Nothing is as explanatory of human sexuality as a broodmare. Because horses don’t have the usual American complexes about social modesty (what do you expect from a creature that runs around naked all the time?), and because they don’t have the same self-protective walls as people, their behavior is unashamedly obvious. As with everything, an extreme example highlights the subtly of a subject, and the peculiarities of human sexuality become embarrassingly spotlighted as I observe Nic and her two new boyfriends.
A broodmare’s entire purpose in life, the very essence of her identity, is about foaling, and, by extrapolation, that particular event that must occur to ensure there’s a reason for a foaling in the first place. Nicole is the Equus caballus equivalent of a gum-chewing, glitter-wearing, just-stops-short-of-g-string-hot-pants, stiletto-strapped, Hollywood Boulevard club girl, except she’s even more obvious in her intent. As a broodmare-come-dressage horse, Nic naturally tends to forget herself in order to heed that urgent call of the wild—yes, sex is constantly on her brain, evidenced by the poor males who are beside themselves from pheromone-ish delight.
Unfortunately for her admirers, the mare doesn’t quite reciprocate, and instead manifests that subtle cocktail of sentiments that only an American female can pull off: triumphant frigidity swirled with earthy curiosity. Only a woman can successfully stir up intrigues of the Marriage of Figaro variety; only a woman can be as ruthless as Caligula when it comes to passion. Nicole accomplishes both with the unparalleled dexterity of a samurai in heat.
The mare taunts her boyfriends, siren-like, unhesitating—nuzzling them, seducing them through validation, touching noses and blowing into their nostrils (the equine equivalent of kissing), only to wheel around, indignant at the intimacy, executing their masculine bravery Vlad the Impaler-style. For extra emphasis, so her boyfriends know she means business, mister, she adds an extra kick to the walls of her stall, like a can-can dancer on crack.
Rejected, and with horsey egos bruised, her suitors relent, only to fall victim of the 3-second-long equine memory, and begin the process all over again. Rinse and repeat as needed.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Saturday, May 10, 2008
In Which Nicole Manifests Her Destiny: May 10, 2008
Nothing about the United States of America is as overwhelming as the different options that prosperity begets. In a country where the only real sacred cow is the First Amendment, a single cohesive force just doesn’t exist. For every opinion expressed, you’ll hear a corollary dissent as well, which isn’t exactly a conducive breeding ground for cohesive thought.
Americans, citizens of a country with a history of under 250 years (shorter than the House of Plantagenet ruled England) and warmed by the embers of Mother Constitution, are in the unique position of having to invent overarching American ideals—ideals of gender, justice, inalienable rights, moral absolutes, self-worth, take your pick—rewriting and reinventing as desired an endlessly-reincarnating Playbill for the Western Stage. A country with no past, where the defining hallmark is that one can start anew, means the future is wide-open for those who wish to Manifest their Destiny.
Medieval Europe had the Virgin Mary to unite individuals to a common cause, India had Gandhi, and so forth, but I’m pretty sure the last time an overwhelming societal goal pulsed a rumba in the collective American heart was around the time of the Boston Tea Party, and we weren’t even Americans then. At a utopian best, Americans today can expect, on a theoretical level, to have a cohesive thought for each individual microcosm of our society. Let’s be realistic, though—no two Americans’ thoughts really coincide; our collective thoughts fan out, like bleeding watercolors, like octopus ink in the sea. Even the Mormon church, which is a religion of American invention, has its internal squabbles, splintering every so often.
As a nation chock full of free thinkers, Americans extrapolate in their own unique ways the secrets of life, in some sort of Rebel Yell or Ghetto Magic, finding Grace in even the most crooked of stairways. I, along with thousands of other Americans, of course, have found Grace on the back of a horse, riding up towards heaven.
Today’s exegesis centers on the Book of Canter Pirouette, that most collected of canter exercises, which I learned this week on the schoolmaster I’ve been riding. The rhythm of the movement pulsates like Starry Night stuck in honey, the electricity of collection—strength made vivid by captivity—as dynamic to the dressage rider as the cross to Medieval Christians. Common sense dictates I would feel a very collected canter, but the amount of loft in the gait was unexpected. I kept using my inside rein too much, losing the travers component of the pirouette, and instead doing a volte.
The purpose of schooling the movement, aside from learning the movement itself, is to illustrate how the horse comes through from behind and into the bridle, and how the rider needs to position themselves to catch and recycle that energy so that the horse becomes an amalgam of power and restraint—the elusive Holy Grail of lower-level dressage.
As a high priestess in the Cult of Plain Language, I spend most of my day attempting to understand complex legal, scientific, and IT concepts, breaking down those concepts to their skeletal frame, and then writing about the same concepts in language accessible to the person with a 6th grade education. Because of this, it’s in my nature to intimately analyze concepts I come across—once you define a concept, you earn a certain measure of ownership over the idea.
That being said, understanding this information about the amount of control required for a pirouette helps with training Nic. The extreme example, in this case the pirouette, better exhibits the idea of how to coax better balance from Nic on a much smaller scale; the required degree of balance goes up and down as the rider asks for more collection. Once I understand how to get a schooled horse to put more weight behind, I can help Nic start to do the same.
Nic’s canter is something these new trainers want to improve. Her canter is too flat and needs more jump, until it’s like a rear, hop, and a jump. It’s hard work for both me and her. Nic has to hold herself, and stay on her hindend more. She gets better every day, though, and now her canter is starting to become soft and rhythmic. There still isn’t much power to it, but as her strength builds, the power will be easier to add.
I feel like I’m starting to get my horse back as she recovers from the confusion of the clinic. I had managed to stop her inverting and pulling before moving her again, but the clinic caused that habit to resurface. She didn’t resist connecting to the bit today, a trait that’s been missing the past few rides.
Americans, citizens of a country with a history of under 250 years (shorter than the House of Plantagenet ruled England) and warmed by the embers of Mother Constitution, are in the unique position of having to invent overarching American ideals—ideals of gender, justice, inalienable rights, moral absolutes, self-worth, take your pick—rewriting and reinventing as desired an endlessly-reincarnating Playbill for the Western Stage. A country with no past, where the defining hallmark is that one can start anew, means the future is wide-open for those who wish to Manifest their Destiny.
Medieval Europe had the Virgin Mary to unite individuals to a common cause, India had Gandhi, and so forth, but I’m pretty sure the last time an overwhelming societal goal pulsed a rumba in the collective American heart was around the time of the Boston Tea Party, and we weren’t even Americans then. At a utopian best, Americans today can expect, on a theoretical level, to have a cohesive thought for each individual microcosm of our society. Let’s be realistic, though—no two Americans’ thoughts really coincide; our collective thoughts fan out, like bleeding watercolors, like octopus ink in the sea. Even the Mormon church, which is a religion of American invention, has its internal squabbles, splintering every so often.
As a nation chock full of free thinkers, Americans extrapolate in their own unique ways the secrets of life, in some sort of Rebel Yell or Ghetto Magic, finding Grace in even the most crooked of stairways. I, along with thousands of other Americans, of course, have found Grace on the back of a horse, riding up towards heaven.
Today’s exegesis centers on the Book of Canter Pirouette, that most collected of canter exercises, which I learned this week on the schoolmaster I’ve been riding. The rhythm of the movement pulsates like Starry Night stuck in honey, the electricity of collection—strength made vivid by captivity—as dynamic to the dressage rider as the cross to Medieval Christians. Common sense dictates I would feel a very collected canter, but the amount of loft in the gait was unexpected. I kept using my inside rein too much, losing the travers component of the pirouette, and instead doing a volte.
The purpose of schooling the movement, aside from learning the movement itself, is to illustrate how the horse comes through from behind and into the bridle, and how the rider needs to position themselves to catch and recycle that energy so that the horse becomes an amalgam of power and restraint—the elusive Holy Grail of lower-level dressage.
As a high priestess in the Cult of Plain Language, I spend most of my day attempting to understand complex legal, scientific, and IT concepts, breaking down those concepts to their skeletal frame, and then writing about the same concepts in language accessible to the person with a 6th grade education. Because of this, it’s in my nature to intimately analyze concepts I come across—once you define a concept, you earn a certain measure of ownership over the idea.
That being said, understanding this information about the amount of control required for a pirouette helps with training Nic. The extreme example, in this case the pirouette, better exhibits the idea of how to coax better balance from Nic on a much smaller scale; the required degree of balance goes up and down as the rider asks for more collection. Once I understand how to get a schooled horse to put more weight behind, I can help Nic start to do the same.
Nic’s canter is something these new trainers want to improve. Her canter is too flat and needs more jump, until it’s like a rear, hop, and a jump. It’s hard work for both me and her. Nic has to hold herself, and stay on her hindend more. She gets better every day, though, and now her canter is starting to become soft and rhythmic. There still isn’t much power to it, but as her strength builds, the power will be easier to add.
I feel like I’m starting to get my horse back as she recovers from the confusion of the clinic. I had managed to stop her inverting and pulling before moving her again, but the clinic caused that habit to resurface. She didn’t resist connecting to the bit today, a trait that’s been missing the past few rides.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Nicole, Henry Miller, and Istanbul: May 2, 2008
Henry Miller once wrote: “A year ago, six months ago, I thought I was an artist. I no longer think about it, I am. Everything that was literature has fallen from me.” He was describing his state of mind at a low point in his life, and how he let go of his literary pretensions, and just focused on his own writing. Out of that frame of mind came Tropic of Cancer, one of the most original works of the 20th century.
Now, I don’t know a lot about being an artist, but I think what Miller suggests in his statement is that at some point you stop thinking about what you want to be, or about the trappings of accomplishment, and just get down to work. Over time you find yourself so involved in your work that you no longer think about what you’re doing, but rather just work, and work, and work, until it scrambles your brain and then—Desire, expectation, concern, they become ash. Just grey matter, scattered to the Santa Ana winds. From that cogitative, and frankly lonely, Nirvana comes you—you are your work, your work is you, and the energy just goes round and round in a blender until the two can’t be unscrambled. You simultaneously forget your work, and can’t forget it, because your efforts have become so internalized they become a matter of identity.
I think, therefore I am? No, René, I work, therefore I am.
These days I’m so dissatisfied with the state of dressage in America. My past few posts have been about this same subject, but bear with me through this phase because I’m having a hard time coming to terms with the sad realization that to get anywhere in dressage requires a rider to be extremely mentally independent. Sui generis being the American condition, Nic and I have found several times that self-invention seems to be the safest yellow brick road to success.
I learned as a kid the skills necessary to achieve success in an athletic venue, and have achieved high levels in other sports before I took up dressage, but the type of mental toughness required in dressage is different. In both figure skating and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu the mores in each sport was such that the student could trust that the trainer had the student’s best interests in mind, or at least wasn’t imparting information that was half-assed or wholly self-promoting. Like Theodora of Constantinople on the night Justinian almost abdicated as emperor, the American dressage rider’s gots to grow a pair and maintain a strong sense of identity in the face of overwhelming pressure to do otherwise.
Honestly, though, the level of skill and theoretical knowledge required in both figure skating and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is simply not comparable to that of dressage. The theory and finesse is much more involved in dressage, and the basics can be understood and taught to the student on so many levels. Maybe that’s because all dressage really is about is refinement of the basics. In figure skating, there’s only so many ways to teach a jump, and if you suck at it, as long as you land it, that’s effectively all that matters. There isn’t the same building on basics from an intellectual standpoint – to go from a double to a triple, you just add an extra rotation. You can’t have the same relaxed approach to dressage and expect to get anywhere.
It’s part of the human condition, to shed beliefs like metaphorical snakeskin: when “everything that was” falls away. Somehow, with all this, comes an inconsolable sense of loss. I’ve found that I have to keep my agenda in sharp focus and constantly assess the information I’m given, testing the information for purity, weighing it on the scales of common sense like a trader at the Grand Bazaar. My knowledge base is constantly expanding, causing fissures in the system to become more blatant.
Nic and I went to another clinic this week, and I believe it was an unmitigated disaster. Postmodern literary theory espouses that everything—ideas, beliefs, emotions, and yes, teachings—is applicable in the moment, but not necessarily at any other point in time, and boy did this clinic illustrate that idea. The irony is that this clinician has been helpful with her, but advice that helped so much in the past, when Nic was stiff, is now passé—Nic is no longer stiff and resistant. We have the very basics—contact, submission, basic swung—covered. We are turning our horizons to gait and muscle development now, and this clinic was a step back for us. Nic came back sore, tense, and lacking self-carriage. There isn’t the same desire to build energy into the bridle. The training we’ve been doing with her is undone, and I’m frustrated.
Now, I don’t know a lot about being an artist, but I think what Miller suggests in his statement is that at some point you stop thinking about what you want to be, or about the trappings of accomplishment, and just get down to work. Over time you find yourself so involved in your work that you no longer think about what you’re doing, but rather just work, and work, and work, until it scrambles your brain and then—Desire, expectation, concern, they become ash. Just grey matter, scattered to the Santa Ana winds. From that cogitative, and frankly lonely, Nirvana comes you—you are your work, your work is you, and the energy just goes round and round in a blender until the two can’t be unscrambled. You simultaneously forget your work, and can’t forget it, because your efforts have become so internalized they become a matter of identity.
I think, therefore I am? No, René, I work, therefore I am.
These days I’m so dissatisfied with the state of dressage in America. My past few posts have been about this same subject, but bear with me through this phase because I’m having a hard time coming to terms with the sad realization that to get anywhere in dressage requires a rider to be extremely mentally independent. Sui generis being the American condition, Nic and I have found several times that self-invention seems to be the safest yellow brick road to success.
I learned as a kid the skills necessary to achieve success in an athletic venue, and have achieved high levels in other sports before I took up dressage, but the type of mental toughness required in dressage is different. In both figure skating and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu the mores in each sport was such that the student could trust that the trainer had the student’s best interests in mind, or at least wasn’t imparting information that was half-assed or wholly self-promoting. Like Theodora of Constantinople on the night Justinian almost abdicated as emperor, the American dressage rider’s gots to grow a pair and maintain a strong sense of identity in the face of overwhelming pressure to do otherwise.
Honestly, though, the level of skill and theoretical knowledge required in both figure skating and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is simply not comparable to that of dressage. The theory and finesse is much more involved in dressage, and the basics can be understood and taught to the student on so many levels. Maybe that’s because all dressage really is about is refinement of the basics. In figure skating, there’s only so many ways to teach a jump, and if you suck at it, as long as you land it, that’s effectively all that matters. There isn’t the same building on basics from an intellectual standpoint – to go from a double to a triple, you just add an extra rotation. You can’t have the same relaxed approach to dressage and expect to get anywhere.
It’s part of the human condition, to shed beliefs like metaphorical snakeskin: when “everything that was” falls away. Somehow, with all this, comes an inconsolable sense of loss. I’ve found that I have to keep my agenda in sharp focus and constantly assess the information I’m given, testing the information for purity, weighing it on the scales of common sense like a trader at the Grand Bazaar. My knowledge base is constantly expanding, causing fissures in the system to become more blatant.
Nic and I went to another clinic this week, and I believe it was an unmitigated disaster. Postmodern literary theory espouses that everything—ideas, beliefs, emotions, and yes, teachings—is applicable in the moment, but not necessarily at any other point in time, and boy did this clinic illustrate that idea. The irony is that this clinician has been helpful with her, but advice that helped so much in the past, when Nic was stiff, is now passé—Nic is no longer stiff and resistant. We have the very basics—contact, submission, basic swung—covered. We are turning our horizons to gait and muscle development now, and this clinic was a step back for us. Nic came back sore, tense, and lacking self-carriage. There isn’t the same desire to build energy into the bridle. The training we’ve been doing with her is undone, and I’m frustrated.
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