All the fixin's

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving! I wanted to post it today so I didn't miss it. I will be spending the day with family, playing games, and feasting. =D

Halloo

I thought we needed something fun and silly for a change. Also, Toler says "hi."

This is what happens when he realizes I'm using my little noisy box. I also suspect that this is very much the view a treat has.

Bring on the wonder

Kind of in the vein of "Hinge of the Way," taken today. I was originally going to put this in grayscale, but I love the coppery color and marbled blue-and-white sky.

I had been thinking about why I'm so drawn to this kind of image lately...

It is said that every being knows parts of the world unknown to any other being. The child knows the house and town of his childhood like nobody else--all its secrets and tucked away places. Lovers map each others' bodies into whole worlds--while the one observes the look and feel of their curves, the other knows the body's every angle, its every facet, the very code of its sensations.

We all view the world in this fashion--while some places warn us away, others claim us. Every touch and smell and sound, every rock of our footsteps and consequence of our minds becomes a pigment in our landscape, a monument to our truest, deepest selves.

To love someone, something, is to know them like no one else in the universe knows them.

As artists, we not only create grains for our viewers' landscapes to absorb, but we put our own on display, as though a magnifying glass were fitted to the crevasses of our hearts and brains. To our souls. Thus, every artist shares what he or she loves, what he or she knows as no one else in the universe knows...

And so I photograph the world around me. And so I photograph what I hold most dearly to my Self--as though, by honoring every inch of his flesh, every inch that has colored my landscape so vibrantly, I can suspend thought. Suspend time.

As We Are

A portrait of one of this last year's moms, Elation. She's always been a fairly nice mare, though she makes for a slightly overprotective mother. Something in her has always reminded me a little of Ginger, the chestnut mare in Black Beauty, though I can't quite put my finger on what.

This last week I caught the last chunk of Black Beauty on tv and felt inspired to reread the book (by Anna Sewell). Since childhood I've loved both the book and movie--I think at one point I watched the movie at least twice a week. It's such an amazing book (though I find it interesting that the movie leaves me feeling a little better about humanity than does the book), and after reading it I couldn't help but wonder how much of my relationship to horses was shaped by it. I've always understood and treated horses (and, indeed, other animals) as capable, intelligent, emotional, and innately good-natured creatures. I've always readily accepted that they see the world in a different way than we, as humans, do and have tried to understand if not stand by it.

It also makes me wonder...If Toler were to tell his life's tale, what would he say? What of his childhood? His coming to "my" barn? Of me? At least he'll never have to know the life horse's had back then--the life of a work animal, of a "beast of burden." And then I can't help but picture my beloved moose all harnessed up in front of a little buggy. Haha, what a sight that would be!

The Art of Dressage, part deux

I intercepted this video from facebook, and I thought it would make the perfect illustration for my last post, especially for people who have never seen dressage. This is a musical kur ride, which means it's a composed pattern put together with carefully (usually custom done) choreographed music. With regular dressage, horses and riders perform the same pattern without music.

But holy crap, this ride is so beautiful and nearly perfect. (Judges awarded him an overall 90.75% score, which is *amazing*. Most good rides get between 70 and 80%.)

Enjoy.

The Art of Dressage

No photo again, my dears. I have been graphically uninspired as of late. I've been reading mostly, and riding. I'm attempting to introduce an advanced dressage movement to my horse (even though he's not exactly ready for it) simply because we *really* need something new. So, I've been reading a lot. And riding a lot. And thinking about riding a lot.

So, this is going to be a discussion on Dressage/Riding as art. I'll try not to be too equestrian inclusive, though.

I borrowed a book from the local library on various dressage training strategies. It's supposed to be one of the best manuals in print for discussing techniques. I must say I find that title a bit misleading so far, but I am not finished with it yet. Anyway, right in the beginning, I found an interesting passage that I both agree and disagree with, both in terms of its discussion on "the artist" and on "the rider as artist."

"All art is based on the knowledge of its traditions and history, and a full mastery of its techniques as well as the usage of its tools. Riding, as an art, is no different. Riding, even on the level of great mastery, is still just a skill. Art is based on, yet goes beyond, these skills. The rider who has only skills is a sportsman and might feel that calling riding an art is either pretentious or offensive.

Many outstanding competitors are well skilled sportsmen. Fewer are artists, and so it should be. The craftmanship of riding, the equestrian sport, is infatuating and often irresistible. Its pursuit is often seen in the show rings and at competitions. The art of riding is sometimes resplendently displayed in the competition arena, but, being sufficient unto itself, is more often part of the everyday existence of its masters.

Observe, if you will, a horse and its rider, combined into one harmonious unit, oblivious of their surroundings. Both horse and rider seem to be in a daze or in a state of meditation, attuned to something the spectator cannot detect. They are joined in a limitless harmony without being obviously aware of each other. They appear to be attuned solely to an outside third force, an inspiration, that brought them together. The pair has beauty, for its energy and force are greater than human, greater than equine." (De Kunffy, Charles. Training Strategies for Dressage Riders. Emphasis my own.)

De Kunffy's writing both struck me and intrigued me. This is the first time I've ever heard a leading, well-awarded trainer/rider actually discuss the spiritual (in this case "artistic") aspect of riding. I like to consider it spiritual, because I encounter the same feeling on personal spiritual journeys and experiences. But it is much intensified when experienced through riding. I think because when I have those moments while riding, I'm not--as de Kunffy suggests--unaware of my horse but somehow merged soulfully with him. I've had moments so intense that for a few strides not only do I feel the "energy and force [that is] greater than human, greater than equine," but just as that energy dissipates and the world is foggily within my awareness, I experience the world simultaneously from his perspective as well as my own--I am not just rider feeling horse beneath, but horse feeling rider and ground, as well as through sight and sound. It is very difficult to explain, and typically I feel that either no one would believe me or otherwise think I've lost it more than I typically have.

Most trainers and riders, when describing any experience like this, simply describe it like any athlete describes the "zone" of hyperalert senses and impeccably tuned focus. Yes, de Kunffy could be describing his own version of an athlete's "zone," but I think I wouldn't be alone in believing that he is talking about something much deeper than that.

So what do I disagree with? His apparent attitude on the connection between art, mastery, and this artistic/spiritual phenomenon. "All art is based on...the full mastery of its techniques as well as the usage of its tools." De Kunffy, like many before him, seem to posit that Artists (that is, real artists) are only those individuals that are undebated masters of their craft. Thus, only masters can truly experience what he describes. This I have a big problem with. First, I think 90% of artists (photographers, painters, sculptors, musicians, whathaveyou) would fall short of the Master title within their field. Second, I've experienced this very same artistic/spiritual phenomenon and I think anyone at my barn would agree with me that while I'm a good rider, I'm far from being a master rider. Especially when it comes to dressage.

Yes, perhaps I'm reading into it a little too far. De Kunffy does seem to think rather highly of himself, perhaps even elitist in mentality. But he also goes into some discussion about how equestrian artists are less concerned with ribbons (ie proving their ability) and more concerned with simply seeking that connection. In other words, a rider doesn't have to be accomplished to be an artist of this sort.

Well, perhaps this has turned into a large ramble. I mostly wanted to share the quotes. One more for you:

"The skills that contribute to and promote harmony are many. They can be taught to riders. However, the sensitivity to and awareness of harmony, and the desire for it, cannot be taught, merely inspired in others...But there are those who understand and seek harmony and live by its ethics, and they naturally toward those efforts in riding that lead to total harmony, and thus the art of horsemanship."

Novel Excerpt

It has occured to me that I haven't shared much (if not any) of my writing on my blog. Considering that I like to feature the various facets of my creative energies, I think my writing should be included. (The same could perhaps be said of my compositions--the few of them that have been performed and recorded, at least, but that's a bit more complicated.) Allow me to reconcile this, and if it's "a hit," I might include more in the future. So, here's a short excerpt from the magic-realism novel I've been writing (well, it's on hiatus at the moment):

Wind shakes the many branches of the forest, and two beady eyes, velvety black, perk at its message—rain, a bit of cold weather. Buckle down, it tells the starling, watch your nest well. And to other ears it might have whispered the same.

Certainly something watches as the little oily bird takes to the air, perhaps to find a berry or a final tuft of grass—observes as the intruder comes to the home of twigs nestled under the eave of a barn, a hen, doe-brown with white on the wings and a butter-yellow belly. A moment’s pause and she flies off, the beats of her wings slow and steady—confident, almost arrogant—as she disappears through the trees.

If the starling notices the hen’s presence, she shows no indication, merely settles, body covering her four eggs—and one extra, this one flecked with brown spots and even slightly larger than her own pale blue eggs.

Unlike other cuckoos, the hen is no killer. She does not, with one nudge of her dark pointed beak, push an egg from the nest before laying her own. She does not crack them and taste of their developing flesh. She merely delivers, takes advantage of the fortune the wind has allowed her. And her nestling does not intentionally harm his adoptive brothers, does not roll their eggs or their frail naked bodies from the nest, and if they die it is because their hunger does not seem as great as his, their need not as immediate. His starling mother flits continuously to and fro, tirelessly—eagerly—to drop insects into his large gaping mouth, her own babies unnoticed.

And something did watch. A boy, it seems. Barely four by the size of him, naked, skin smudged by earth, feet cut, knees bruised and skinned, hair ragged. But his pine-green eyes are worldly, knowing. He will have to work on that, just as he will have to work on behaving like a four-year-old. Details must be perfect. The woman and her husband are not like the starling. It is not enough for the boy to look the same as their son, he must be their son. His habits, his grins.

So he has watched the son—for months, maybe a year. He is not accustomed to their notion of time yet. He has followed them when they moved into the country from a far city, migrating for the season like a pack of animals. He mimicked the memories of each day that passed. Every tumble the son took, he mimicked the bruise, the scrape—practice. Details must be perfect.

He hides behind the bush, concealed by a tangle of branches and leaves. He watches the son as he plays by the barn, climbing and running, and he waits. The mother goes inside to make lunch. The father is gone today—luck. The son is alone, now sitting with his legs dangling from a tire swing.

And it is time.