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.
