I-Thou-Equus

From the work of Martin Buber, The Horse:

"When I was eleven years of age, spending the summer on my grandparents' estate, I used, as often as I could do it unobserved, to steal into the stable and gently stroke the neck of my darling, a broad dapple-gray horse. It was not a casual delight but a great, certainly friendly, but also deeply stirring happening. If I am to explain it now, beginning from teh still very fresh memory of my hand, I must say that what I experienced in touch with the animal was the Other, the immense otherness of the Other, which, however, did not remain strange like the otherness of the ox and the ram, but rather let me draw near and touch it. When I stroked the mighty mane, sometimes marvellously smooth-combed, at other times, just as astonishingly wild, and felt the life beneath my hand, it was as though the element of vitality itself bordered on my skin, something that was not I, was not akin to me, palpably the other, not just another, really the Other itself: and yet it let me approach, confided itself to me, placed itself elementally in the relation of Thou and Thou with me. The horse, even when I had not begun pouring oats for him into the manger, very gently raised his massive head, ears flicking, then snorted gently, as a conspirator gives a signal meant to be recognizable only by his fellow-conspirator: and I was approved. But once -- i do not know what came over the child, at any rate it was childlike enough-- it struck me about stroking, what fun it gave me, and suddenly I became conscious of my hand. The game went on as before, but something had changed, it was no longer the same thing. And the next day, after giving him a rich feed, when I stroked my friend's head he did not raise his head. A few years later, when I thought back to the incident, I no longer supposed that the animal had noticed my defection. But at the time I considered myself judged."

Lux desiderium universitatis

Horses
by Kate DiCamillo

Lux desiderium
universitatis:
light is the desire
of the universe; tonight
the moon
is on its side, partially lit,
and patiently waiting
for more light, while
Lucinda sings
that if wishes
were horses
she'd have a ranch; and
in an old storefront on 38th
the windows are bright
with the people inside
learning
to dance; the
street lamps shine on
November's last
stubborn leaves.

The dancers
are moving their mouths,
counting,
counting and wishing,
with each breath for
I don't know
what
horses, maybe,
or more light,
or something
gold
that will stay.

A R i t u a l S t u d y

The barn was my sanctuary. It was immaculate. I kept it that way. The stalls were raked almost hourly when possible. The tack was clean and orderly. The feeding schedule rarely varied. Not a speck of organic matter spent much time on either the ground or my horses.

Feeding, grooming, cleaning, riding and raking are not chores: they’re rituals. They are rituals revolving around purity and care of the spirit. Being in service to the horse requires this labor of love and the bodily sacrifice of blood, sweat and tears. Some rituals stem from superstition and tradition, like lucky horseshoes. Some rituals stem from experience and witness, like the daily routines around the barn that run like clockwork.

The most meditative rituals take place in the presence of the horse. Grooming and tacking up are carried out with the same precision and attention to detail every time the ritual is re-enacted in preparation for a ride. While grooming the horse, the hands smooth over every hair on the horse’s body in the same ways that a climber’s hands run over entire lengths of his ropes looking for wear before a big climb.

How can we deny that our identity is shaped by what we do? How can we separate body from ritual, and ritual from body?

We can’t.

I didn’t know who I was unless I had my horses. I didn’t think I could be who I was without them, without being with them, without working around them. I was what I was doing in the barn, and I was doing what I loved. I couldn’t separate myself from my rituals.

When looking at the lived rituals of religious practitioners and horse people, it is difficult to separate body and experience from the ceremonial aspect of ritual. There appears to be no separation of self and performance. Ritual shapes us, and we shape our rituals. By looking at the medieval women who experienced their personal mystical experiences, we see how ritual and devotion mesh so closely (inseparably) from emotion and the sensuous body. In Carolyn Walker Bynum’s medieval context and discussion of medieval women mystics, these women mystics have become part of the word made flesh. These women moved body up to the realm of godliness and away from the often dirty image cast up on women’s physicality. Horsewomen too, move the body into positive light, as the body becomes a way of knowledge and communication with their beloved horse.

A new religion that smells like horse

“I think I’ll start a new religion. I’ll call it “Houynnm-ism, ism, ism”
- from The Legend of Flying Horse.

Deification

"Deification is the ultimate distorting mirror that man has held up to the horse in our shared history. While the ancient elevation of the horse to the status of god is hardly a tradition that endures to affect modern-day attitudes toward the horse, it is nonetheless a reflection of the intense emotions that the horse was –and still is—capable of evoking. When the ancients were overwhelmed they found an outlet for their feelings in religious and magical terms; in our more competitive age we are perhaps more likely to impute our motives more crassly, for instance in wishing to believe that our horses love to win ribbons at horse shows. We may not literally worship horses anymore, yet the religious awe that the horse once evoked is testimony to a basic inability to see straight on this subject, which endures."
- Stephen Budiansky, The Nature of Horses

at once of nature and transcendent of nature

"It takes a harder heart and a stronger mind than I, for one, possess not to be dazzled by the pure beauty of man and horse working together. The almost magical cooperation of horse and rider is testimony both to the inventiveness of man and to the remarkable learning ability and physical prowess of the horse. It is art as much as science, a product of pure imagination as much as it is any predictable outcome of evolutionary biology. The thrill of watching the performance of a superb racehorse or jumper or cutting horse or polo pony or dressage horse come from the sense that these are creatures at once of nature and transcendent of nature."
- Steven Budiansky, The Nature of Horses

C h o r e o g r a p h y

“You need never break a horse. If you want the horse to dance, you must never break him. The horse must like the training, enjoy the dancing. …” from The Legend of Flying Horse.

On a late fall afternoon, I went to Golden's Table Mountain Ranch to spend the afternoon with horse choreographer, Barbara Gardner. Barbara was wonderful: a petite woman with moxie, owner of 3 talented horses, and former owner of an experimental dance company in NY. She has spent the last 25 years as a horse choreographer, creating freestyles for World Cup and Olympic performances and exhibitions that have been seen at the National Western Stock Show, An Evening with Dancing Horses, and Ballet on Horseback, to name a few. At 65 years old, she was still spending her afternoons with her little herd of horses and riding two of them daily.

I talked to Barbara about the connections between horses and dance, about her experiences and performances, and about her horses. And she asked me about my thesis. I watched as she free-lunged her Andalusian gelding Vigo in the round pen. “Are you just focusing on riding?” she asked from the center of the ring. “That’s the image I proposed in chapter 3,” I said. “But I’m well aware that it is a limiting image and that communication on the ground is a huge part of it.” “Yes,” she agreed as Vigo was tuning into her from the edges of the pen. “This is all part of it. You can see he is listening to me, and I’m listening to him.” I watched as she slowed her body down in order to slow Vigo down from a canter to a trot, and eventually a halt.

On the walk back to the barn, with Vigo calmly in hand, Barbara began talking about what it takes to have a horse-human relationship. “It’s all about compromise—give and take. Compromise, concentration (focus), communication…and patience.” I agreed, and remembered a trailer loading incident about 11 years ago that took over 2 hours in the bone chilling cold which tested all of the above—especially patience. In relating dancing to riding, Barbara stressed the importance of learning to be passive, then learning to follow, then to direct.

As a rider, one must be passive and not get in the horse’s way; one must also learn to follow their partner rhythmically with grace and balance, and then a rider can direct the movement of the horse. The importance of following is the importance of feel and the awareness of the body—the rider’s and the horse’s body. A rider must learn the tempo and the body of the horse. Some European rider’s spend 2 years or more riding on a lunge line before they ever pick up the reins. Some will ride with no hands and go through exercises in which they will be told to close their eyes and tell the person holding the lunge line what hoof is leaving the ground. This allows them to develop a sense of feel that is rooted in their body’s way of knowing through feel and touch. These are exercises that strengthen one’s ability to ride with his/her body and not primarily with their hands.

“Do you really think it’s possible to ride 1200 pounds on 5 inches of mouth?” asked Barbara sardonically. Much like a VW bug, a horse’s “motor” (or drive) resides in the backside, or hindquarters, which means the impulsion carries through the horse from back to front when he is working correctly. That’s a lot of energy to be responsible for on the five inches of mouthpiece on the bit. I watched Barbara as she executed a half halt, where the horse rounds out his back and drives from the rear all in one foot-fall, all with her body placement. She also stopped Vigo with her seat and legs, not her hands. They proceeded to circle the arena performing various upper level dressage maneuvers with that sense of partnership that is seen in a dance hall.

Meeting with her not only deepened my thesis discussion, but (of course) ignited my horse passion again. Sometimes it is hard to be grounded when my emotions for wanting my horses back are so strong. But it made me realize that in the world of horses, I was raised well with a good bit of horse sense and common sense and intuition when dealing with these animals. I had to thank my lucky stars for getting started on the right hoof. Before I left, Barbara introduced me to a cute little bay Arabian gelding named Phamous. I would hope for him whenever I got bored writing my thesis.