Ever seen a Zuni horse fetish? They are beautiful. I have a small collection, as the Zuni are here in New Mexico. Generally, a fetish fits in the palm of your hand. You can enjoy the smoothness of the stone and the weight of it as you hold it. I like them very much. (The bears are really pretty too.) The Zuni believe that each fetish embodies the spirit of the animal it symbolizes. I love the little turquoise hooves on this horse fetish.
Native-Languages.org. Among the stones, turquoise was widely used in Native American jewelry and was believed to bring good luck to the wearer. It is being used in Indian jewellery for more than 2000 years and the Zuni tribe believed that the blue turquoise representing the sky was male and the green representing the earth was female. Other stones used in Native American jewellery included Coral, sugilite, gaspeite, charoite and garnet.
Call me superstitious, but I have slipped a piece of turquoise into my saddlebags for many a mountain ride.
Continuing the conversation about the animal police over at Smells Horsey, I wonder if they would have let me have this behemoth as a mouser?! (Maybe the Oregon Humane Society is more sane than the Santa Fe Animal Shelter, where I wasn't allowed to adopt a cat because I told them that he would be living ... gasp ... outside.)
Looks to me like the below pretty much sums up the peril of the silly ideology of some animal rescue and adoption agencies that animals are better off living inside.
Have you guys seen the kids flick Mousehunt with the incomparable Nathan Lane?
Synopsis--Two hapless brothers inherit an old mansion from their father which would be worth millions, if only they could evict a smart, tenacious mouse that is intent on staying in the house and making life miserable for the brothers.
It's one of my favorites. I can't help thinking of the cat ... Catzilla ... they adopt from the Human Society ... Check it out. Rent it if you haven't seen it. Hilarious for kids and adults.
She's working hard at rescuing horses caught in the wake of the California wildfires. Read her story here. I had a Paso Fino refugee from the Los Alamos fires several years ago. Not everyone got their horses out.
I think these are way cool. It reminds me of how the Native Americans used to braid some turquoise into their horses mane to keep them from stumbling. See Zephyr Equine Gifts. I wonder if these would sound as pretty as the jingle bobs on my Spanish spurs? I don't have any financial association with these guys, just found them in my web travels.
Would these look silly on a percheron? (No snickering ...) They're very becoming on these horses, I think. Check out the selection!
The Stag symbolises a person's longing for liberation. Aggression. Strong male influence. The stag is seen as a noble masculine animal. The stag is also a medieval symbol of Jesus. There's a lot of mythology surrounding this magnificent animal.
He travels to the high, wild places. He disappears into the dark forest, where occasionally I may dare to follow. To me, he speaks of a journey.
And there have been some major journey preparations going on around my house this week with my two men preparing for their week-long deer hunt beginning this Friday. Such cooking as I have never seen. Although I did manage to get a bowl (or two) of the savory and hot hot hotgreen chile stew, because Dennis made something like three gallons, it seemed. I was not invited, or, quite frankly, allowed to help with any of the preparations. This is the staked-out territory of the males in my house. (Although I did talk Dennis into taking the horse trailer for sleeping in vs. a tent, not quite as macho, but infinitely warmer and drier. So see, there's a bit of female influence in the mix after all...)
This is 10-year-old C.'s first hunt. And actually, he is accompanying Dennis, not hunting himself. He hasn't done the hunter safety course yet.
Having kids is a series of little letting goes, it seems. And that's as it should be.
I wonder how different my little boy will return to me? The one who still lets me kiss him bye (every now and then, if I'm really fast) on the top of his blonde head in the mornings as I drop him off at school. The one who still reminds me of a puppy? How can a little boy hunt the stag, hind, roe, without something growing up just a little more inside?
Well, I'll be happy to welcome my little hunter home. (And my big one too. One of these days I'll tell you the story about his standoff with a black bear over an elk. Which he won, with nary a firearm and what I'd call sheer force of personality. It's legendary. At least in my house, and around a few campfires over the years when we cajole him into telling it.)
I spoke with the vet. I'm going to have to take Caprichosa to Albuquerque for a lameness evaluation. She's not doing well.
I got her from some rather rough circumstances years ago, so this andalusian mare spent the first four years of her life in a filthy 10 x 12 pen and her hooves were pie plates when I got her and had rarely been attended to. About five years ago, she suffered a cracked coronary band. It took us a year and a lot of veterinary work to get her through that. She got hurt really badly a year ago on the same leg, got caught in the fence. This was taken about six weeks after the injury, as she was on the mend.
It's been touch and go on that left hind leg and I think the injury is up in her hip. We had some improvement with what I though was arthritis (the vet's been out several times to see her). She'd loosen up once she got warmed up, and it was seeming like we could work her through the stiffness, although I'd resigned myself to the idea that she wasn't going to be the same. But now we're going backwards. She's been off and kind of depressed. I'm concerned we're not going to make it through the winter with her. She's almost 16.
You tell yourself it's going to be what it's going to be. But sometimes that's not much of a consolation.
Jesus said, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you [will] kill you." The Gospel of Thomas
This is my religion—
You huddle beneath the stars in the middle of your little horse herd. The moonlight is reflected in their clouds of breath, their whiskers, their soft eyes. The silence is brilliant. It tinkles in your ears like chandelier crystals somewhere way above your head, until it’s punctuated by the sound of a stamping hoof.
You pull your goose down jacket closer, look back at your ranch house where your family is inside. You’re off to see the horses, you announce, and they know you’ll be a while. They understand your hunger for the stars, even though you’ve all just finished dinner. Yellow light pours from the kitchen windows into the inky night, and you can almost hear the talk and the laughter going on inside, the clank of dishes in the sink.
You think of that Native American woman you read about in a story once, and how because she had no living male relatives, she was forced out of the tribe, out of her home, and had to seek some warmth, some shelter among the horses on a winter night just like this. A night so cold your breath comes quick and the emptiness of it all makes you almost dizzy. By the morning, the story goes, she had frozen to death.
You stamp your feet to get the blood flowing and understand why.
You made a diorama in grade school once. Of a winter scene like this, with a cardboard house and a barn and the mountains, white cotton for snow, and black paper for the night sky into which you punched lots of little holes with your No. 2 pencil. To let the light from your penlight come in from the other side. You see the big dipper suspended above you like the celestial mobile you hung from your daughter’s bedroom clerestory window when she was five. The constellations you wish you could name. The Milky Way in all its glory.
And just as you are being grateful for the lack of light pollution way out here, you have this hunch that the light is trying to get through. Right now. At this moment. That it’s pushing against the construction paper, that it might very well shake loose and spill out all over the mesa through the holes someone’s punched in it in about a million places. And they are punching more. You shiver slightly and lean against furry Toby to soak up some of his warmth, and as he regards you with the full force of his draft horse calm over his shoulder--you hear it.
I love you.
The words are as clear as a bell. You gape up in wonder up at the stars. Take a couple of steps forward, to try and hear better. As if that would do any good. Because your ears are not involved.
I love you.
Like the old school bell you ring on the front porch of the house when you want the kids to come in. Like the one they rang for you when you were a girl yourself who liked to run wild in the woods. You stand in your barn boots with your feet planted firmly on the frozen ground that’s reeling.
The stars burn.
I love you.
Toby sighs.
You stand out there a long time, clutching the hem of the lady's black velvet gown. Listening to the silence. Until all of a sudden they are ringing the bell outside on the front porch for you to come on back inside. And it's a couple of minutes before you do.
Fabulous photo by roadside pictures. Poor poodle. Does anyone else remember Gaines Burgers? I grew up in the 60s. I can still remember the smell of those awful things. Fed them to our dachshund on a regular basis.
And now we turn to ...
anthropology.
These are my findings from spending approximately an hour on the ever trendy Santa Fe Plaza recently, specifically in search of a warm pair of black (they absolutely positively had to be black) UGG boots. I cited several Santa Fe Poodles during my exploration.
Santa Fe Poodle. (Poodilus Santafeus)
Common characteristics.
The Santa Fe Poodle tends to be relatively mobile or "nomadic", given her reliance upon the ability of a given natural environment to provide the most trendy and expensive Southwestern jewelery and apparel in order to sustain her craving for Squash Blossom Necklaces and the biggest turquoise concho belts money can buy and the variable availability of these resources owing to local climatic and seasonal conditions. (See the Santa Fe Indian Market.)
Habitat and Population
While she may live in Santa Fe (often in her Santa-Fe-Style-on-Steroids vacation/second home), the Santa Fe Poodle often has her origins in New York City, Dallas Fort Worth, or California. Upon arriving to the high desert, she displays an insatiable desire for all things silver and turquoise, native american and cowboy, although it's likely she's never once been near a horse and possibly has never seen a cowboy or a native american.
It's difficult to ascertain the exact population of Poodilus Santafeus in the region, because after a while they all begin to look the same, at least to this anthropologist. The Santa Fe Poodle is literally dripping with Zuni and Navajo jewelry, possibly with some big Egyptian pieces thrown in for good measure. Beneath that raffia er ... cowboy ... hat, one can barely see her face. The most distincitve feature of the poodle is her noise. She rattles and clangs like one of those African native women who wears all of her wealth on her body at once, in a display of some form of tribal personal banking.
Outlook for the Species
As long as there are gallery openings with free champagne and overpriced jewelery stores who will cater to her, the outlook is good for Poodilus Santafeus. It should be noted that her choice of a desert habitat is not by chance. You see, it is imperative that the poodle avoid the water. At all costs. Her deeply ingrained fear has been observed at several social events over the years where no poodles or wannabes were cited near the in-ground swimming pool.
This anthropologist has often thought to herself (and grinned wickedly while doing so) that the fully outfitted Santa Fe Poodle, with the ten, heavy, six-inch-square conchos lashed around her waist on a leather belt like some medieval corset or device of torture, along with that other bright mess of metal and stone with which she is compelled to decorate every square inch of her person, could be in the same peril around almost any body of water as those knights she read about in high school history class.
You know, the ones who drowned at the bottom of the castle moat because of the sheer weight of their armor.
This is what we had for dinner last night. My mother likes to tell this story about how her eccentric Aunt Hazel would invite everyone over for dinner and simply serve ... pie. (I was explaining to my husband last night, upon his discovery of what was baking in the oven, that my passion for all things pie is indeed genetic.) I never met great Aunt Hazel myself, but all I have to say is you go girl.
I fed everyone a big late lunch, just for the record. I wonder if my daughter's house guest who is going vaulting with us today will tell her mother that this was what I fed her for dinner.
Unlikely.
I fell off of my Dansko clogs on Friday evening when I was brilliantly ground driving our andalusian horse Caprichosa. It wasn't that good-mannered horse's fault, clogs are not good ground-driving shoes, in fact they are not ground-driving shoes at all, no matter how old and fabulous they are and that they are my favorites. My ankle is swollen terribly, a lump about the size of a baseball, and it's all black and blue. Looks like I will not be vaulting today. Maybe I'll longe. I can actually hobble around quite effectively once I get going.
There's some leftover apple pie, and I am thinking of an Aunt Hazel style breakfast, as everyone else is sleeping.
Love this photo by Miss Chien. This reminds me of exactly what my apple thiefs do--
The Cathars, a medieval Gnostic movement that flourished for a time in the Languedoc region of Southern France, and who were known to their neighbors as the "Bon Hommes," or "Good Men," were the first Christian casualties of the Crusades.
Thanks to Julian the Transylvanian Horseman for pointing out my mistake. Other examples of Christians who were persecuted and killed in the crusades are the Waldensians. The members of the group were declared schismatics in 1184 in France and heretics more widely in 1215 by the Fourth Council of the Lateran's anathema. It wasn't just the Jews and the Muslims and the pagans they were after.
I think it's important to note that the Gnostics had been in the church's crosshairs since the second century, though, with St. Irenaeus of Lyons' five volumes entitled On the Detection and Overthrow of the So-Called Gnosis a.k.a. Against Heresies. And until the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library (popularly known as The Gnostic Gospels), a collection of early Christian Gnostic texts discovered near the town of Nag Hammadi in 1945, the writings of the Catholic heresiologists comprised the bulk of the information we had about the Gnostics.
I think that what we do know is that Cathars were ascetics with gnostic tendencies.
Most of the information about the Cathars has been destroyed, and what we do know has mostly been aduced from Catholic records. This is rather like reconstructing Jewish theology from Nazi records of the holocaust. Records are biased and incomplete.
Cathars regarded themselves as Christians. They used the New Testament, especially the John Gospel, and repeated the Lord's Prayer with the addition of the words "For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever" (which the Roman Church regarded as evidence of heresy before it also adopted this ending ). Believers were generally called "Good-men" and "Good-women", or "Good-Christians". The name Cathar had been adopted by the Church originally as an insult, but people tended to assume that the name was derived from the Greek word for "pure", so it stuck.
When Saint Bernard visited the Languedoc in 1145 his main impression seems to have been the shameless corruption in his own Church. Of the Cathars he noted that their morals were pure and that no sermons were more Christian than theirs.
Now I'm not sure how the above fits in exactly with Wilousset's statement below, but I'm sure the good Saint Bernard was entitled to his opinion--
"Gnosticism is first of all a pre-Christian movement which had its roots in itself. It is therefore to be understood... in its own terms, and not as an offshoot or byproduct of the Christian religion."
- Wilhelm Bousset, Kyrios Christos, 1913
Anyway, I find all of that very interesting. I'm no expert here, just a traveler.
The idea about the gnostics thinking that Satan created the world is, I suspect, a bit of a misunderstanding of the gnostic idea of the Demiurge. (Although in the canonical bible Satan is referred to as "the prince of this world" in the Book of John 12:31, 14:30; "the prince of the power of the air" also called Meririm, and "the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience" in the Book of Ephesians 2:2; and "the god of this world" in 2 Corinthians 4:4. I'm not really much of one for spouting off bible verses anymore, but there you go ...)
The story of the Demiurge and the Archons, Sophia, etc. is mostly viewed by gnostics as a metaphor, a powerful and transformative myth. Gnostics aren't world hating dualists as the Catholic heresiologists liked to portray them. The idea of a lesser god (Demiurge) who created this world with its flaws and suffering is in fact one of the things that drew me to gnosticism. The idea that the world is flawed (and not perfect as they tried to tell me almost every Sunday in my fundamentalist church for years) makes much more sense to me.
Just think of the death, disease and human suffering going on for centuries. I used to ask myself the age-old question--how could a good God do this? (The gnostics have an entirely different take on what the orthodox call The Fall. I don't buy the idea of original sin.) And I never had much use for the mean-spirited, jealous, bloodthirsty, woman-hating Yaweh/Jehovah of the Old Testament, whom one might very well see as an incarnation of the Demiurge. And then to balance out that dark stuff, there's the gnostic idea that the light/the spark of the divine is embedded in this materia too.
Is anyone thinking yin and yang out there? This gnostic idea about our existential situation is a balance I just don't see in orthodoxy.
And again. This is just my very personal, very own path. Gnosticism isn't a belief. It's not faith in someone else's faith or someone else's beliefs, which is what I used to have when I bought my church's party line. (I suspect that most of the people who were sitting in the pew reciting it next to me weren't buying it all hook, line, and sinker either.) I tried that for years, and it was highly unsatisfying to me. Gnosis is not something that someone else can give to you, although there are those who can point you to the path because they've trod it before. It's something you simply ... well ... know. It's written on the inside. Scrawled across your heart. And it also involves your mind.
Reader Jules from Australia (Otterkat) mentioned The Gospel of Thomas in her comments to the first post on this topic. This is the very first gnostic text I read. It's a very good first book in the Nag Hammadi to read, if you are interested. Those expecting the world-hating dualism described by Iraneus and his ilk (I'm surprised at the articles I've seen in modern Catholic publications still branding gnosticism an ancient heresy) will be pleasantly surprised. It's beautiful. Thanks, Jules, for mentioning that. Also, thank you Rose for your lovely comment about Jesus being gnostic. I think so too, girlfriend. You both have given me a lot of encouragement. You too, Julian, with your interest and excellent questions.
What liberates us is the knowledge of who we were, what we became; where we were, whereunto we have been thrown; whereunto we speed, wherefrom we are redeemed; what birth is, and what rebirth. Theodotus
After my post on Eight Things You Don't Know About Me, a couple of you have asked me for some information and resources on Gnosis and the Gnostics.
First of all, rest easy. Gnostics don't evangelize or proselytize. Therefore, I will not be knocking on your door in my Sunday best, twenty-five-pound King James (or even the Nag Hammadi Library) tucked beneath my arm. Nor will I or do I pretend to know everything. I'm really very leary of those types who claim they have the answers all wrapped up in ribbons. (And you should be too.) I'm just treading the path ...
Gnostics are one of the few religious groups (maybe the only) who haven't killed others in the name of their beliefs. (I find that an interesting fact in light of what's going on in our post-911 world today.) The Cathars, a medieval Gnostic movement that flourished for a time in the Languedoc region of Southern France, and who were known to their neighbors as the "Bon Hommes," or "Good Men," were the first casualtioes of the Crusades. (The Albigensian Crusade, conducted by the Roman Catholic Church, consisted of some twenty-thousand Knights and a large number of soldiers and mercenaries. It was a slaughter of the Bon Hommes.)
So, that said, here's the info--
What does Gnostic mean, anyway? Well, first of all, there was never a 'Gnostic religion'. Pronunced 'Nostic' which means 'knowledge' or knowing, having direct knowledge. 'Gnosis'.
The word gnosis (from the Greek word for knowledge), refers to a Hellenic philosophical term for knowledge. It is also used to mean a form of spiritual knowledge that is more commonly familiar to people as enlightenment,though the Greek word for enlightenment would be closer to the word informed rather than knowledge.
Gnosis can also be defined as direct knowledge of god through awareness of the divine spark within. (I like this one the best.)
Gnostic Books. A good reading list can be found here. The first book I read on Gnosticism was Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing by Stephan A. Hoeller. Another excellent introduction to the gnostic tradition is The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels.
Gnostic Blogs. A list of gnostic blogs in what has been dubbed The Logosphere is available at Jeremy Puma's excellent website The Palm Tree Garden.
Gnostic Webcasts.
For over fifty years The Gnostic Society in Los Angeles has sponsored activities dedicated to furthering an understanding of Gnosis and Gnosticism. The Society's "Friday Evening Lecture Series", directed for the last three decades by Dr. Stephan Hoeller, provides a distinguished and uniquely focused forum for individuals interested in Gnosticism, Jungian psychology, Kabbalah, mythology, and other subjects related to Gnosticism. The Gnostic Society Web Lectures.
Miguel Conner produces the first ever weekly webcast on Gnosticism and early Christianity. This is my all-time favorite podcast. I don't do tobacco, but I do brew myself up a big cup of steaming hot java for Coffee, Cigarettes and Gnosis, an "approachable, comprehensive, and affable discussion about the impact of the world’s favorite Heretics, The Gnostics, and their esoteric brethren." Hang onto your seats for this one! His scholarly podcast guests are impressive and mind expanding.
Interested in Carl Jung? Jung thought of the gnostics as old friends. There are many similarities between Gnostic inner illumination and Jung''s concept of individuation. Jon Betts, a Zurich-trained Jungian Analyst in Victoria, British Columbia produces The Jung Podcast. Superb. And I especially recommend C.G. JUNG: PORTRAIT OF A TWENTIETH CENTURY WIZARD, a series of lectures by the Wasatch Society of Salt Lake City, Utah. This is a special tenth anniversary edition of Dr. Lance Owens’ popular “Jung course”, formerly offered at the University of Utah. (Scroll to the very bottom of that web page for these four lectures.)
Finally, I'll leave you with one of the most beautiful gnostic myths ever. The Hymn of the Pearl. Most people can't read this once through without feeling something. "Embedded within the Acts of Thomas we find a beautiful and complete statement of a classic Gnostic myth describing the exile and redemption of the soul." I'm not giving too much away when I tell you there's a big journey, complete with dragon.
Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares. Proverbs
Anne over at Smells Horsey writes about her daughter dressing up her horse Buddy in horsey pajamas and all kinds of cute things. And she's relieved her daughter is spending her money on horse clothes rather than on "tight pants for herself that say 'Juicy' across the butt."
Those "Juicy" pants are right up there with the Britney Spears- and Paris Hilton-inspired Bratz Dolls and their equally annoying Petz, both of which I really dislike. To me, these Bratz are like caricatures of girls. Cartoons of the feminine. And poorly drawn to boot. They are someone else's rather uninspired idea of femininity. Not mine.
And I wonder. Why would any mother allow these kinds of societal ideas--"Juicy" and Bratz--to be visited upon her daughters?
Instead of pants that say "Juicy", how about a t-shirt that says Good at Math. A Wonderful Friend. Barrel Racer. Plays a Mean Chopin. History Fanatic. Absolutely Hilarious. Kind. Insightful. Brave Adventurer. Best Sister in the Universe. Big Spirit Inside.
And if we want to go absolutely for broke on behalf of our daughters, because girls aren't all sweetness and sunshine like some old Mother Goose rhyme claims, they do contain the full gamut of emotions, how about Cranky Sometimes. Ill-Tempered. I am Competitive. Or I Get Mad About Things.
I am a big believer in the power of horses and girls. And in the potential of the interaction between the two to help a girl build up a strong core inside of herself. Yes, it has something to do with sports and robust outdoor living. But it also has something to do with myth and spirit.
(Also, I'm like the parents of the teenagers who put in a home swimming pool so the kids will hang out a home hopefully. My thinking is that if I keep my daughter interested in and occupied with the horses, and she does have a natural love for them so I'm not forcing her into something, then I'll keep her occupied and away from some of those pop-culture, mass media influences out there.)
What if we filled up that place in girls that's currently being filled up with "Juicy" and Bratz with some big bold myths? Not necessarily the myths of the Greeks or the Romans or the native peoples, although I'm sure we could choose some powerful ones, but of myths we can tell them about our own lives. Something for girls to hang onto. Possibly then we'd see the end of "Juicy" scrawled across the rear ends of pre-pubescent little girls and new words being scrawled inside of them instead. Words of wisdom. Emblazoned on their hearts and minds. Stories that will sustain them throughout their lives. Words that would help them to be whole women in the world and in their lives?
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not against Juicy. Not. At. All.
In fact, let's be juicy by all means--juicy with life.
But I don't want my daughter (or those of others, although that's really none of my business you may be saying) to be a real life slogan for the titillation of what Anne observes in her excellent blog post to be the "Viagra-ed up old guy". She and all of the little girls deserve much better than that.
What myths sustained you as a girl? What stories/myths sustain you as a woman? (And guys, feel free to chime in. I'm not trying to be one-sided or sexist here. It's just that most of you aren't walking around in warmup pants with "Juicy" inscribed across the derrierre. I suspect I could gain some serious insight from you out there.) Are there books that you love? Poetry? Music? Artwork? I'd love to hear about it.
OK. I'll begin. This is one of my favorite pieces of wisdom literature. Decidedly very juicy stuff--
Thunder, Perfect Mind
For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am and the daughter.
I am the members of my mother.
I am the barren one
and many are her sons.
I am she whose wedding is great,
and I have not taken a husband.
I am the midwife and she who does not bear.
I am the solace of my labor pains.
I am the bride and the bridegroom,
and it is my husband who begot me.
I am the mother of my father
and the sister of my husband,
and he is my offspring.
I am the slave of him who prepared me.
I am the ruler of my offspring.
But he is the one who [begot me] before the time
on a birthday.
And he is my offspring [in] (due) time,
and my power is from him.
I am the staff of his power in his youth,
[and] he is the rod of my old age.
And whatever he wills happens to me.
I am the silence that is incomprehensible
and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.
I am the voice whose sound is manifold
and the word whose appearance is multiple.
I am the utterance of my name.
Looking up from my errands around Santa Fe today, I gasp at my sight of the first snow of the season, like always. It's just sprinkled across the top of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
I think it would be hard for me to live back East, as green and pretty as I know it is there. There's something about this wild and wooly geography that gets down deep inside of you.
I've been tagged by the delightful Anne over at Smells Horsey to tell you eight things you don't know about me--
A sitcom character was once named after me, by a boy who sat in front of me in high school geometry class and others throughout the years, and who went on to Hollywood to become a wildly successful television producer and all around go-zillionaire. I think the particular sitcom in which I was "named" however, lasted about two weeks.
I think that apple pie, cherry pie, peach pie, raspberry pie, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, coconut cream pie ... you get the drift ... is hands down The Food of the Gods. My mother used to make vinegar pie. I kid you not. Vinegar.
I think it was a throwback to her days of growing up dirt poor when there was nothing in the kitchen and you had to get creative. Kind of like the pioneers used to whip one up out of beans (and sugar?). Check this out: A recipe for Vinegar Pie from Emeril. What is he? Mad?!
Our High School mascot was the ... Beavers. And it gets infinitely worse from there. I was on the drill team for three years. I will leave it up to you and what I will count on as your momentary lack of every shred of your good taste to guess (absolutely correctly) what our drill team name was. Stupid stupid stupid drill team instructor, a woman too. I can't believe I walked around with that emblazoned in bright gold letters on my high school jacket all those years. Oh, yes, and for the icing on the cake--I was the Captain of the drill team. Uhhhh... Go Beavers!
I like to read a good book in a steaming hot bath tub, water so hot you can hardly stand it. So you'd be wise not to loan me any of your books.
Many of my ancestors are Cherokee. My grandparents called us "Black Irish", not a term you hear much anymore. My relatives from Oklahoma add an interesting twist when drawling out my name. They call me KEEEEiiiiiimmmmburhleeeeeee or sometimes just KEEEEEEEE-iiim. My very German married name is one that nearly always brings a smile to people's lips upon hearing it for the first time, unless they have extraordinarily good control of their facial muscles. I'm not sure how it will go over on a book cover, though.
My husband says I have a cranky and opinionated streak, which is true, and probably why I get along famously with mares and geese.
I hear they do this tope in many villages on Sundays in Costa Rica. (If we survive the Feb. 1, 2008 layoffs, Central America is where we're headed. For vacation, just in case I need to clarify.) The Sunday horse parade. I'd like to see something like this instituted in the village of Pecos. We could ride behind a mariachi band.
I wonder what Val Kilmer, our charming Hollywood neighbor who said that 80% of the people in our county are drunk most of the time, thereby making himself very popular, would have to say about a Pecos tope? From the videos I've seen of these parades, there does seem to be a little drinking of some beer.
This is old news, but ...
KILMER UPSETS NEW MEXICO SENATOR. The screen star told the magazine he carries a gun in his car and justified it by explaining, "I live in the homicide capital of the south-west. Eighty per cent of the people in my county are drunk. So driving home on the highway, especially with kids, it's (carrying a gun) just a precaution."
The BATMAN FOREVER star was also asked how he spends his time. After talking about feeding the animals and going to the watering hole, he put on a country accent and said, "We shoot the automatic weapons at the trespassers and people a different colour than us."
State senator PHIL GRIEGO, whose district includes Kilmer's ranch and who lives nearby, says that if the actor doesn't like San Miguel County he's welcome to leave.
They were shooting footage for his new action movie out on my road late this summer. Yeah... I'm sure going to cough up $9 to go see that ...
The water-kelpie may appear either as a horse or a man. In the former case the horse is ready caparisoned; and the wayfarer, weary with his journey, may mount the horse, and, once mounted, the rider can never get off—he is stuck fast to the horse. Even were it only one’s finger, it would stick to the horse, and tales related how people had to cut off finger or hand to save themselves. The horse, having its rider safely mounted, at once gallops off to its lake and plunges in. There is a movement of the waters, a gurgling noise, and shortly after the heart and lungs of the human victim are seen floating at the water’s edge. Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, 1888
The water horse often appears on the shore as an extremely handsome man. And his aim is to woo a fair maiden.
Guileless young women from Oklahoma who wore overalls to high school, spent most of their growing up on the back of a horse, and had most of their god-given instinct stripped out of them by a fundamentalism, the aim of which is producing only good, submissive, obedient, and sanitized women, are particularly vulnerable. Especially if they are lonely and don't have much self-esteem. And are too afraid to cross the moors by themselves.
The water horse. The kelpie. The each uisge.
The creature has several names.
When I first learned of the myth of the water horse a couple of years ago, and in my writing about the dark horses, I was struck by the parallels of the ancient stories to my own life. It was almost uncanny. Although, I am, I tell myself, after all, a part of this vast collective unconscious.
There are stories about the water horse dragging maidens down to their deaths, and one nearly dragged me to my own. You see, I married a kelpie, once upon a time, in a kingdom, a long time ago.
Unsuspecting maidens who marry the water horse in disguise may very well find themselves stuck. When you realize the prince has scales and flippers and teeth instead of the crown he was just showing you, boy are you surprised.
And if there are children as a result of the union, the maiden may even have to resort to cutting part of herself off--sometimes with a resounding chop, it's not a very pretty sight, and bloody--in order to become unstuck and to avoid being eaten by this each uisge to whom she finds herself ... married all these years. After all, the maiden will be no good to her children if she's no longer alive.
What good is only her heart?
Which he's promised her he'll make stop beating, if she doesn't behave exactly as he tells her to.
Her lungs?
Which he'll rip from her chest if she dares to breathe a word of her perilous situation to a soul.
And if the kelpie doesn't do it, she can always count on her mean-spirited god to take care of that.
At the divorce proceedings in a stone castle on a hill with lots of banners flying, she's granted joint custody of her children (that means she has them half the time) by the very civilized and overeducated and modern decision makers in their long robes and pointy wizard hats. They are bedazzled by the glamour, the socialite family, the pedigrees, the letter of recommendation by the wife of a Former Governor Himself who'd boxed the lady's ears so hard she's nearly deaf (and everyone knows it too), and all of that other stuff, that is claimed by the real life monster with seaweed dripping from his hair. They don't care if he is standing in a sopping putrid puddle, right in the middle of their hallowed halls.
But dear reader, don't despair. There's a brilliant ending to this story.
Although she was very nearly drowned by the water horse, and gobbled up to boot, the maiden kicks herself free of the muck at the bottom of the loch, swimming through the deep black waters, until she breaks through into the open air, sputtering, coughing, gasping for breath.
Reborn.
Into the full spectrum of life that scares the living dayights out of the water horse and his ilk.
A 1,000-pound American saddle-bred horse was freed this afternoon from a backyard swimming pool in North Knoxville.
The heavily sedated horse was lifted from the pool using a specially designed equine sling and a wrecker.
Unsure how long the 27-year-old horse has been in the water, rescuers said the horse was too skittish to walk out of the half-full pool on Black Oak Ridge.
The horse, whose name is Mountain and is owned by Deborah Black, went missing Monday night and was discovered this afternoon in the pool, according to trainer David Cunningham.
An award-winning show horse, Cunningham said Black has owned Mountain about 15 years. Mountain is now just a pleasure horse.
“She just turns them loose like dogs,” Cunningham said.
The woman I bought Lacey Jay from when I was in my late twenties was scared to death of the big-boned appaloosa mare. The marbled, strawberry-colored horse knew it full well and had taken complete advantage of the woman's gentle nature.
The horse had refused to budge beyond the white gates of the riding stable for the six months the woman had owned her and boarded her there. During my test ride, I rode the horse right out of the gates after about a five-minute conversation in which I led her to understand that she wasn't going to do that to me, and I never looked back.
That woman was relieved to see the persnickety dotted beast go for the grand sum of $750. She was in the process of purchasing herself a nice beginner's horse with a more generous attitude, and the timing worked out well for all of us.
A chance encounter with Linda Tellington-Jones in the arroyo in the front of my Pojoaque house (she was riding a very cute Icelandic) changed the whole course of things for Lacey Jay and me. I'd just read an article about Linda in an airline magazine on the way home from a trip to see my parents. I'd had no idea she was officed around the corner. Anyway, I couldn't afford a TTouch practitioner, but I did manage to scrape up the money to buy one of her books. And I massaged that rascally mare completely into submission. Of the most relaxed and warm and fuzzy variety. That horse and I in fact became excellent friends. And on the back of my speckled soulmate, I learned the meaning of the word adventure.
In Ohio, where I'd grown up and done most of my riding, my experience had been limited to riding around the periphery of cornfields and through some fairly tame woodland paths and dirt roads. In the Pojoaque Valley, my property bordered native land and the barrancas--wild red cliffs and hills that leapt into the sky above the sandy creek bed and where you could ride for miles.
And miles.
It was, by my standards, and still is today, jaw-dropping rugged country. If you didn't watch where you were going, you'd find yourself in a high place surrounded by deep canyons with no way to get down. You had to be careful not to fall off. Or ride off. Or get run off. I got caught, boxed in, if you will, on those cliffs many times, and we'd have to find our way back.
You could ride through the deep gullies and arroyos that wound through the cliffs like scars or you could go cross country--up and down in undulating waves of stone. I remember that big athletic mare cruising down a steep, slate hill into the arroyo. I can still hear her raggedy breathe as we entered that tight place together. And then it was as if our minds intertwined, as we had to make the decision to go left, right or straight up again. I remember distinctly the horse waiting for me. Asking what it was I wanted to do. And sometimes, I let her decide. She was one smart mare. And sometimes I think she enjoyed showing me a thing or two.
One of my favorite places to ride was way up the back of the barrancas, the blood red rocks that seemed to have sprung from the earth just yesterday and about a million years ago at the same time, where I almost expected the earth to open up and swallow me and Lacey Jay, or for us to just tumble out of the grasp of gravity into the white sky above. We rode up through the serpentine arroyos that got more and more narrow until we were nearly at the top, along the spine. And if we ducked into a canyon on the left, we found ourselves in a small oasis of cottonwood trees and buffalo grass with the ruby walls rising up way above, and the sky just a slice of blue in the cliff's teeth.
I'd tether Lacey Jay to a tree, her girth loosened, or saddle off, give her a goody and a rub, and sit on my knees in the sand, in what was very nearly a cave, and dig and dig. Until I found it.
Water.
The invisible stream that always seemed like such a miracle to me. Way up there in the cliffs, in the middle of all that barren land.
I loved to watch the red liquid seep up from the desert, feel it rising up in Lacey Jay and me.
Maybe I'm just cranky today, but a sickeningly sweet Hollywood movie about The Water Horse?
These water horses dragged you beneath the water, gobbled you up, and generally your survivors found your liver or heart on the loch shore if they found any trace of you at all.
I'm standing in the chicken yard, glad to see that my three geese have their game back on after nearly being eaten by the dogs last week. Peepers, Darwin and Duchess are marching around at me feet, honking loudly, mostly at my knees, which I know if I don't watch, they'll be tempted to nip. Luckily, I'm wearing jeans. I think all this talk has something to do with the fall weather, and the fact that they are feeling itchy. Itchy to be a thousand feet above the earth with the few wild geese that pass our way here.
This is the kind of day that inspires my plump, domesticated geese to lumber as fast as their stout legs and flat feet will carry them while flapping their wings for all they're worth to get a few seconds (and occasionally more) of airborne bliss. Sometimes they are lifted up and carried by the wind and the sheer force of all their enthusiasm just over the fence and into the pasture next door. Then I have to scale railroad ties and barbed wire to go fetch them--honking and carrying on something terrible--back from their delusions of flying south.
And then I see the red tailed hawk.
He is sailing between the pinon trees on his golden wings, silent as an arrow shot from a the crossbow of a serious hunter. And right on his tail glides a magpie, a frankly rather scrawny one.
I am shocked, because this is the first magpie I've seen on our ranch. Maybe he's not too smart, and has managed to get himself lost. That would explain his rather shopworn appearance. We're a good two miles from the river here. And I'm even more surprised to see a magpie and a hawk together. Are they together? I ask myself. What are they doing? I wonder.
Well, if he's trying to run that red tailed hawk off, then the little magpie seems to be no match for the raptor who looks to me as if he came down into my chicken yard straight from the sun. A sun bird I am thinking as the magnificent fellow swoops through the trees and disappears.
Just as quickly, the magpie gives up the chase. Lands on the topmost branch of a pinon. Preens his rumpled but formal suit of feathers and begins to sing like Pavoratti. He'd been working so hard before to keep up with that hawk, I'm surprised he has any breath left in his body. The black and white bird makes chortling, whirring, whistlings, clackety-clack sounds in his throat, beak pointed into the air, as if he's celebrating something.
I walk to the edge of the fence to get a closer look, but that bird could care less about me, and continues his commotion, although I'm pretty sure he knows I'm there. As the magpie proceeds with his raucous, crackling, show-off symphony, I consider all that empty air in between the trees and think about what a strange thing this has been to see. I mull it over as I finish taking care of the hens and the geese, and I begin to entertain the idea that there's something more to this.
So I hunt around, and I find this old story. And I'm thinking it's true what they say. The same ones really are being told again and again and again. Whether you see it at the movies or read it in a book or an ancient myth. Or very possibly are just minding your own business and feeding the hens when the story unfolds right there in front of you, just above the chicken scratch.
Following up on yesterday's bellydancing class--the most fun I've had in I don't know when ...
All I've got to say is that any exercise that focuses on having this type of control over your hips and pelvis has got to be good for horseback riding too! The instructor--a really magnificent round and Rubinesque type of woman with all this golden hair who could move like I didn't know was possible--told us that because we are learning the tribal style, this whole idea of being upright and tall and long in the neck and spine is important. She reminded us that in many parts of the world, women are still carrying jars and bundles around on their heads, hence the whole posture idea, which is of course very important when riding our horses or vaulting.
She sent us newbies away from class with some exercises for our glutes, our psoas and our obliques. The first half an hour of the session was some serious rip-snorting belly dancing. (I didn't know my gluteal muscles could do that, or that's how some of that jiggling--sorry, that is I'm sure not the correct technical term--is produced. I'd always thought it was coming from the joints.)
The little finger tambourines sounded like about a hundred pairs of the jingle bobs on my fancy Spanish spurs. The energy in the studio, with all of that hip shaking and ululating, was ... indescribable. Well, the word rapturous does come to mind. (I'm not sure you're supposed to grin like an idiot when belly dancing.)
I suspect the techno geeks at the web development company next door thought they were under attack by a band of tribal women. (Or hoping they were.)
Furthermore, we have not even to risk the journey alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world. -- Joseph Campbell
It was cold and dark when I fed my horses this morning, and I was looking at the final hard, bright star that was lingering on the horizon, wondering, in the wake of the recent announcement about the impending layoffs at my husband's job, if I'd even know who I am without all of my stuff--you know, the trappings of my everyday life, the things for which I am grateful and at the same time take very much for granted.
The small ranch we've worked so hard for and which is our respite, private school for the kids, piano lessons ... the horses. I look at them in the darkness. They look back. They're not a very fancy lot, although I love them as if they had lineages a mile long.
Could I find them all good homes where they'd be loved or would they eventually become the sad rescue stories after years of being sold around?
How would I patch up the gaping hole in me if that's how this all shakes out?
Well, I just can't take that one any farther right now.
There are countless others today who are treading this same path with me. And we're all in the labyrinth waiting to see if we'll get done in by the Minotaur or not.
I'm not feeling like much of a hero at the moment.
Really cool photo by carlha on Flickr. Carlha's entire photo set on horses is exquisite.
"The greater the suffering, the greater the pleasure. That is nature's payback to riders for the homage they pay her by suffering. Velvet pillows, safari parks, sunglasses; people have become woolly mice. They still have bodies that can walk for five days and four nights through a desert of snow, without food, but they accept praise for having taken a one-hour bicycle ride. 'Good for you.' Instead of expressing their gratitude for the rain by getting wet, people walk around with umbrellas. Nature is an old lady with few friends these days, and those who wish to make use of her charms, she rewards passionately." Tim Krabbé, The Rider
I shall be thinking of this as the brisk wind howls around me and the sun is sinking even earlier below the horizon, as I try to squeeze in a hurried after-work ride on my horse in the thin autumn light, and I am being silly and lamenting the fact that I don't have an indoor riding arena.
