By Kevin Carrel Footer

The last time I saw the circus goat, she was walking across a narrow plank three meters off the ground. She was not at all sure of her footing and her gold-fringed caparison was slipping indecently off to one side. She did it all led by a shrill circus announcer in sequins who bribed her with treats after every minor feat.

In this circus there were no tigers or lions, but there was, at least, a goat. Visiting one weekday morning I found her grazing on a field in La Boca where the circus tent was staked in the mud usually reserved for weekend football matches. She nibbled delicately at the few sprigs of grass that hadn’t been trampled. She was on a chain, but you could go up and pet her with impunity. She just kept nibbling. It occurred to me that it’s a lot easier to keep a goat than a tiger.

The entire scene — the goat, the putative tiger, the mud and the tent — seemed important for reasons I could not fathom. I just turned them over in my mind as if they might hold some meaning that was beyond me. Perhaps a piece of this chaotic universe would fall into place.

A friend pointed out to me the other day that I am always seeking these “little epiphanies.” Knowing what he said to be true, perhaps I’ll tattoo it on my arm. My life is an endless chase after these little epiphanies where something, seemingly insignificant, gets rendered in its true glory. And that is never insignificant.

I am convinced that we are mostly blind, that we do not see even the simplest features of our world as they are in essence. It is as if we are all disguised as tawdry circus performers under a sordid tent before a moribund audience of fools; in a form of collective amnesia we all choose to forget that we are capable of soaring through the air, of making great sacrifices, of heroic love.

We toil away inside the tent so firmly convinced that our world is one of shrill voices, thrashings, and meager treats. If it weren’t for the little epiphanies, we wouldn’t know any different.

Epiphanies come too few and far between — but at least they give us a glimpse from time to time of what lies outside our tattered tent.