left: the Paso Fino in Vieques, right: drawings of horses by friends
year of the horse
We went around the table, starting and ending with a Horse person, but in Chinese Zodiac year order: first a horse, then a goat, followed by monkeys, rooster, dog, pig, rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, and ending again with the other horse in the room. Friends from college and from similar phases in life, we were surprised to find that we had a representative at dinner for pretty much every Zodiac year, meaning we had a span of at least 12 years among us. The prompt: what does the year of the horse mean to you, what will you carry into the year?
For me, this year and its imagery were all too easy—a latent horse girl, I am secretly awed by and pulled toward horses. I'm struck by their great strength, and by how much they reserve that strength for use in even greater endurance. I'm struck by how that strength comes from a near-constant grazing of tiny blades of grass. I'm struck by their watchful rest, the calm in their vigilance. I'm struck by their silliness, their grace. For me this year, I'm embarking on certain personal challenges: things I told myself I'm not strong enough for, can't do. I'd like to take from the horse: the strength in stillness, the strength in action, a restful building and storing of energy, an energetic leap into the doing.
For my friends, there were a lot of similar themes: the term "self-authorship" was floated, restfulness & exploration were discussed, action by saying "yes", strength in emotional disclosure and awareness. The other Claire discussed how all the time for preparation is for now, that now is the time to act and try and do. One of my most stoic friends, Kayla, brought up how horses sleep standing up, and they only lie down when they are sick. She found inspiration in their resilience and diligence. Josh brought up Boxer the horse from Animal Farm, as a reminder of our increasingly authoritarian times, and a reminder of with whom we should have solidarity. Camira shared some history, that the last year of the Fire Horse was 1966, a time of great social change, progress, and activity. The professional musician in the room, Reid, declared horses an inspiration in action: with a personal vow to make a record this year. Horses were celebrated for their sexiness, and it was declared to be a year of being sexy 💋!!!
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But now in this great year of action, where to start/what to do?
My initial interpretation of how I wanted to act, to do, was taken from David Lynch. Reading his bio/memoir Room to Dream, you find yourself looking for the source of his expansive, wide-ranging heart and vision. The best answer I could come up with was that he was always encouraged to create, to try anything, make anything, without seeking the validation or approval of parents or other adult figures. This seems to have translated to a supremely strong sense of self and intuition, legible even during his teenage years as a neighborhood ringleader, and followed by adult work of great power, mystery, and magic.
So in the past little while, I've been challenging myself to explore and try whatever idea comes into my mind: what if I try to draw this memory, what if I write her a poem, what if I go to that dance workshop, what if I make an audio recording of this moment? It's been a lot of fun, and honestly playful and experimental in a way that I was not exactly brought up to be. But it has also felt hobbyist, uncommitted, and isolated to a domestic and private mental realm. It hasn't felt that connected to my larger political and spiritual wishes, ideas jostling around my mind, knocking around in my soul, things that require years and collectivism.
For me, this year and its imagery were all too easy—a latent horse girl, I am secretly awed by and pulled toward horses. I'm struck by their great strength, and by how much they reserve that strength for use in even greater endurance. I'm struck by how that strength comes from a near-constant grazing of tiny blades of grass. I'm struck by their watchful rest, the calm in their vigilance. I'm struck by their silliness, their grace. For me this year, I'm embarking on certain personal challenges: things I told myself I'm not strong enough for, can't do. I'd like to take from the horse: the strength in stillness, the strength in action, a restful building and storing of energy, an energetic leap into the doing.
For my friends, there were a lot of similar themes: the term "self-authorship" was floated, restfulness & exploration were discussed, action by saying "yes", strength in emotional disclosure and awareness. The other Claire discussed how all the time for preparation is for now, that now is the time to act and try and do. One of my most stoic friends, Kayla, brought up how horses sleep standing up, and they only lie down when they are sick. She found inspiration in their resilience and diligence. Josh brought up Boxer the horse from Animal Farm, as a reminder of our increasingly authoritarian times, and a reminder of with whom we should have solidarity. Camira shared some history, that the last year of the Fire Horse was 1966, a time of great social change, progress, and activity. The professional musician in the room, Reid, declared horses an inspiration in action: with a personal vow to make a record this year. Horses were celebrated for their sexiness, and it was declared to be a year of being sexy 💋!!!
-----
But now in this great year of action, where to start/what to do?
My initial interpretation of how I wanted to act, to do, was taken from David Lynch. Reading his bio/memoir Room to Dream, you find yourself looking for the source of his expansive, wide-ranging heart and vision. The best answer I could come up with was that he was always encouraged to create, to try anything, make anything, without seeking the validation or approval of parents or other adult figures. This seems to have translated to a supremely strong sense of self and intuition, legible even during his teenage years as a neighborhood ringleader, and followed by adult work of great power, mystery, and magic.
So in the past little while, I've been challenging myself to explore and try whatever idea comes into my mind: what if I try to draw this memory, what if I write her a poem, what if I go to that dance workshop, what if I make an audio recording of this moment? It's been a lot of fun, and honestly playful and experimental in a way that I was not exactly brought up to be. But it has also felt hobbyist, uncommitted, and isolated to a domestic and private mental realm. It hasn't felt that connected to my larger political and spiritual wishes, ideas jostling around my mind, knocking around in my soul, things that require years and collectivism.
What I want most of all, is a world free of abuse, exploitation, violence, and me sewing a bunch doesn't feel like it's bringing that world much closer: I idealistically and generally believe human violence would dissipate if peoples' needs were met, if we had universal healthcare, clean air, clean water, clean food, a much much lower cost of living, a free press, time and space for people to be curious, to explore, to connect. But the problems not only seem intractable, and the opponents to such a utopia (insatiable, warmongering, colonizing, destructive, capitalistic) appear irremediable. It's obviously easier to burrow inward with hobbies then to actually take any tangible action toward a better, but seemingly impossible, future.
In transcendental meditation, you're given a mantra, and instructed to memorize it without writing it down or speaking it aloud to anyone. The goal is that the mantra will remain as untouched by association as possible. If you tell someone, you risk seeing their face during meditation, remembering when you told them, etc. If you write it down, you create a visual of the word, and a time and place of the writing. Either way, you risk transporting to the time and place of the telling during meditation, rather than to the ideal radical present.
I took this direction very seriously during my TM training, and have never told anyone nor written down my mantra. The warning feels true to me, and heeding it is a small price to pay for maintaining a place of meditative mental detachment. But I've been thinking about this direction in another light recently, that the miniature act of writing and/or speaking is a miniature act of actualization; these acts are the smallest building blocks of making an idea, wish, hope, or thought real and giving it shape.
My brain has been hijacked by an upbringing built entirely around a project-mindset, an evaluation-mindset, a grades-mindset, an achievement-mindset. I've undone much of this by committing to dilettantasy, but the mindset is still in the background and sometimes discourages me from truly trying things: but what will I have to show for it, but what can I point to at the end?
A part of wanting to DO in my horsey year of action I think means confronting the defeatism of this deeply-ingrained achievement logic: I didn't fail if I didn't try. Well what if we view doing as iterative, as experimental, as steps on a progression, with no final moment? What if we view the smallest building blocks of actualization as something, but not everything? With political wishes that require complex, difficult solutions, what if we start, try, learn, try more, learn more? No effort is meaningless, and there isn't an end. Thinking in vectors, rather than a fixed line or point
慢慢來
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more horses
The Misfits (1961), some of the last words uttered by Marilyn Monroe's character in her final film appearance: "Horse killers! Killers! Murderers! You're liars! All of you, liars! You're only happy when you can see something die! Why don't you kill yourself to be happy? You and your God's country! Freedom! I pity you! You're three dear, sweet, dead men!"
James Stephens' collection of Irish Fairy Tales, illustrations by Arthur Rackham
so dear to my heart (1948)
wifredo lam's horse-women
Taiwanese Gourmet. Reading from right to left, 大展鴻圖, dàzhǎnhóngtú – "May you realize your ambitions"
outside the Grand Street station
https://bodyhighgenerator.fkatwi.gs/
