This is the work I care about in Wordle. It’s a playful way to sift what is important. As I am refining focus, Wordle and Michael Bungay Stanier’s Do More Great Work and Get Unstuck and Get Going are great tools.
As you sift, what stays and what do you set free?
This is not just a story about a horse. It is about the commute from what we know to what we do not know. What we fear.
For a long time this picture shows the only way that I could touch Nelson on his left side. He would not let anyone stand on his that side. That was where he had been freeze-branded by the BLM after his capture. Who knows what else had happened there. It is like the dark side of the moon – the part we can’t see. Unexplored, alien.
Over time, I got him to let me move to that side. Usually by walking around his tail and walking calmly toward his head. But every time I would do it, he was nervous. As if it were the first time, and someone showing up on that side was a nasty surprise.
Today was that way. I haven’t seen Nelson for a couple weeks, and when I walked around and stood on his left and went to touch him on that side, his skin jumped, and he spooked off. Like a boogeyman had popped out of the ground there. I did it again, and he was still nervous, but let me touch him. I clicked and gave him a treat (he is moderately Clicker Trained).
As I went to touch him again, a curious thing happened. I felt myself drop into what felt like a warm lake of calm, as if I had stepped into my avatar, who possessed transformational powers. “What’s this?” I thought. Nelson dropped his head, and relaxed. Immediately.
Because their vision is not binocular in the way that ours is, horses experience the two sides of their bodies differently. When you introduce something on one side, you have to do the same thing on the other side, because that side has not processed the information.
I often imagine that I am like Nelson in this way. One side that is pretty mellow and can handle what comes along. The other side that is spooky and weird. Not exactly Jekyll and Hyde, but disconcerting to those who live with me nonetheless. It is almost like falling out of being a predator and into being prey. Back and forth. Actually, I think most of us do this all the time. “I’m safe.” “I’m going to die.” Back and forth.
After my calm warm lake moment I could touch him all over. We were both breathing. I felt these huge blooms of love for him. That is, in fact, the glue – the tether – the thing that smooths the journey from one side of the moon to the other.
How do you commute?
Pam White “Missouri Mud Run”
Yesterday when I was riding the Arabian that lives in a field down the road all by itself got loose. He came tearing down the road to visit the horses at our farm. Brandi told me that everyone out in the fields was galloping from excitement, and I should probably stay in the indoor arena. Capprichio, the horse I was riding, didn’t need to see the horses to feel all that energy. He arched his neck and strutted. The loose Arab ran up and down the road, tail flagging. Everyone else galloped in their fields with their tails up. “This is fun.” they seemed to be saying. “Let’s play!!” Finally the lonely, running horse was caught, and things settled down.
We are herd animals too. But I am not sure we have as much fun as the horses. Sometimes I think that we just want to get back to our computers instead of partying down when one of us gets loose and running.
Flash mobs want to be herd-like, but they are planned, choreographed. Other kinds of herds are more scary, mob-like. Things that get large numbers of us running are also scary. 9/11, tsunamis, earthquakes. This is the problem with being predators. It takes natural disasters to get us going. One loose human doesn’t do it, unless of course, they are armed.
Herds are curious things. With horses, signals get passed almost invisibly with movement. A twitch of an ear, a look, a sudden start, or a mosey travel like ripples through the herd. They all mean something. “Look out!” “Better grass here.” “Get away from my mare!”
We are much less savvy movement-wise. From the horse’s perspective, we are bumblers, clomping along meaninglessly, much noise signifying not much.
That is why I recommend horse dancing. It is about waking up to the ripples we make and the ripples we feel. Learning to be better herd-speakers, learning to feel the currents among us.
How do you feel your herd?
The churning of the Sea of Milk or the Milky Way is an interesting Hindu creation myth. It involves a serpent and a mountain.
In the story, the gods held the tail of the snake, while the demons held its head, and they pulled on it alternately causing the mountain to rotate, which in turn churned the ocean. The mountain began to sink and so the god Vishnu in the form of a turtle came to the rescue and supported the mountain on his back.
I got to thinking about this story as I was reading The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. He says that the demon is resistance – the thing that gets in the way of our fulfilling our goals.
As I read, I kept thinking, “Resistance to the resistance is still resistance.” This troubled me. Later in the book, Pressfield speaks of angels, muses, allies. They are, he tells us, forces counter-poised against the resistance.
“More resistance,” I thought.
So my question is: Is all this churning (effort, battle, resisting resistance, etc.) necessary to create a sparkling Milky Way? To create at all? Is war really how to make art?
Then I thought about riding, and how all the resistance in the world is useless. How it is by aligning, opening – finding the onward, flowing, shaping, guiding quality in the riding – I become part of that glorious movement. The “join-up” as Monty Roberts says.
Abraham teaches that resistance is just tethers us to what we don’t want. That when I say “no” to something, I bring it to me – special delivery. Because no is just the other end of the stick from “yes,” the tails side of the coin.
What are you resisting? And what is the opposite of resistance?
