Author Archives: Paula Josa-Jones

May15

the faraway horse

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Here is a new chapter in the story of Nelson.  For the past month, he has not let me get near him.  We went from being good friends to something else.

There are a few reasons for this, having to do with out-of-my-control changes by his owners in his training program.

I like and respect the other person who is working with Nelson.  He is smart, horse savvy and can do things with horses that I would not attempt.  Having said that, it saddens me that Nelson no longer trusts me.  All humans look alike, I guess.

Today, I felt that he was looking at me, through me in a way, and that I had become unreadable to him.After a long while of hiding, he did let me get near him and I was able to pet him and do some very simple movement work with him.  But mostly he was ready to take off if the wind went through the trees.  For the first time I felt like it did not matter how calm and settled I was.  He was on his own track.  Watching his own inner movie, nervous system on full alert.

At the same time that this is happening, there is another Mustang around.  The lovely folks at Little Brook Farm in Old Chatham have brought Amado, a Mustang straight from the wild (after six months in a holding pen), to their farm.  Summer Brennan, the daughter of the owner, has entered the Extreme Mustang Makeover, a competition in which she hopes to take Amado as far in his training as she can in three months. She is documenting the process here.

When I first heard about the Extreme Makeover idea, I was nervous.  “Extreme” anything and horses are not really a good fit.  But Summer and Amado are.  Her idea is that he will tell her what he can do and when.  The basis of the training is love.  You can see it in the pictures.

I don’t know what will happen with Nelson. I am remembering something that I have heard Linda Tellington-Jones say when she encounters a difficult situation with a horse:  “Isn’t that interesting.”  That opens the door, and lifts the limits, which is exactly what Nelson and I need right now.

 

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May14

naked

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I was doing some research for my book, Horse Dancing, and came across the Jacques Derrida book, The Animal That I Therefore Am.  The book was sparked by Derrida’s experience when his cat followed him into the bathroom in the morning.  He asks what this animal sees when it sees this naked man.

Derrida aside, I wonder about our emotional nakedness before our animal companions.  I know that I feel more exposed and more uncovered with my horses than anywhere else.  I have to be more self-aware, more vulnerable with them than I do at any other time.  It doesn’t happen all the time, because I am not always that conscious, but if I let myself be seen, if I am listening, there it is.

I wonder if we mostly can’t get quiet or humble enough to really feel that sense of nakedness, if we are just too busy being the apex species to let that in.  Or it is too much trouble to take off all the armor, all the habitual responses to our animal companions.  What is it like to allow ourselves to be seen, to be observed?

I read in one of Klaus Hempfling’s books that humans get triggered into violence with horses because the horses uncover their vulnerability, their lack of skill, their awkwardness, their ineffectiveness.  I have experienced that many times.  You can’t ride for very long without stumbling into that tarpit.

So here is a question to which I would love some responses:  how do you experience your nakedness with animals?  How much do you let yourself be seen?

May13

mother

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This is the ending of a story – a memoir –  that I wrote about my mother, who died five years go of Alzheimer’s disease. 

Your dementia.  I’ve opened the parts of this wry gift for nearly eight years.  It keeps arriving like pieces of a silver set from some cruel bride’s registry.  The fork and spoon sets are complete, the knives a continuing sharp rain.  In these last years, though, the gifts have become more tender.  Losing your mind has let us come close to you without fear.  I stroke you, feed you, rub fragrant oils on your feet and hands.  Your body is our meeting ground.  Nothing holds us apart.  I love you boundlessly.

These are the things you never told me.  Your deepest sorrows and hopes.  You never told me your dreams or how you saw the sky.  You hung opinions round me like a house of mirrors, and I was always turning, twisting, spinning, trying to glimpse you behind the skimming shadows.  You never told me you were leaving.  That leaving would happen with startling, irregular cadence, an evaporation of being from body, an unsnapping of essential self from the edges of a shrinking world.  You never told me that you would leave and stay, all at once.  You never told me that heaven lies nestled in the exact center of the present moment.

I listen to the song on the Oh Brother, Where Art Thou CD.  “Oh Sisters, let’s go down, down to the river and pray.  Oh Brothers, let’s go down, down to the river . . .”  I sing along, loving the thrill of voices, the invocation of family.  Then, “Oh Fathers, let’s go down . . . ”  Gears slip and I am ratcheted into sorrow, the death of my beloved, ferocious, complicated father opening like a fresh wound.  The song goes on:  “Oh Mothers, let’s go down.”   And you are there.  I fall down, skinning knees, hands, face, on the harsh rocks of love and fear.  “Oh Mothers, let’s go down, down to the river and pray.”

Nothing will be every be truly finished with you. In death you are a mystery of loose ends and I have come undone with you.  My heart is split by this song.  I feel a chaos of the heart – arteries, portals, chambers all opening, closing, opening – a beating cacophony.  The house of love thrown open at last.