The horses do not…
lower themselves without reason…
Ask a woman
from Ohio about actual horses
& they will be able to move,
sometimes without their body,
to places that feel like everywhere
now that they’ve been there…
~ Darren Demaree, from “Emily as Every Time I’m Asked to Write a Poem…” in What Are Birds Journal (Issue 1.1)
Notes: Poem: (via Boston Poetry Slam). Photo: Anna Attlid (via See More)
If you move
soft enough through the wind or woods,
they say the sun will make a space for you.
Some of your regrets might soften. I move
terribly. I crush twigs and spiders but the horses
say nothing of it; they let me pet their long manes.
I hop on and we walk out to the end of wanting.
What is God? I ask them.
They tell me, Yes.
~ Bret Elizabeth Jenkins, from “Horses Explain Things to Me
Notes: Poem via Memory’s Landscape. Photo by Alison Porwol
Zereeseis Player, age 12: “They taught me how to be respectful, they taught me how to listen, they’ve taught me not to be disobedient to others, and treat people like they want to be treated.”
Farrah Akbar, age 8: “I would say, if you’ve never seen a horse or touched a horse, just touch it. Because if you touch it, then you’ll feel the soul.”
At equine-therapy programs like Compton Jr. Posse in Los Angeles, inner-city adolescents find a refuge from drugs and street-gang culture by developing equestrian skills and learning to regard the knowing gazes of 1,000-plus-pound horses and guide their beguiling power. In return for striving in school, the program’s participants, ranging in age from 8 to 18, are taught to ride horses, groom them and clean their stables. These experiences keep them within the horse’s “personal circle.” Horses have a profound effect on humans. “Whether they have a physical handicap or an emotional handicap or a mental handicap, when you’re around a horse,” Akbar says, “the energy is so powerful that it tunes the body up…
Something extraordinary occurs when we’re in the presence of a fellow sentient being. When we let go of language’s tacit conceptual constraints and judgments, we allow ourselves a kind of time travel toward our own inner animal. Science is revealing the ways that the physiology of our psychology can be found across species: the common neuronal structures and attendant nerve wirings that we share in varying measures with a startling array of both vertebrates and invertebrates, including fellow primates, elephants, whales, parrots, bees and fruit flies. Animal therapy makes us aware of this cross-species interconnectivity on the purest, subconscious level…It has been established that the tactile element alone in animal therapy releases endorphins, so called feel-good hormones that counteract the trauma hormones of adrenaline and cortisol.
…therapists involved in such programs speculate that their benefits actually derive from shutting down for a time some of our brain’s higher and sometimes cacophonous cognitive functions…Rather than augmenting higher-level consciousness, a substance like psilocybin actually shuts down our brain’s ego center, which, under duress, can confer crippling fear, guilt and insecurity, and instead allows people access to their unfettered emotions and sense of childlike wonder. Allows them, in other words, a mind-altering walk in the wood with no names…
“He looked down,” Martin recalls, “and she just gave him a little lick, and suddenly I couldn’t stop him from crying. Just that connection set free all of this stuff inside of him. She was the catalyst. There’s that ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ thing that happens. That’s real.”
~ Charles Siebert, excerpts from Why Close Encounters With Animals Soothe Us (NY Times, May 18, 2017)
Autumn morning.
The horses in nearby fields are standing motionless.
The pony already has a heavier coat; it seems too soon.
Her eye is dark and large, the lashes scanty.
Walking close, one hears the steady sound of grass being eaten,
the peace of the earth being milled.
~ James Salter, Light Years
Photo: Med777
“Dark Horse” won “The Audience Award in the World Cinema Documentary Competition” at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.
“He was bred from allotment. How can he be a success?”
Whether you are a horse person, or not (I’m not), this was something to see. Don’t miss it. 87 minutes of inspiration.
Find it on Amazon Video.
Thank you Susan.
Photos taken by Eric Kanigan in Iceland on January 4-6, 2016
As American Pharoah came out of the far turn and squared his shoulders to let his rider Victor Espinoza stare down the long withering stretch of Belmont Park, a sense of inevitability surged through this mammoth old grandstand. The fans in a capacity crowd strained on the tips of their toes and let out a roar from deep in their souls. It was going to end, finally — this 37-year search for a great racehorse. […]
But as American Pharoah bounded into the stretch amid a deafening roar, the memories of the gritty Affirmed, the speedy Seattle Slew (1977) and that tremendous machine Secretariat (1973) were summoned from backside to grandstand, and rightfully so.
No one doubted that American Pharoah was about to enter the history books. He was bouncing down the lane as if jumping from one trampoline to another, and no one was going to catch him. […]
“The crowd was just thundering,” he said. “I was enjoying the crowd and the noise and everything happening.”
Materiality gave chase for a mile, but American Pharoah picked up his tempo and shook that rival off at the mile.
“Steady, steady,” Espinoza said to himself. […]
In the saddle, Espinoza felt a rush that had twice eluded him. He was on California Chrome last year and War Emblem for Baffert, only to remember how two very good colts staggered beneath him and the collective gasp of more than 100,000 disappointed people rustled within him. […]
But not this time — Espinoza dropped the reins on his colt and let the muscled bay take him home. When he was a boy in his native Mexico, Espinoza had been afraid of horses. Now, at 43, he knew they were a gift. Beneath him, American Pharoah’s strides were getting longer and longer, but Espinoza felt as if he were riding on a cloud.
“You don’t even feel him,” he said. “It feels like you are going in slow motion.”
~ Joe Drape, NY Times: Riding Into History by Five and a Half Lengths
Photo: TBO
There were a lot of other things he no longer had to deal with.
He was like one of those horses,
who having shaken off the jockey,
slow down, dreamily, to a gentle trot,
while the others are still bursting their lungs
in pursuit of a finish line and an order of arrival.
— Alessandro Baricco, from Mr. Gwyn
Notes: Photo Source. Quote: The Journey of Words
There is a story in Zen circles about a man and a horse. The horse is galloping quickly, and it appears that the man on the horse is going somewhere important. Another man standing alongside the road, shouts, “Where are you going?” and the first man replies, “I don’t know! Ask the horse!” This is also our story. We are riding a horse, we don’t know where we are going, and we can’t stop. The horse is our habit energy pulling us along, and we are powerless. We struggle all the time, even during our sleep. We are at war within ourselves…We have to learn the art of stopping – stopping our thinking, our habit energies, our forgetfulness, the strong emotions that rule us. When an emotion rushes through us like a storm, we have no peace.
– Thích Nhât Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching: Transforming Suffering Into Peace, Joy and Liberation
Credits: Quote – Sensual Starfish. Image: landscapre
Here’s Bud’s 2015 Super Bowl XLIX Puppy Commercial.
If you missed Budweiser’s 2014 Award Winning SuperBowl Ad, find it here: Puppy Love
Thanks Susan.
“20 years ago, Steven Millward tragically broke his neck falling off a rodeo horse; now, he must call upon his friend, veteran horse whisperer Grant Golliher, to gentle the new colts about to enter his herd. Through Grant’s compassion and dedication to the horses, Steven becomes inspired to live his dreams of riding once again.”
“The Horsemen: The traditional ‘Rounding of the Mares’ has been with the Almonte horsemen for generations. Over a thousand horses are driven across the plains and through the towns of rural Spain. Being a horseman in Almonte is to live the tradition of our ancestors that has existed for over 500 years, to maintain the balance between nature and man. It is something so rooted inside of us, in our blood, that we are born horsemen and our children are born horsemen. The first thing they want to do is go to the marshlands with their fathers and grandfathers. For us the marshlands, the field, the nature, is a religion, a way of life, an identity. It’s a proud responsibility to because you have to maintain what you love. We are horsemen, living in unity with nature and our values. It is a community and a union, between animal and man. I think for a man, where he has lived, what his elders have passed onto him, if he doesn’t preserve this then life has little meaning.”
“Roshi once told us that there were three different kinds of horses: with one, just a tug at the reins made them start moving; the second, a kick in the flanks and they were off; and then there were those that had to be beaten to the bone with a whip before they started to move. “Unfortunately,” he said, “most human beings are the third kind.” He told us we act as though we were going to live forever. “Wake up,” he said.
~ Natalie Goldberg
Thank you Glenn Weissel for nominating me for the Sunshine Award. Thank you for Cristi Moise @ Simple. Interesting., ForOnePlease and Ivon Prefontaine @ Teacher As Transformer for nominating me for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award. I’m humbled by your nominations.
As to seven facts about me: (1) I’ve never been to Paris. New Zealand. Or Australia. (2) I’m the breadwinner in our family but have absolutely no clout. (3) I have insomnia (like now). The excuse tonight, Zeke crowded me out of bed. (4) We’re empty nesters in less than 3 weeks. (sigh) (5) I’m afraid of heights yet have no fear of flying. (6) I’m a sap with babies and animals (not fish so much). (7) I relish Saturday afternoon naps (and Sunday afternoon naps for that matter). (Bonus Fact) I’m a lucky man in so many ways. Too many too count. And I’m grateful for it all.
In return, I’d like to nominate the following bloggers for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award:
To accept the award, the rules are:
And here’s a few of the inspiring bloggers’ posts of the week:
“When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age.In middle age I was assured greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ships’ whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, once a bum always a bum. I fear this disease incurable. I set this matter down not to instruct others but to inform myself….A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we not take a trip; a trip takes us.”
~ John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Oh, to write and think like Steinbeck. A master with words who can whisk me away…
Source: the-little-deer. Image Source: tomorrowstragedy
GOOD SUNNY WEDNESDAY MORNING!!!!
Here’s my selection of the most inspiring posts and moments of the week:
My Rachel was looking for research for a summer internship project to answer the question: “Are Leaders Born or Made.” The first person that came to mind to help was Susan Barrett Kelley @ Great Moments. Prior to jumping on this blogging train in 4Q11, I had never spoke to or met Susan but had come to admire her blog posts. And, yet I didn’t hesitate to drop her an email asking for help. (Love these blogging connections. Powerful.) Within several hours of my request, Susan had replied and the opening line in her email was: “Oh, this question is like handing a microphone to Charlie Sheen and asking if he has anything to say…” She proceeded to offer links to research papers, web sites and her own point of view on the subject. My reaction: Inspired. How I managed to get wired to fantastic human beings on this ride…
Mimi @ Waiting for the Karma Truck in a return visit to inspiration row with her post titled: Post This: “The Post-It notes had one of three messages – “You’re Terrific”, “Smile” or “Have A Wonderful Day”… I started at the gym, surreptitiously placing notes on the handle of an exercise bike, on the mirror in the locker room and on the windshields of two cars in the parking lot. Honestly? I felt both tremendously silly (and I do silly very well) and sneaky (I don’t do that as well) . Onto a quick meeting, where I left one Post-It on the panel of the receptionist’s desk and again on a windshield. At Starbucks I put one on the cash register (there was no one behind me in line – the place was empty for a change), left one on the sugar/cream counter and in the ladies’ room…Talk about stepping outside one’s comfort zone…(Finish reading this awesome post at this link.)
Live & Learn 