this auspiciousness until I, like the mustard see in the Gospel of Matthew, could grow roots in my adoptive home and go somewhat intact through the hardships migrating usually entails. Mami was familiar with this, given her journey from the Dominican Republic onto the US East Coast; her medical trials adding challenges to the experience of relocating, but not precluding her ability to laugh. She once told me how she thought she might be gay, not due to her sexual preference, but because she went to a gay bar where she had so much fun with the patrons that she felt one with them. Was the mustard seed she gave me a way of expressing her understanding of the longing imbued in most migration, hers and mine, and also a push telling me not to give up enjoying life? Was this her metta, lovingkindness, to me in the shape an Afro-Caribbean amulet? “May you be spared from unnecessary suffering, may you be kind to yourself, may you do good to others, may you stay put in this country no matter how much you get beat up by xenophobia.”

My second spiritual encounter with a text dealing with a mustard seed occurs in my elderhood, as I familiarize myself with Buddhist teachings, the dharma, or the equivalent to the Christian Gospels. The story of Kisa Gotami is one that illuminates so much for me, since the woman in question finds herself in the stream of grief that sooner or later, each one of us will have to step into, yet she seems oblivious to the relationality in it. Kisa Gotami lost her only child and whatever social status she was able to achieve in her community as a result of birthing a boy. Her plight for medicine, she learns will not bring her offspring back, and ends up with the Buddha prompting her to go from house to house in town to fetch tiny grains of mustard seeds from an abode where no one has ever died.[1] The dharma here is meant to reveal itself out of the impossible task of begging for some puny mustard seeds. In Kisa Gotami’s case the dana becomes the dharma, the gift she is meant to collect to bring her son back to life and that in turn becomes the teaching. In the Buddhist parable the tree where Matthew’s Gospel foresees birds nesting, is meant to turn inwards and develop into Kisa Gotami’s consciousness. She is called to heal as she gains awareness with and through others that she is not alone in her experience of pain, loss, grieving and dying. Mami’s pendant has outlived my relocation from Manhattan to the South Bronx, while tucked away safely in a milk glass trinket box. It has equally outlived Mami’s death and that of many more in my circle. It could be that her message, similarly to that of the Buddha to Kisa Gotami was not intended to be a quick fix. I will never know why Mami gifted me this, but I am learning that what she went through is part of life: illness, aging, dying, and also about celebrating between pang and pang. Mami may be now sending me from house to house, not in search of a tiny mustard seed, but carrying the one she trusted me with and which teachings have been unfolding with the slow pace of wisdom. ¡Aṣẹ!

[1]. “Kisa Gotami and the Mustad Seed,” Turning Wheel Buddhist Temple: Zen Buddhism in the East Midlands, accessed October 25, 2025, https://www.turningwheel.org.uk/buddhist_stories/kisa-gotami-and-the-mustard-seed/

Mami’s Mustard Seed ©2025 Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

Call Me at 3:00 AM/ The Number You Just Dialed is Still in Service

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

The heart can hold pain and suffering so efficiently, like the sturdy clay pitcher thrown by a skilled potter. Steady foot. Strong handle. Functional spout. Graciously rounded belly that the hand can grasp. In liquid form, hurt evaporates, yet it can remain securely stored for a considerable time. I can gulp it all, glass by glass, sip by sip, while some of it rejoins the atmosphere at a pace unperceivable to the eye. Physiology assists the process by the act of elimination. What goes in usually comes out, and that certainly includes a drink of water, unless there is an illness preventing this flow. If I am lucky, clay will do its part by allowing its porosity to absorb a measure of the contents of the jar; my heart. By the way, high-fire glazes are non-porous. The purpose of them is to hold liquids for a long-period, and to provide a sanitary surface that can be scrubbed easily. Pots of this kind are less likely to host germs in their inner wall, and thus they are ideal for behaving as a barrier between the inside and the outside. In any case, the heart is not a high-fire pot, but more like its terracotta counterpart, with its transpiring surface in continuous exchange with the shifting surroundings; the world at large.

The time I started to make telephone calls was not 3:00 AM. It was more like, maybe, the middle of the afternoon, or possibly the end of the day. I was in deep distress because of the false stories that an organization I have interacted with in the past had concocted about my persona. But wait, I was actually at the doctor’s undergoing some tests when I received the message that my adoption of a cat I had rescued was denied based on my previous history of “cat neglect.” Whoever wove this narrative had pulled together strands, bits and pieces, from all of the creatures I had encountered on the streets—none of which were mine—and which I had brought to this organization to help. There was the black female cat missing fur on its tail and freezing on a Bronx doorsill, waiting to be let into the place from which she was probably kicked out; and the cat full of feces someone had abandoned to its fate while facing leukemia. The orange one found by the Bronx River banks was once obviously domestic, now full of mistrust of most humans. His eyelids were growing inwards, a condition known as entropion. Bubblegum was easily co-rescued with another non-human animal advocate and was walking on three legs. The month and a half that he spent under the care of a local foster organization granted him the opportunity to heal a gash in his paw and to recover from an upper respiratory illness, also known by the acronym of URI. Somehow, I was blamed for the neglect of every single one of these cats.

I received the news from the cat organization in the form of a text as one of my physicians completed an exam, and as one of the team members at the medical office was sharing with me the preparations for an upcoming colonoscopy. I have heard before how my (one’s) reputation is always in the hands of others, but I could not hear a single word that the medical assistant was conveying to me regarding the prescribed procedure. When the accusation arrived, my blood pressure climbed to 160 plus. I did not understand a word the doctor’s staff member was trying to share with me. She quickly switched to Spanish in a compassionate attempt to be there for me. “It is not the language,” I said to her. “I simply can’t process what you are telling me.” She paused with the intention for me to tell her my story. That is what good medicine is about.

It was not 3:00 AM when I reached out, via my cell, from the Upper East Side, to those I felt could come to my rescue. “Please help me out and attest to my moral character.” But who is to expect that everyone will be available at any given moment. I had to contend with the false sense of uninterrupted connectivity that cellphone culture has instilled in us. Not true. People might be away from their devices washing dishes, mending socks, making themselves a cup of tea, crying, having sex, or simply taking a break from the devil, as I have come to name the device to which the tech industry has made many of us addicted to. First to answer was an anarchist friend in the South Bronx. “What the f*ck?” “You?” Being versed in community organizing, she quickly made me aware of the possibilities of coming together to clear my name and alert others of how my narrative had been turned into a misconstruction on my role as a non-human animal advocate.

The caring anarchist was there for me and with me. Second call proved to reveal systemic issues, the woman on the other side of my WhatsApp audio was clearly not willing to risk her peace to speak up for me. Instead, she blamed it on me and direct me to speak with the organization. It was maybe 4:00 PM ET and, while this last person and I were in the same time zone, we were far distant from each other. She could tell me what to do, but would not deign to lift a paw on my behalf. I lost her number. Yes, this is a euphemism. Colleagues and friends from 30 years back rallied with me to write compelling accounts on how I was a trustworthy individual, an esteemed member of different groups, and a caring Bronx neighbor. A person I went to school with in 1986, now living in Texas, expressed her intention to write a letter for me after hearing my plight compassionately. It dawned on me several days later, and at 10:00 or 11:00 PM, while texting with this friend in the Lone Star State, that this was so much about listening, that most people just want to be heard, that sometimes I/we do not have an answer to the conundrum of others, or can come up with a solution, but that all most and many of us need is a receptive ear.

Wasn’t I meant to be incarnating the role of the chaplain, that of the spiritual guide or companion, and instead I was asking for help? Was I not the one to be on the side of the listener, and I was still desperately asking to be heard, to be able to convey my story? An assumption when my clay jar—my heart—broke in pieces was that those in my circle would be there for me and that I could metaphorically call them at 3:00 AM. Nope. I am always giving, I told myself, without wanting to dwell on transactional dynamics. However, it was not about the time of the day or night. For the handful who did not respond to my call or texts, this was not a chronological issue. I figured they were too busy picking up the shards of their own broken jars or simply could not deal with the pain of others. Pain can be scary. Pain, even in others, can expose my brokenness. Pain can underline my vulnerabilities. In calling for support, I was directly or indirectly asking others to see my pain; to hear it out. As I train as a spiritual care person, pain will likely be one of the conditions I will be called to witness or which I will simply have to face from time to time. And instead of urging others to be strong, so I can personally be less disturbed by their suffering, can I accompany them as they are? Do I fear their pain is communicable, or that in being with their pain mine will surface? If so, what is the trepidation in acknowledging that pain is a common denominator in all sentient beings?

It is worthwhile to make a distinction between pain and suffering. I have heard teachers like Dale Borglum from Living/Dying Project talk about how, “Pain is mandatory, while suffering is optional.” Can I, as the result of my own learning, reroute others away from suffering? Those who like me are or have been in the midst of great pain, whether physical, emotional or spiritual? Doesn’t compassion call me to be with the pain of others: com = with and passion = pain? Is the fear that in doing so individual boundaries will be effaced and that I will come in close contact with the Oneness of us all?

More than a week has passed since my visit to the doctor, and an activist friend called me to inquire about my situation. She had been traveling outside the city and said that she is slow to answer messages. A neighbor was hoping to call, so she could hear the details of the accusations and get a clear understanding of the case. 3:00 AM is indeed a strange time. I tend to wake up at this hour of the morning. I have read how in the past, for many, sleep was not straightforward, but that people tended to get up in the middle of the night to take care of some chores, to make love, to have a bite and then resume rest until the morning. 3:00 AM and similar hours, I have been cautioned growing up the Caribbean that that is not a good time to look out your window. This is when unwholesome presences can be walking around town and you do not want to catch sight of them. I keep my windows closed until day break. I keep my curtains drawn but turn a lamp on.

Is it that the heart gets numb? The saying goes that time takes care of everything. I would argue that this is not true, but that it is in fact relationships that can do so. It is with others where my suffering abates and where I come to an understanding of what I am going through. Moreso, it is in the telling and retelling of my stories where I get to comprehend that I am not alone, that others have gone through similar hardships, and that there is solace in coming together. I am therefore grateful to my friend and mentor in Upstate New York who sat patiently to hear me out while she toasted two extra slices of bread. A coping mechanism? I get it. Fine. Whatever it takes to deal with the pangs of life. What can this person listening in Saugerties do for me when I open my hands to reveals the bits and pieces of my jar? She cannot retrieve the liquid from the ground. She cannot mend the pot to the point of functionality, but she can give me a glass of water and that is what she does. “Call me one month from now,” she instructed me to do, and I will. Time will not heal the wounds and the space she is speaking of, the one month, is the location in which I would have had plenty of conversations with my mother, would have laughed in my friend’s house in Joshua Tree, would have complained about the damp weather in New York City, and have given the chance to my heart to patch itself up the way hearts do: in silence, in the darkness inside my body, pumping blood non-stop to keep me going until I can again trust life.

In Siddhartha’s story, his father the king, tries to shelter the Buddha from worldly misfortunes. In this effort the palace becomes the clay jar that holds suffering and pain at bay? The porosity of life outside is blocked by the symbolic glaze that takes the form of entertainment; blatant distraction. If nothing can enter the skin of this environment, the king might have thought, then safety is preserved, at least for the time being. The Buddha, nonetheless, seems to feel a pull by relationality, knowing that on the other side of the vitreous surface that separates him from contact with the outside there is learning he must pursue. He eventually leaves behind the deceptive environment his father has staged for him to make impermanence, with all of its nuances his wise teacher: old age, illness and death.[1] I would say that these aspects of life fall within the three dharma seals, which include impermanence, non-self and nirvana.[2] For the sake of my story about calling at 3:00 AM and that of the ensuing discussion, it makes sense to focus on impermanence, the changing nature of all.

If reputation is what most matters to me, after six letters of good character shared with the organization that blemished my name, the situation was solved. Unfortunately, the adoption was negatively affected by the lack of respect on behalf of the volunteers overseeing the case of the significance of the being I was so intently wanting to open my home to. Their personal time off and emergencies at work took the center stage at the expense of someone’s suffering and pain. My first reaction was that of rage toward their apathy. Obviously, their unskillful behavior had generated a great deal of damage to me. My initial response was a wish for divine retribution. Yet, enveloping all of this unwholesomeness was the listening I had been gifted with by friends and colleagues, acting like a protective cloak. Not quite a barrier, but behaving like a zone of comfort made out of breathable cotton or a similar material. I was not locked out of the outside world by this cloak, but simple held with utmost care. It is as if in the silence and pauses on the other side of the telling of my story those present were saying, “I have been there too. I have nothing to fix in you. I am not sure what to do for you. I hope that things get solved, but I don’t know.” Just that and that was enough.

Putting my trials and the Buddhist teachings on impermanence side by side, I may look for higher ground to climb and hence achieve perspective—or to step back to get to see the horizon from afar. What is it that I can suggest in the context of spiritual care at moments when my toolbox is pared down to the basic items? I ponder a bit further on this, realizing that by opening my ear I am opening my heart. Likewise, what seems like a personal story belonging to a single individual pertains equally to them as well as to me and to all. The Buddha comes up again. In the scope of storytelling the impermanence that Siddhartha meant to get in touch with by shattering the walls around him to venture out in the world was a form of listening. In other words, the clay jar in my hand is already broken. Its integrity is a temporary image of a wholeness that it is not so much threatened but that runs counter to the nature of impermanence.

So please, call me at 3:00 AM to tell me your story. I might be in bed, I might in the midst of a complex dream, or praying for the panic attacks to let go of me and that I can fall asleep again, but I will call you the next day or as soon as I can. I for sure do not want to miss that part of myself that you are seeking to deliver to my ears. Isn’t listening the biggest offering a spiritual caregiver can put to the use of others and to the benefit of their own awakening?  Let’s say that the clay jar breaks. Who cares? We can compost the shards into the Earth, and you can still quench your thirst with the water I will fetch in my cusped hands. But do keep telling me what happened to you.

May no one experience false accusations

May all organizations act ethically for the good of those whom they seek to serve

May all organizations contribute to the well-being of communities

May we all be free of unnecessary pain

May we all be spared from suffering

May we all make space to hear each other’s stories

May no urgent call be left unanswered, not even at 3:00 AM

 [1]. “Life of the Buddha,” Buddha Drama Association Inc., accessed November 22, 2025, https://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/buddhism/lifebuddha/11lbud/.

[2]. “three Dharma seals,” Soka Gakkai: Nichiren Buddhism Libray, accessed November 22, 2025, https://www.nichirenlibrary.org/en/dic/Content/T/114.

Calling at 3:00 AM / The Number You Just Dialed is Still in Service ©2025 Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful