Inside Out and Backwards

Once you start playing with computers you can't stop. I'm sure everybody's done this, but I inverted the picture I had in an earlier post, Unconditional Love. It's amazing.

It's fun because it's my own work, but then I can spin it off into so many other things. I wonder if you could print this out on a really good color printer and have it look this cool? That would be awesome.

Communication Under the Skin

A reality I know from horses, that we as humans don't want to talk about -- boundaries are permeable. Emotions leak, they are transmitted from one being to another. The person who names an emotion, experiences consciously, may not be the person who really has it.

Carrying the emotions of others has been my job, which may be why riding a horse seems so backwards. On a horse, I'm the emotional leader. I need to know when to be calm, when to bring up the energy, when to be aggressive or firm.

To get a horse to move away on the ground, I may need to hit it on the rump, but it's not necessarily the hit that makes it move away. Sometiems the horse moves the instant before, in the very moment that the intention forms completely in my mind and body.

In either case, I'm the one asking the horse to go out of its way for me, to serve me, so I'm the one who has to choose the emotion and eddy it outwards. Classic, but conscious, projection.

In human relationships, I tend to absorb emotions unconsciously, conforming to others like a chameleon. I resonate to another's needs. This was especially true in my last two complex and disastrous romances. Each man took the fear they carried and turned it out on me -- and I accepted it. I was the "depressed" one, the "wounded" one, the lonely one. When I was around them, I felt their emotions: humiliation, fear, emptiness -- and never knew it wasn't me. Like the Fear Thing, the emotions descended on me, amorphous and undefined, and I was left struggling to make sense of it. I was, and still am, open to alien feelings, to energy spilling out on me, to other people leaning on me with their dark feelings.

Shadows. I'm aware of and carry a lot of shadows.

Horses are simple by comparison. If you are fearful, they become aggressive or fearful, but it's open. They put back their ears and bite. They jerk their hooves away when you try to clean their feet. They panic on the trail at the spot where the other horse you ride panicked last week. It's visible -- and that means I can experiment and see what works. I can practice and become attuned to the signs and responses.

The very fact that with horses I am learning a different language, the language of horse body and need, makes the assusmptions visible and puts them within reach.

With people, it's far murkier. It gets even murkier when you realize peple need to hide a lot from themselves. If you could ask a horse, "Are you angry?" it might say, "I don't know but I really want to swish my tail and bite you." Anger is an action, not a concept. If you ask a person, "Are you angry," you are likely to get the half-smothered clipped volcanic version: "I'm! Not! Angry!" Or the sweet and gentle, "Oh, no, I'm not angry, but I see you are. You poor thing."

There are days when it seems it would be easier if we could just lay back our ears and bite.

Horses Psychology

Sour Roasted Horse

I confess -- before I started riding, I ate horse. It was at a cheap restaurant in Paris, while I was a graduate student there. Don't tell Teddy or Robin.

After all, I live in Berkeley, home of all things culinary-snobbish. This was just part of my quest to keep up with the Joneses. I've also eaten guinea pig (and I even got to pick which pig!) -- in Peru, with traditional peanut sauce. Reindeer in Norway. But never turtle or monkey, which is just as well, in retrospect, since those species are now endangered through eating.

Sour Roasted Horse
Mr. Ed is Dead

Fear of Listening

Perhaps the fear I experience around a horse is not a physical fear. Perhaps it is the fear of letting go of myself and truly listening to the body and heart of another being. The fear of trusting myself. The fear of believing that I know what to do.

Fear of letting there be questions. I do want to learn another way to be myself around horses.

Justice O'Connor -- Truly Irreplaceable

How long will it be before we have another Supreme Court Justice inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame? So riding pays off. According to Time Magazine (i.e., take this with a grain of salt), when she was interviewed as a nominee for the Supreme Court, "O'Connor charmed Reagan in her interview talking about horseback riding and mending fences at the Lzay B. The president never bothered to interview anyone else."

She seems to have been inducted about the time that she published her book, Lazy B

Other inductees at the Cowgirl Hall of Fame include Georgia O'Keefe and Willa Cather.

The Fear Thing

I didn't know it was fear.

It would come down in darkness, blinkering my vision, narrowing my focus to a blurred tunnel. I was invaded, although my eyes could still see, just as my mouth could still move even though I felt muted and powerless. I became clumsy and vague. If it went on long enough, I began to shake, huge whiplashing jerks of the arms and legs, or rapid fire fluttering in my eyes, a shuttering of the jaw.

I was terrified it would happen on the back of a horse. The jerking, the emotional blindness. Riding is a matter of focus, of awareness on the part of the rider, a clarity of mind and body that communicates to the horse and directs its responsiveness. And though I did not know that what I was feeling was fear, I did know the way power and consciousness drained out of me and left me more than lost.

It came to me in therapy, when my therapist asked me a question: "What is it you can't tell your mother about? What is hiding in that corner?" I looked at the corner and began to tremble, tremble all over with fear. Deeper than fear -- panic, terror, the horses of the chariot of the god of war. Fear took my body, my soul, my mind -- raw, unmediated by thought or words. I couldn't move or open my eyes.

This is the way an animal must experience fear -- with nothing before it or after it, no ability to plan or even imagine the route out of the burning barn. But animals live all their lives in wordlessness, without speech. I went from articulate and thoughtful -- from having a sense or concept of self -- to instinctive and afraid, obliterated inside fear, all the layers of my being gone, stripped to the bone. The charioteer fallen and the two horses crashing into each other inside me.

My therapist said, "I can move closer if you like," and I said, "Don't move!" The thought of movement, closer or further was like a tiger coming out of that dark night. Slowly she began to talk me down. "Breathe," she said, and like I was on the back of a horse, I forced myself to exhale. "Feel your feet on the ground, take your hands and squeeze your legs, feel the big muscles of your thighs." Remembering who I was had to begin with remembering the body. "Can you open your eyes?" she asked and after a long time, I opened my eyes. Fear was still there, but it no longer owned me, it no longer was me, I was a separate being and alive.

After that session, the Fear Thing became more visible, more present in my life. I had episodes of hyperventilation, whole days of panic and fear. A bridge had been crossed, a gap had been bridged. What had been held so long in my body had become present to my mind. The namesless had a name -- Fear.

Writing this, I feel the separation of the parts of me and the energy that arcs between them like a sudden jolt of electricity. We are taught to master the horses of our body, not to befriend them. We treat our deepest instincts without tenderness or grace. When the body-horse bolts or shies, the mind punishes it with a brutal fury I would never use on an animal.

I wondered earlier what it is I am so afraid of when I'm on a horse, why I fight so hard. Perhaps in opening to the horse, to the flow of its energy, I must open to myself, to my unknown instinctive body and the grief it holds.

The fear has drained me. It's the cause of the migraines. It makes me clumsy and blank. I once put the saddle on backwards, my hands slick with confusion and sweat. Fear produces itself, it runs ahead and creates reasons for its existence.

But I always kept riding. I want to learn. I want to be soft and open to the animal in myself, without losing my humanity inside it. It's an impossible task that extends far beyond a lifetime. Every day I learn.

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse -- Always a Crowd Pleaser

The Weekly World News has the best coverage of the upcoming rapture: Four Horsemen Killing the Competition -- at Polo Clubs

Another experienced player says: "Pestilence in particular rode a superb mount that lasted throughout every game. The Four Horsemen didn't need a string of ponies, they did very well with just one horse."

The Four Horsemen have appeared on Earth several times through history -- usually before wars break out -- as prophesied in the Bible's frighteningly accurate Book of Revelation. They have been spotted with increasing frequency since the United States invaded Iraq, most recently at the polo club in Dallas.

This seems to be a follow-on to a previous article Bible's Four Horsemen Ask for Directions in Paris.

Meanwhile, in Britain, there is a stunt crew/horse show called the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. (See picture at the top right.)

Other representations abound, from the fanciful one by Durer to the more recent one of our homegrown product.

All Quiet on the Western Horse

An uneventful ride. The best kind.

A small group today -- Judy in front on Shas, Brenda on Tiger, Mary N. on Daisy, and me bringing up the rear on Casino. We just did one tiny canter. I was tempted for a moment to rise out of the saddle and two-point, because that still feels more stable, but decided I'd better keep sitting down so I had more control. That turned out to be good thing because Daisy, who is a young horse, got excited and passed Tiger, so we had to stop before we got into an impromptu horse race.

Daisy is a young horse so she's still learning her manners. She's also a Premarin foal, which means she is half-draft horse. At least half. She's ginormous and she has hips just like her namesake, Daisy Mae in Lil' Abner. Normally, she doesn't canter much on the trail -- it's hard for her to keep going up those hills, there's a lot of her to carry. Mary N. said later, "She saw it was short and figured she could do it."

One thing that is mysterious is what people are and are not afraid of. I'm actually much more confident on the ground grooming and saddling the horses than I am in the saddle. Brenda, on the other hand, who loves riding Tiger, was standing around scared of him after he'd been saddled up. So I walked up to him and rubbed him on the shoulders, where horses love to be touched. I tried a quick stroke on the inside of the thighs, but that got ears back and a mean face, so I went back to the shoulder.

But Brenda will ride horses I would never get on. It sometimes feels these days like I'm more afraid of loss of face than of getting hurt. Not living up to expectations. Not to mention the humiliation of being afraid itself, which makes me more awkward and afraid. I read somewhere that there are only four core emotions -- Fear, Anger, Grief, and Joy -- and I keep thinking how that means, if we cut one of them off, we lose one-quarter of our emotional lives.

Anger is my most difficult emotion -- I often don't recognize what it feels like in my body. It's gotten to the point where if I have a high level of tension that feels like fear but I can't place it, I say, "oh, anger," and then that makes it easier to deal with. At least then I know the name of the fire that is burning through me.

Horses have it far easier. They have their emotions, respond, and then they forget. When you slap a horse on the shoulder to keep it from squishing you, everything's clear, you're the boss, and they don't hold a grudge. Fear they do remember, and they will spook at a spot they spooked at last week. On the other hand, so will a rider. So I guess they remember, but they don't seethe. They don't try to hide their fear, or pretend they are too tough to call out when they are alone and they see the other horses leaving.

That's the human's job. To make sure they do what they have to do without being abusive. Which may mean dismounting off a panicking horse, because actually they are much safer to control from the ground. Unfortunately, you can't dismount from yourself.

Riding on the way back I looked down at my reins and thought of another term for my list "give him some slack." I was.

Quality of Silence

Horses have a good quality of silence. In fields with each other, distance and closeness, awareness when they walk in and out of each other's bubbles. Choosing distance, like a cat.

Talking About Horses

Straight From the Horse's Mouth
a tight rein	The rider is connected to the horse's mouth through the reins. A taut, or "tight" rein holds the horse back.
hold in check, hold in, hold back
keep a firm grip on
pull up short	A sudden sharp pull on the reins will jerk the horse's head back. Not very nice.
a free rein	Letting the reins go loose means the rider doesn't have as much control over the horse and the horse can choose how to go. it also can mean the horse has enough movement to, for instance, lower its head to pull a carriage uphill.
a loose rein
give him his head
give him some slack
high-handed, heavy-handed	Unresponsive ways of holding the reins.
chomping at the bit	The bit is a metal thing that goes in the mouth. Horses that want to go will pull on the reins. If they do it enough, they will start to foam.
foaming at the mouth
take the bit in his teeth
The bit actually rests on the bars, which are a sensitive part of the mouth just behind the teeth. If the horse takes the bit in his teeth, it doesn't feel the bit & off it goes.
curb his temper	The "curb" is a harsh kind of bit, used to get more control over the horse.
hard-bitten	A horse whose mouth is less sensitive may need a harder bit to make it respond.
take the bit in his teeth	The sensitive part of the mouth is the bars, behind the teeth. If the bit is in his teeth, the horse doesn't feel the restraint and can do what it likes.
Breaking Away
break away	The horse, who is drawing a cart or a carriage, has broken the reins and is loose
cut loose, let loose	Cut the reins to free a tangled or frightened horse -- for instance when the carriage has fallen over

me 

Unconditional Love

I actually got my migraine again Wednesday. I rode Tuesday and then came home, showered, changed into respectable clothes and ran over into the city to interview for a contract. The place I interviewed at not only had a security desk, they had an electronic sign-in/sign-out console, which wouldn't let me put my name in lower case. It had been so long since I'd been in a place that had ID badges that by the time the interviewer came down from the 6th floor (all the same company) to see me, I nearly said, "I don't want to work here." And actually, after an hour and half of talking to everyone, I felt the same. On the way out I asked one of the other tech writers, "Do you like working here?" He answered, "Yes. It's been a safe place to be for the last five years." Safe. That was not what I wanted to hear. I can't help it -- I want words like "challenging", "fun", or even "great". No wonder I got a migraine.

Riding has gotten more challenging emotionally this summer. For the past two years I've been riding Teddy on the trail. He's the sweetest, most loving, gentle little horse. He also is on-duty for the summer at summer camp, having a different crowd of elementary schoolers climb all over him each week.

So I've gotten Casino, a smart but lazy paint horse. I'd be nervous on any new horse, actually, and Casino definitely has his little horse quirks. He's so greedy for grass that Bianca, one of the employees at the stables, rigged up a kind of headgear with ropes and pulleys -- well, not pulleys -- that goes through his bridle and onto his saddle so he can't duck his head down far enough to eat grass.

Actually, it would take a while to tell you all the things I get nervous about when riding a horse, especially one I don't know. I worry that I am going too slow and the horses behind me are frustrated. I worry when I'm going faster and I might be too close to the horse in front. ("Too close" in horse terms is "close enough for the horse in front to decide it's time to kick".) I worry because I"m not used to sitting down in the canter and am I trying to learn to do so, because sometimes Casino goes too fast and I need to be able to hold him back. (If you're not used to jostling about in the canter, it's more stable to grab the mane and lift your seat out of the saddle. This is what jockeys do, except they're not such wusses as to hold onto the mane.) I worry on the downhills because Casino is a long-bodied horse and he tends to put more and more weight on his forelegs until suddenly he's out of balance and it's easier to trot. (Running downhill with a person on its back is about as good for a horse's knees as running downhill with a backpack on might be for yours.) So I fuss and fuss. I'm afraid I also do it outloud -- and then I worry about driving everyone else crazy with my complaining.

But. I've been thinking about "unconditional love", the kind where someone just gazes at you with a besotted look on their face and when you say, "What should I do?", they just say something like, "I have total faith that whatever you choose, you'll handle it." This is irrititating when I'm doing one of those silly New Age meditations that's supposed to bring me my Inner Guide and my Inner Guide seems to think I don't need guidance. But it is also an amazing thing to be able to picture -- your parents are supposed to look at you that way when you are born, I hear, but I really do not think either of mine ever did. So imagining it when I can is good for me.

This does connect to Casino, and to the gentle art of horseback riding. On the way back down, almost home, I thought -- what would it be like to ride with unconditional love? What if everything the horse did (and I did) would be fundamentally all right, forgiveable, and no big deal? Short of breaking my neck or his, of course, but Casino isn't really going to do that.

It would certainly make riding much easier -- and much more pleasant. Horses know, too. At the moment, it's a concept that's as far off as the moon, but I'm so addicted to riding, I'm willing to try anything that will make me better, inlcuding being nice to myself. Far far easier said than done...

There are only two emotions that belong on the saddle; One is a sense of humor, and the other is patience. -- John Lyons

At the starting gate

Riding is one of the few things I do that is hard for me. I am fearful, over-intellectual, and lack self confidence. The first two or three years after I started taking lessons (at 40!), I got horrible migraines after each ride and had to spend the next day collapsed in bed. I was furious at my lack of progress and pushed myself, becoming even stiffer and angrier. But I knew it was something I wanted and I guess I was so used to being miserable anyway that it just seemed part of the package.

What I've learned from riding is that horses teach you, or at least teach me, about yourself. Riding a horse is unique, in that you are communicating with another being, one who has its own perceptions of the world, and trying to tell it what to do. Most of us, nowadays, are never in contact with an animal when it's actually working, trying to learn a task and understand what is wanted form it. People who train their dogs extensively have some of that. Because they are animals, horses are utterly honest teachers:

They say princes learn no art truly, but the art of horsemanship. The reason is, the brave beast is no flatterer. He will throw a prince as soon as his groom. -- Ben Jonson

The gap between people and horses is bigger than the gap between people and dogs, and to communicate with a horse, you must be physical. I've spent most of my life in my head and to learn to convey confidence with my body, not get stepped on, keep my focus and determination, has had a profound effect on my being. Having been a perfectionist all my life, it has been as important to learn to fall as to learn to ride. Every time I ride a horse, I learn something about my body and my spirit.

In particular, riding a horse -- or grooming a horse, or being around a horse -- teaches me about the profound relationship between my own mind and my unconscious physical being. I have thought often of Plato's tripartate theory of the soul which I don't really know, but the idea of the self as divided, with an intellect that must learn to listen to and communicate with the deeper inner parts of me, fascinates me. In this sense, I feel learning to know and be myself is like learning to ride my own inner horses. (Unlike Plato, however, in this over-intellectualized world, I would say that both inner horses have their own nobility and purpose.)