Learning from Horses

October 21, 2012.

Still Sundays

The core muscles of stillness feel flabby but it is I who is out of practice. I have come to the conclusion, for now, that experiencing stillness in different parts of cities, countries, and continents stretches and develops different muscles of Stillness. In New York City I could drown out ‘so much is happening’ where as on my parents’ farm in Central/Southern California it is not so easy in the mornings, but all antennae are completely tuned in during dusk to hear the colors of twilight hues.

Oh the way the night falls! The sky lights up at dusk to welcome darkness filled with lighthouses in the sky. The smell of wood and foliage hovering over the layer of earth rotating is exhilarating.

I had such ambitious plans for this Sunday morning. I was going to mince the bones of the caricature called “art” in our contemporary world. Oh I made mental notes before going to bed: I was going to slam-dunk on the net of social media for having destroyed art, I was going poke the guts out of the mainstream publishing industry for taking us a notch below “chic lit” to “desperate-house-wife-lit,” I was going to offer quotes of contemporary best-sellers and challenge any reader to rebut how this is not rubbish. I had plans to confess how perhaps I too am responsible for perpetuating mediocrity albeit for different reasons. I see the potential in all and so I have engaged and encouraged. “Can I come across a more resistant breed to evolution than our contemporary ‘social media artist’?  Does anyone besides me know the difference between an artist and an Artist? ” is how I wanted to begin this Sunday.

But I awoke this morning rather sore. Physically.

All I can think about is almost falling off a horse yesterday. My parents don’t own any horses—they once did but it was a short-lived experiment because having space doesn’t mean you have the time—but one of my mother’s friends does. She doesn’t ride them herself but her grandchildren sometimes do. This woman was gifted these horses so it isn’t like she or anyone in her family are horse aficionados.  To my mother’s surprise the stalls where her friend’s horses stay are only two streets over from my parents’ farmhouse. My mother told me that her friend and the friend’s family will be there if I wanted to come along to say hello to the horses.

At first I just went to help groom and clean them because I love horses.

While I was cleaning the hooves of one of the males, I kept thinking about the story I wrote called “Intuit.” Where did this story come from?

My name is Aindriú Manus and I know horses. And that’s about all I know. I suppose if you knew about horses you would say that is all anyone needs to know. 

How did I know this?

Surely I must have recalled having ridden horses when I was a child but nothing regular by any means. I remember always feeling an affinity towards them. Once I told my mother that we could see the entire Universe inside a horse’s eye. But by no means would I claim that I grew up riding horses.

So then I shouldn’t have saddled him and hopped on without someone who knew the horse well. But I did. Surely this horse had chosen me. We clicked instantly. It was going to be a short—very short—and smooth ride.

When the horse was just trotting, a memory from the slingshot of the past fell on the back of my head. I recalled what my late English professor and mentor used to say to me, “You, your writing, is like a wild colt. The day you can learn to harness this free-falling passion is the day you are going to own what happens.”

This was no wild colt. He was calm, quiet, “mature” (15 years old), and experienced with many riders. Surely this is not how Professor Bud wanted my writing to turn out? But I took a look at the view from atop the horse: fields being harvested, so much land, earth so full of giving, us so full of taking yet never full enough, maybe taming it all is what’s it’s all about. No sooner had I thought this I realized so far the horse had been on some kind of an auto-pilot. I wasn’t riding it. I wasn’t telling it where to go or what to do. I was just on it. I am not sure what happened next but he just took off. My hat flew off. My scarf came undone. All I could do was grip the saddle as tightly as I could from falling.

The entire wave of events barely lasted two minutes but in those two minutes I experienced complete lack of control. It reminded me of the time I went boogie boarding in the ocean when I was much younger and a wave took me under and the board slammed against my thighs. The pain in addition to feeling lack of control frightened me from going deeper in the ocean for years to come.

There was the horse, the reigns, my body gripping the saddle, and there was the horse. I was awestruck by the wildness in the animal. The fact that I was awestruck and not frightened intrigued me. It didn’t matter that this horse had been broken in for 15 years and had been through barrel racing.  You can never tame something wild all the way.

Eventually two or three people working and riding around there came near me since I had somehow managed to reign him in to slow down and helped me as I jumped off the horse. Quite shaken, all I could muster was, “Bad bad horsey!”

One of the guys with many years of experience asked me, “What happened?”

I replied, “I don’t know. I really don’t.”

His wife came over to hand me my “Rapture Hat” and after I thanked her the man said, “You don’t know is what happened.”

At this point my mother and her friend had walked over and I informed them everything was fine.

And it was. I just wasn’t ready to ride. The horse hadn’t gone crazy. The horse just wanted to do what he was meant to do.

My mother gave me the look I have been receiving since I was a little girl.

“I am really alright. I promise,” I said as I looked at my hands sore from trying to manage the reigns.

The man who had spoken earlier said to me, “He was probably just afraid you don’t know what you can do.”

I didn’t know.

Once you know what you can do, you can start riding.

Which is exactly what I intend to do.

Great art/literature must offer us the best view as it shakes us just enough to alter our perception, either to confirm or reject the status quo.  The tools—digital or traditional—alone can’t alter the viewer’s perception but actually riding so as to experience delivers the story.

Sunday mornings have their own agenda. Stillness is neither a preacher nor a ranter.

There is the blank page, rustle of the leaves outside, thoughts from last night—amateur performers on a promenade, noticed only to be dismissed—and me who woke up ready to write about the decaying state of literature and art, ready to offer proof in the words of well-respected authors who have hung the hat of Truth on the hook of Time.

And in stillness all I could come up with was about the wild horse in us all.

There is no short cut to glory. And not all that is glorious glitters.

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