Category Archives: moving, breathing, feeling

Jul5

sweet, bitter

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I love summer.  I love the warm, sensuous mornings, the feel of water on my skin while swimming, the sounds of birds, the brilliance of night skies.  I love potato salad, ice tea, ice coffee, eating outside, anything outside.  I even love the sweat running down from under my riding helmet.  I love dancing in the heat, muscles looser, longer, more playful.  All sweet.

In the midst of summer’s sweetness this year is the bitter absence of my youngest daughter, and the accompanying inexplicable silence.  There are certain hellacious life experiences that feel like psychic whiplash.  Unexpected, brutal, painful  This is one of those.  This morning, Pam and I wept as we ate our peaches, sitting outside in the soft, curiously empty morning.  I said that I felt I could not contain both the bitter and the sweet of these days.

With this, I can neither carry it nor put it down.  The ache feels like it is carried in each of my cells, like a stain or a bruise. At the same time, the beauty of each day, the irresistible sweetness of my new granddaughter Laila Rose, the kindness of my daughter Bimala, the touch of a horse’s nose on my cheek, the caress of the water on my skin – all call me, hold me, soothe me.  Sweet, bitter, sweet, bitter.  Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. Keep walking, keep opening, keep hoping.

 

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Jun28

do one thing

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During my recent Aikido/Horsemanship with Mark Rashid, at one point he said, “Do one thing instead of 20.”  Returning home to ride on my own, I could feel myself starting to do 20 things with Amadeo, getting too busy with the reins, leg, mind.  I stopped.  I let the reins all the way out and we just stood there.  The one thing I focused on was feeling the inside of me connecting to the inside of him.  When he tried lowering his head, i said “good” and after a few moments, he relaxed all the way down.  When I picked up the reins again, the one thing was maintaining a feeling of internal softness in the contact.  And breathing.  We did that several times, with some walking in between.  I could feel him settling, looking around, calming, his whole body seeming to change texture.  Mine too.  When we started to trot, I needed to firm up a little, because for Deo, too much softness feels like no direction or structure, which is ineffective.  But the firming up has to have the softness all the way through it.

My daughter Bimala is getting very good at doing one thing.  Being with a baby is a lot like being with a horse.  Both require feel, timing, blending, balance and breath.  When we get too busy with Laila, she lets us know right away that we have lost one of those things.  Deo is the same.  The interesting thing is that with both of them, I am finding a deep quality of grounding and stillness.  One breath at a time.  Repeat.  Repeat.

Jun27

staying in the saddle

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Staying in the saddle means that regardless of how rough the ride, we try to maintain balance.  I am not talking just about riding here.  When our youngest daughter ran away and cut off all communication, dropping out of the college and basically shattering her family and mucking up her life, we all came unseated.  It took me about two months to even find my horse and try to get back on. I am back in the saddle, but there are days when my balance is poor, when I do not want to ride or even get up.

Those days a fewer and farther between.  The universe, curiously, has delivered me two great gifts:  An artist’s fellowship from the state of Connecticut and a fellowship from the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy.  I take those gifts to mean that not only must I ride forward, but I have to be firmly seated in my own life, my own work, moving into the days with a courageous heart.  When Mark Rashid told us to ride with “feel, timing, blending, balance and breath,” I took that as an instruction for living.  His idea is that those elements result in softness – the kind of irresistible Aikido softness that can move mountains.  My horses already feel the difference.  So do I.  My daughter may be lost, but it is that softness, if anything, that will open a way for her to return.