The Deeper Why

There was a story in the news today about someone near Fresno, California, who won a fat lottery payout 10 years ago, setting him up for life (enough to set any ordinary person up for life, I'd guess.) So this winner went out and bought himself a ranch, like you do. He had 11 horses there. Yesterday eight of the horses, starving, were removed from the property. The other three will be removed today. Stories like this one are common, of course, regular as a kind of busted clockwork; just when you think it's stopped, the thing starts ticking again. Every story like this that I come across causes heart cringe in me, an unmistakable impulse of compassion, anger and sorrow. When you're wired that way, there's nothing that can be done to avoid the feeling.

Fresno Bee Photograph

But just once, I wish the reporters would investigate the deeper why. What is an animal to someone who isn't instinctively drawn to them? What is an animal to someone who is indifferent to them? How can they be less than living, be forgotten like an unwanted object? How does one disregard that they are there? These seem like silly, naive questions because the answers seem reflexively obvious, but the real answers aren't obvious to me at all.

I have a long commute to work. In the evening, driving back, I pass through a huge freeway interchange before exiting home. This mild winter I've seen two cats hunting on the high shoulder near my exit, inside the chain-link fence meant to keep them out. They're hardscrabble cats who seem wise to the traffic. I look for them with every drive. Sometimes I see them, sometimes not. When I don't see them, I look for them dead in the lanes. They're junk cats, abandoned strays or maybe urban ferals who've never known human contact. Still, I think about ways to catch them, can't help it. They're never not living to me. I have to take note of their welfare.

I want to understand what it's like to look at animals in need and feel nothing, not hate, not indifference, just nothing. I wonder what it is to see them from that perspective. What do such people know about themselves? How do they experience their sense of self? It's not the shocked How could they that I want to hear, it's the deeper Why do they. I want a reporter to explore that so I can check my judgment, because it is harsh and unforgiving.

Latitude Time, Longitude Horse

So I opened a vintage horse shop on Etsy shop in January because I like to dream it will pay for my sweet mare to have all that she needs, pay for me to continue with my riding instructor, pay for me to one day be looking out over verdant fields, musing over which of the three marvelous, suited-in-all-ways horses I shall ride just then, long freed from work I've lost the heart for and a place I've never ever thought of as home...

Ahh, dreams. That's a lot of freight to hang on a little cyber-commerce. But the shop is there, weaned off my wishing and moving on unsteady legs toward my wanting. What a magical thing it gave me yesterday.

 

In the evening, someone purchased this vintage photograph from my shop. I'd called the photo Shot In the Heart and written about all the details I'd noticed in it. I wrote about the kind hands of the rider and the strength of the well-built pony. I wrote about the Shriner at background right and the little girl at background left, whip-lashing her neck at the sight of the pony as her mother leads her by the hand. It was that very same girl, grown now and horse-fevered all her life, who bought the picture. She recognized herself and wrote me a wonderful note with her order; instantly we were bonded through years, space and time; we were bonded through horses.

Value of my time: nothing much. Value of the photograph: $7.50. Value of her finding it: Priceless.

Michael Clayton - Looking at Horses

Thinking about Cave of Forgotten Dreams reminded me of a movie that's really never left me since I saw it. It's not a movie about horses any more than Cave of Forgotten Dreams is about horses, but horses appear in Michael Clayton just as powerfully as they appeared in Herzog's documentary. And two years after seeing it, I still think of those horses.

Michael Clayton is an interesting and complex legal thriller starring George Clooney and Tilda Swinton. Among its plot points are a lawyer who may or may not have had a nervous breakdown, a defense attorney who may or may not be corrupt, a death that may or may not have been a suicide, and a car explosion that may or may not have been intentional. Clooney plays the title character, an attorney with a gambling problem who's been working as the "fixer" for a high-powered New York law firm. He's called in to clean up messes caused by clients or members of the firm. Because his own life is a wreck, he can hardly judge the lives of those he bails out of ugly situations, but it's wearying work.

Michael Clayton depends on a four-day flashback that makes up most of the film. That flashback begins during a scene with horses and we return to the same horses when the story has caught up to the present day. It's a simple scene. The tired, burned-out Michael Clayton pulls over on a country road and gets out of his car when his attention is drawn to a hillside. He walks up the hill. There, three haltered horses stand side by side at the corner of their pasture. He approaches them, lifting his arms a little, palm up as if to tell them he won't harm them, and then he just stands there, looking at them. They look at him (and they really do). The camera cuts to each horse's face, then pans across them as a group. There's an occasional cut back to Clayton, whose expression is that of a troubled man seeking solace, understanding, redemption, peace.

The thing is, I don't know if the horses were in the original script or they were added by the director. What I'm sure of, though, is that whoever included them knew something about horses. It's why they chose to use them rather than, say, deer. It seems to me they knew that looking eye to eye at horses can strip you back to yourself if you've added too many layers or bring you back to yourself if you've forgotten who you are.

Sometimes I just step back from my mare and I look at her. She looks at me. I look at her. I don't do it enough, but I do it. Each time, I get that subtle recalibration that reminds me who I am, whether I like it or not. That's exactly what happens in Michael Clayton, and that's why I'll always think of it as a horse movie.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

You know how there's that dinner list thing, where people talk about who they'd invite for dinner, anyone from any time? Werner Herzog, the director of Cave of Forgotten Dreams, has been on that list of mine for a long, long time. I see every film he makes, documentary or fiction. I believe he's an archivist by nature, profoundly interested in excavating human truths and preserving them for the future. Perhaps that's why he felt such a deep urge - and sense of urgency - to film the paintings discovered in the Chauvet Cave in southern France.

In a way, the modern mind can't quite relate to the drawings in the cave. Grasping that you are looking at images created some 32,000 years ago is akin to knowing in real senses what one billion dollars is. In the end, it's theoretical.

 



Except for these horses...







We can look at all of the images (but for those that are concealed behind stalactite and stalagmite formations) from Chauvet Cave because they are widely available on the Internet. We can see drawings of human figures, bears, big cats, water buffalo, bison, and some animal species that vanished thousands of years ago. They are all interesting to look at, even as the mind searches for any kind of foothold to know what kind of people created them. Because to know they weren't people like us tells us nothing, really.

But in his film, Werner Herzog returns again and again to these horses. (I wish I knew how to make and link in a sound file of his voice as he says "the horses" in that wonderful round, slightly thick German tone of his.) I don't know what pulled him back to the horses, but I know I couldn't wait for the camera to return to them. Because these horses stand apart from the rest of the drawings. Maybe it's how they were drawn, the complexity of the group of them, the four different colors and sizes of them, the clarity with which they were depicted. It's as if the artist meant to paint them in exacting, painstaking detail, meant exactly to capture the what-they-are-ness of them. I think that intention is there. But what does that mean, what does that say about horses, I wondered to myself, watching the film. Herzog mentions in his running commentary that horses were hunted as food, among other things. Yes, but still, I can't help but feel that the human being who painted these four horses saw something more in them, understood something more. And oh, to know what that might have been.

If I Didn't Have Her...

Then I would not have felt the ocean-like rhythm of her rocking into me, who was leaning there against her while she grazed.

I would not have felt her choosing where to reach next as I accompanied her, lead line just loose in my hand. 

And I would not have felt the simple, deep lift and pull of her spine and shoulders when she leaned long and forward, too lazy to lift a hoof toward that tuft of grass.

If I didn't have her, I would not have been able to return her gaze when she turned to look back for me. 

I would not have been able to feel the delicious shiver that ran the length of her when she snorted in pleasure, nose deep in the last-gasp grass.

And I would not have been able to feel her lift herself back up to look at her world, nose skimming the breeze.

If I didn't have her, I would not have been able find my own silence, which I have been awaiting for some long months, or notice the lulling call of the winter train, whistling out our journeys to come.

The Knot of the Year

I didn't say much in my journal about the difficulties of this year with the horses; not in particular details, at any rate. When I did mention barn moves and poor standards of care, I always added that the horses got through it, I got through it, my friends got through it, etc. People told me we'd get through it, and they were right. It's true: everybody got through it.

There are hidden side effects of squeezing through a bad pass, though, and I think I'm being impacted by one of them now. The difference between rushing to my horse because she's my refuge and rushing to my horse because I am worried about her is vast. That change of focus can be subtle, but it ends up being very consequential. I lost track of its silent encroachment into my consciousness somewhere near the end of the events, as we worked our way home to a good, steady, reliable barn. It wasn't until after we had settled and some other chapters were concluded that it all came to bear and I realized how disconnected I feel from my mare right now.

Such good things happened, too, this year, but there's that raw-deal thing about how fleeting is their power. Somehow it's not easy to hang onto the lift of them and let oneself be carried for a while. Instead, I have to list them from memory. Scout and Special K came together. I released Scout to K with full openness, acceptance and peace. Dar's been gone for over a year and I have no way of tracking him, so he's subsided to just an occasional daydream. Late in the summer I found an instructor I understand and respond to with sublime, practical ease. All these things help resolve and reshape my horse life for the better, I know they do.

...and I realized how disconnected I feel from my mare right now. But I don't know that it's her. I think it could be horses in general. And I'm struggling with it, very much so.

Here's how it went. Everything with the horses settled and then I moved home, but my job asked much more of me much later into the post-season than it ever had. I could not wait until the holiday break; I felt myself leaning hard against the gate, wanting so badly to burst into my own free space. An immense sense of pressure was building that left me on edge and preoccupied.

Now I am in that time I was awaiting with such need. Alone at home, holidays done, typing on a grey afternoon, cats asleep, the phone silent, I expected finally to exhale into calm, but that's not what's happened. Instead, I realize that I'm filled with aftereffects of the year and they are spilling out with a vengeance. I feel distant from my horse, as though something has changed. It's like a taint, a lingering pall cast over us by trouble, even though it's past. She's got nothing to do with it, and I know that, but I'm stuck here in this thing, stuck in a knot I don't think I tied. Or, I feel like I'm looking down at a bruise that just won't fade when I should be looking up at my horse. Why?

I don't know what else to say about it right now.

Finding Home, Concluded

Part I, Part II

I could have hope for Scout's future, perhaps, but not expectation. You can't have expectation when it comes to horses themselves. They are separate beings, living their own lives. As much as they must adapt to us, who possess them, so must we adapt to them. I'd adapted to not riding Scout and she'd adapted to not being ridden. There was a balance, but not a very useful one, with waste on both sides.

I get so busy in the summers, five months are wiped right out of my year. I told Special K she could ride Scout anytime she wanted and left it at that. It's not that I was indifferent, it's that my future with Scout only meant keeping her with me so she'd have the good, safe life she deserved. I remember how I'd get an email here and there from Special K in which she detailed some ride she'd had with Scout. She rode her out alone, in groups, for hours on trails. One day she told me she'd been putting all those miles on Scout just for me, so I'd feel less intimidated about riding her. Such a good, good friend. I shook my head no. Scout wasn't that for me, was never going to be that. There was a diamond in the rough in her, but I wasn't going to be the one to find it.

 

In July of 2010, I returned Dar to the jousters, and in September Saxony fell out of the sky and I bought her. I remember having a window of time there where I had just one horse. I thought hard about keeping it that way. But... I had Scout, yet I didn't have her. I needed a horse I could have in all three dimensions, one I could manage and grow with. That fall, our vet let Special K knew that her aging Arab needed to move to semi-retirement. No more four-hour rides for little Gambler. After her shock wore off, Special K proposed taking a half-lease on Scout. Of course I said yes, and together they rode out into the coming winter.

Then we went through a horrible year. The climate at our little-bit-of-paradise barn changed and the standard of care dropped rapidly. In May we moved our horses to another place, just before I was grabbed away by the festival. I  brought Saxony over from her barn to make us complete. The way I saw it, even if the summer claimed all my time, our horses would finally be together in one place, we'd have left barn drama behind, and we could start clean in the fall. It was not to be. The new place was a joke. Special K had to go there every day to care for our horses.

 

I worked and worried, but for Special K it was different. Her Arab had reached retirement; he was fit for light riding only. She was at the barn every day and I was gone, so she turned herself loose on Scout as though she were her own. I'd get these dispatches about where they'd trailered, which shooting range they'd ridden by, what group ride Scout had aced. Sometimes I'd get a quick call right in the middle of a show day at the festival. Amidst the churning crowds, I'd press the phone tight to my ear to Special K. Breathless, she'd squeal, "Scout is the bomb! She was perfect." Then, in a hushed tone, she'd say,"She's a trail goddess." The joy in her voice made my heart lift, just had to. It was like the C.W. Anderson novels I read as a kid, that simple, that magical.

We left the second place in August and moved everybody to the steady, reliable barn where I'd bought Saxony. What a hard, stressful summer it had been. But I remember following behind on Saxony, watching Special K handling Scout on a loose rein during our ride to the new barn, and feeling the first sense of calm I'd experienced in months. The ease, the rapport, the familiarity of each with the other, their confident sense of purpose. They were lovely together.

I don't know the precise moment when it happened. It might have been the moment when Scout bucked her off and made her so mad, or it might have been the moment when Special K realized she had the one horse on a long group ride who wasn't going to wig out. It doesn't matter for me to know; it really is between them. What matters is that at some point, Special K fell in love with Scout. And then she fought it, thinking there might be one last chance left in me for Scout. And then she quit fighting it. When she called me, asking could she buy her, I said yes, yes of course, because all I'd wanted was for Scout to find her true home. Now she has. They both have. How lucky am I?

Merry Christmas, with all my heart, to my two favorite redheads.