Author Archives: Paula Josa-Jones

tail, breath

I took many, many pictures of Capprichio yesterday.  He is a black stallion, a Baryshnikov among horses and the love of my horse life.  He is also very equanimous about having his picture taken.

Some horses are not.  Sanne, the Lily of Holland, Pam White’s big Friesian, is very cagey, wary and not especially cooperative.  he is not exactly nervous, but he is an avoider (much like myself).

That brings me to another subject.  After a certain age, I did not want my photo taken. I am more than a little embarrassed about this.  I would like to be easier with it.

I got some significant help yesterday when I watched the film Breath Made Visible about the now ninety year old dancer and choreographer Anna Halprin.  It is stunning.  She is stunning.  There is a glory in her that is so rare, so unabashed, so full that I just sat in silence for many moments after the film.  (It is available on Netflix.)

What this has to do with for me (in part) is a willingness to be seen, to be witnessed, to be held in the attention of a single lens or a large audience.  These are the waters that I am stepping into again now.  At the end of the film, Halprin says that she wants her dances and her dancing to connect to something profound and shared.  (I am paraphrasing badly.)

That is true for me as well.  What I danced about before is not what I want to dance now.  In the past I made beautiful, feral dances that were like a Chinese sliding block puzzle:  you had to work hard to discover the order, the relationships and the meaning.  Now I want to dance you into the eye of the storm and into my wild heart.  I cannot wait to see what will happen.

Watch this film.  It is not to be missed.

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the softest place

There are two places to kiss a horse’s nose.  One is in the soft spot between the nostrils, where the two lines are here on Nelson’s nose.  The other is between the top lip and the outer rim of the nostril.  There is no silk or velvet, absolutely nothing that is as soft as those two places, nestled around the fragrant breath.

Nelson and I are getting reacquainted.  He is allowing me to be near him, but his dark side is dark again.  Not sure why.  He and I have not been able to work in our usual ways for a lot of complicated reasons.  Whatever has happened, all the cues that we built between us are rinsed away.  Today I tried to remind him, and he was doing his best, but at the same time, telling me that he does not feel easy with the things that used to be easy.

The one thing that he was totally happy about was having his picture taken.  Again, not sure why.  Maye it is the clicking sound that is like the click that I make when he does something that I have asked him to do.  So I tried an experiment, and took a lot of photos of Capprichio today as well.  He also was very interested in the camera, but more pushy.