I came to smoking late and I probably won't stop early. I don't think smokers exhale as deeply as they inhale, at least I don't. You get duped by seeing the air you are releasing. But if you bear down and exhale again, you'll see a little more smoke, the stuff that was just hanging around in there. You should get it out.
That's what happened to me today, when I learned that the jousters had given Dar away. It's as if all of me clenched for a second, bore down on my heart. There he was again, lingering in front of me like smoke. Now the path I sometimes still crazy-dream is gone. Will I never forget him?
I wanted to write about what a difference a year makes, after having written earlier about what can happen in just one day. I was thinking about where I was a year ago with Scout, but... no. I kind of drifted into the day and a then a fair ways farther into it before I became aware of a sense of melancholy enveloping me. It's been a long time since I've had that feeling, a kind of almost benign sadness that might have been wifting through the air, invisible, until you just happened to bump into it. And anyone could have bumped into it, it's that random seeming.
Someone I love, a really good friend who also rides, says to me from time to time, "If only I could see what you see in me, understand how you see it." If only she could.
I think my friend was taught to apologize for herself at what must have been an early age. Some life lessons -- mostly the bad ones -- when learned during childhood and youth prove almost impossible to shake off and discard. My friend's self-esteem withdrew to a safe distance, hidden behind the need to silence her own voice because someone, sometime, either didn't want to hear it or didn't care when it spoke. The particulars of that don't matter. Any time life asks us to erase a part of our identity, we are forced upstream against our nature and left to sort out the side effects even as we discover them. That's harder when you're young.
In spite of that, kicking around in my friend was a vital being hungry for expression and release. Some people would dial the volume down on that hunger, or console it with substitutes. Others might ascend to the shallowest level of themselves, choosing to live there in a deceptive kind of peace.
Passion is a force strong enough to pull us free if we are lucky enough to find it and brave enough to accept its calling. My friend found the voice of her passion in horses, and she had the drive to listen, the heart to listen to what that voice compelled.
I don't know all the facts, like how many years she rode before getting her first horse, how many horses she had before finding the treasure she's owned for more than a decade. But I know that all along the path, she battled against that deep-seated need to diminish herself by negotiating for her right to have horses in her life. In the end, she could only give herself what she needed.
Recently, I have watched my friend discover her identity as a rider. The toughness with which she protected and nurtured her love of horses and riding is the same toughness that has brought her finally to the verge of self-acceptance. There, her skills will shine even brighter than they already do.
It takes guts to have what you want when life has put you down. It takes wisdom to recognize that the very thing you want is also the one thing that can help you get it. It takes simple love to not see the one corrupted by the other. All this I see in my friend and in the horses who accept her voice as a trusted guide. How can I not stand in awe of her?
That question, in general, was raised in an excellent piece, found here, Grey Horse Matters: The Horse Gene, the other day. It's a good question, but for me it follows secondary to what I see as the first question: Why Do I Horse?
Because the simple, tangible reality of time spent with horses feels like precisely that to me: Real. Depending on your circumstances, perceptions of the actual, the present, the "real" can be elusive. "It's relative," people used to say, where today they might say, "Whatever."
But that reality is hard won; it was for me. I was born overseas to parents lashed tight together with cords spun from bitterness, deception and fear. It was a strangling life for them, let alone their accidental children. Trapped in just what "is" as a child, reality isn't even a concept until the first major thing happens, good or bad, that throws you out of yourself and then back in in a single involuntary instant.
In my case, I would have been better off staying in "is." Reality, when I recognized it, trapped me between myself and my parents in the inexhaustible chokehold that exists between predator and prey. I became responsible for managing my own safety, or knowing that, anyway, but never understanding it. It was an oppressive climate of uncertainty and vigilant self-consciousness, one in which I was always struggling to stay invisible, desperate not be caught out by the din of terror clamoring in my head. There, I learned myself as a reactive creature, not a person, not an identity, not a being separate and apart from the forces threatening it. Trapped between the assaults wrought by one parent and the cool, unseeing facade erected by the other, I was never free.
Until the first time I stood near a horse. I don't even remember her name. She was a crazy pinto mare, a filly, really, who'd been ridden too young by the six-foot-tall farm boy who owned her. His farm was one of three on the long blacktop road where our little bi-level ranch house had been built, oddly out of place, and quickly sold to my parents. I don't know why my parents moved to the country. For me, it just meant there would be no place to run, no one to turn to. But I could get away with walks in "nature." My father approved of what he called the "American pastoral setting," so unlike what he had experienced in wartime Poland, while my mother preferred her dogs above all else and gave little care to absent children.
My walks took me again and again to that pinto filly. I would stretch my hands through the paddock fence, feeding her long grass from the roadside. There never seemed to be any people around, and she was alone. One day I climbed the fence and slipped onto her back. I can still remember the warmth of the sun on her sides. She trotted easily under a low-hanging branch and scraped me off, then went back to snuffling among the weeds.
There had been animals before, for me. My mother was a dog breeder, and we'd once had a cat. When whelping boxes had to be cleaned, the litters of puppies were brought to me for safekeeping. I loved those times, loved how it was to be with creatures just as vulnerable as me, but it was different with the filly. She was bigger than me, stronger than me, taller than me. She was a whole separate being who could react to me as she pleased. For the first time in my life, I wanted someone to like me. That someone just happened to be a horse. I wanted her approval, and I worked really hard to get it.
I think that is it with me and horses. Somehow, their self-awareness drew me in when I was a child, and it keeps me with them today. It's not a consciousness that we can know, I don't think, but we can sense it, just as they can sense ours. A dog will see you, a cat will regard you, but a horse will look at you. That pinto filly looked at me when I couldn't even see myself, and then I did.
I took this picture in Seoul, South Korea a few years ago. It's a roof hanging over the courtyard of a shopping mall. Tonight, it captures the pervasive, seemingly inescapable presence of rain that is wearying me. Moisture hangs in the air, thick like a veil I can't ever completely brush aside.
Entropy came to visit us this weekend, moving toward us through the rain. I didn't see the horses for managing wreckage.
One of our cars died. The '91 Pathfinder so beloved to H.G. died on the eve of his 60th birthday. He's 60. How? We've been together 20 years, but I never dreamed one day he'd be 60. "Gold bullet, silver bullet," our mechanic said. "Which do you want?" I thought of a car I'd seen in London long years ago, way before it showed up in the States. Ah, well... After taking a few hours for the shock to settle, I found something to borrow so H.G. could use my decaying Pathfinder.
In other words.
A trend soon emerged. Our newish coffee maker went, followed moments later by my hated (despised, really) cell phone. We can always live without the cell phone -- oh, I prefer to, but coffee supplies core nutrients to our armature. Like junkies, we drove in a jittery panic to replace the coffee maker. Resentfully, I bought the cheapest cell phone I could find, reminding myself that really, the only reason I have it is so H.G. and I can talk to each other when he steps out of his office to take the requisite lunch break. Or when I call him to tell him I'll be home from the barn by, oh, 7:30. I'm always wrong. I always take longer with the horses than I mean to. I guess I take as long with them as I need to. They supply core nutrients to me.
I saw this picture in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago, maybe in an archived review of Warhorse, a play that premiered in London a while ago to great critical acclaim. I think I see it inside out. It reminds me of how I puzzle over horses, try to figure them out, try to imagine what it must be to be one of them. But in the end, they are a thing that drives me, claims me. Their engineering keeps me going when things are breaking.
I am just breathing. I'm in a low tide of me, off my feed, reluctant to move, to think, to call, to write. As always, though, even when I have to drag myself out, time at the barn slows my head drama and brings me back to something basic. Fill the water buckets, clean the stalls, mix the grain, sweep the aisle: I never get tired of it.
I played with Dar today, running along the fence beside him. I have to smile at him, even when I'm feeling grim. And I was feeling grim. I haven't written the story about what happened to Scout, what really happened and how it all went down, but now it has taken an ugly turn. People tell me, "You've been lucky. Bad things happen at boarding stables all the time. This is the first time it involved one of your horses." I know what they mean, but it doesn't help right now. What I see is that Scout didn't matter, in the end, to the facility. I certainly didn't matter to them. They blew both of us off.
There is a fifth hurdle for Scout. Her post-op X-rays showed well-healed bone. The surgeon was pleased, so on Saturday we'll try turning Scout out, after six weeks of stall rest. It's not a moment too soon for my pony, who swings unpredictably between the warm cocoon of sedation and an anxious fury at being apart from her friends.
A couple of years ago, I became involved with a story unfolding on a horse forum. I never forgot it, and I remembered it the night I began this journal.
A woman hesitantly brought up the subject of fear on a thread in the forum. She said her husband had given her a horse for her birthday and she was so happy, but it had been years since she'd ridden. She said she was anxious and nervous. She couched it in terms of being intimidated by the instructor who was giving her riding lessons. Little by little, she revealed more. People posted comments on the thread, offering thoughtful suggestions to this woman. Maybe she was encouraged to say more, not by the advice, but by the interest people showed, the claims of a common experience. Maybe she just needed to scream. But over the course of a few weeks, something happened. Her fear increased, or she began to tell the truth about it; I'm still not sure which. It got to the point that she began to miss lessons. She would log on to the forum, and post a guilty message. She said she knew she had cancelled a lesson because she was afraid. She described sitting in her car, shaking, as she tried to talk herself into going to the barn. Responses would pour in, mostly kind. Try a new instructor. Just groom your horse. Don't be so hard on yourself. Every now and then, someone would try tough love. The woman would disappear for a few days after that kind of post. Subplots unfolded in the thread, people comparing notes on bad falls, hot horses, bolters, buckers, biters, getting back on, how you always have to get back on.
There was a tone of growing desperation that somehow bled through this woman's posts -- desperation, shame, sorrow and resignation. Other people on the forum began to sense it, too. A chorus of cheerleaders sprang up, saying, "Don't give up, don't give up, we know you can do it." Their pleas of support created another sense of pressure in this woman, though they meant only the best. I could feel it building in her. One night, she came on and said, "I just can't do it. I am too afraid. I gave my horse away today. But thank you all for your kind words. I'm very sorry." Then she disappeared from the forum. It was heartbreaking.
I still think about her. Not that I think I'm like her; I don't. But I know how hard it is to tell the truth about fear. Fear is a stain, a force and a deceiver. It is the best conversationalist in the world, and seems to know your every thought.
I don't know who I'm writing to. Maybe her.
Just like the girl in To Kill A Mockingbird, Scout is smart and curious. She's alert to the world, but sometimes too quick to flee it. Like me. Our tensions dovetailed beautifully early on. The hard life of a traveling horse had taken its toll on Scout: she learned how to say no; she learned how to look after herself. She was made when I got her, made and alone. It took me months to win her affection.
We grew, and we grew together, but we could not grow all the trust we both needed. Now, five years later, she still forgets me when she thinks of herself; that's just the way she's wired. Now, five years later, I see that I'm too old to be forgotten by the horse I'm riding. That's the way I'm wired.
I took this picture in Seoul, South Korea a few years ago. It's a roof hanging over the courtyard of a shopping mall. Tonight, it captures the pervasive, seemingly inescapable presence of rain that is wearying me. Moisture hangs in the air, thick like a veil I can't ever completely brush aside.
One of our cars died. The '91 Pathfinder so beloved to H.G. died on the eve of his 60th birthday. He's 60. How? We've been together 20 years, but I never dreamed one day he'd be 60. "Gold bullet, silver bullet," our mechanic said. "Which do you want?" I thought of a car I'd seen in London long years ago, way before it showed up in the States. Ah, well... After taking a few hours for the shock to settle, I found something to borrow so H.G. could use my decaying Pathfinder.
In other words.
I saw this picture in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago, maybe in an archived review of Warhorse, a play that premiered in London a while ago to great critical acclaim. I think I see it inside out. It reminds me of how I puzzle over horses, try to figure them out, try to imagine what it must be to be one of them. But in the end, they are a thing that drives me, claims me. Their engineering keeps me going when things are breaking.
I am just breathing. I'm in a low tide of me, off my feed, reluctant to move, to think, to call, to write. As always, though, even when I have to drag myself out, time at the barn slows my head drama and brings me back to something basic. Fill the water buckets, clean the stalls, mix the grain, sweep the aisle: I never get tired of it.
Just like the girl in To Kill A Mockingbird, Scout is smart and curious. She's alert to the world, but sometimes too quick to flee it. Like me. Our tensions dovetailed beautifully early on. The hard life of a traveling horse had taken its toll on Scout: she learned how to say no; she learned how to look after herself. She was made when I got her, made and alone. It took me months to win her affection. 
