Bluebirdy

My sweetest little Argentine Thoroughbred cross pony, Lola, plays with me at Horse Park in Woodside, California. This is our Fun Match on June 21, 2011. Lola is a better polo player than me.

Photos from my trip to Lisbon are here.

Was sitting overlooking the Rio Tejo in Lisbon when a girl walked up to me and asked if I’d like my photo taken. “Sure!” I said and handed her my camera. She looked a little surprised since she obviously wanted to take photos of me with her fancy camera so she could sell them to me. I continued with my arm extended, SLR wavering in my hand. She took it confusedly and snapped two quick, lame shots which turned out so similar I made them into my very own stereoscopic 3D likeness. Now it’s almost as if you’re here with me in Lisbon. How about that?

A lot of bad things have happened recently, including one thing ostensibly negative but that on further examination turned out to be an odd sort of thought exercise. I’ve been unhappy on and off at work, and a coworker tried to give me some advice that amounted to “play by the rules.”

“Jess, if you’re going to get what you want, you need to play by the rules,” she said. I should just play the game, be part of the “team.” I did think about this advice. I thought, she has nice things, she has a family, she has a house, and she has a career. She got all those things by playing by the rules. But what if those aren’t the things I’m sure I want – should I still play by the rules? What if I want them, but on entirely different terms? No white pickets, no 2.5 kids, no desk job, no oak dining table. What if playing by the rules is only going to get me what everyone else thinks I want?

I had a mainstream ex-boyfriend, a play by the rules kind of a guy, a guy who every mother would want their daughter to marry. He liked to point out his rebellious failure of a brother as the reason why you should always play by the rules. It was like your mother gesturing to the homeless guy on the street and saying this is what will happen if you don’t study hard in school. This is what will happen to you if you learn to play the ukelele, or get a tattoo, or try to be an archeologist instead of a lawyer.

“He was always raging against the man,” my ex-boyfriend would say. “See where that got him,” he’d add, with a wave of his hand. The brother was married to white trash, my ex would point out, lived in an old house in dire need of major renovations that he purchased with borrowed money from many family members, and had just had a baby that was colicky and crying and whiny. We visited them one Christmas, and the only thing I noticed beside the obvious that my ex had listed, was that they were undeniably happy. They had absolutely nothing that my ex would ever covet, but they were thrilled with whatever his brother’s rebellion had given (or not given) them.

I don’t want to make it sound like I’m a rebel without a cause. I’ve realized lately that when I suddenly stop playing the game it’s because something’s lacking in my life. I liken it to a vitamin deficiency, where you start eating really bizarre things like rocks and wood because you have no idea what’s missing. In the process you’ve become that “weird” person, the one who neither follows social constructs nor provides a good reason for not doing so. The less you conform, the more people start to dislike you because they can’t find any way to relate to you. In fact, the only people who are capable of doing so are other non-conformists, many of whom won’t understand you exactly, but will understand you in spirit. These are actually the people I need advice from and yet ironically, I spend a lot of time fearing their answers, because I know what they will say. They will tell me that fearing to stray will never get me my big dreams.

As a non-conforming friend said to me once, “If you ask your friends with little dreams for advice on your big dreams, what kind of answer can you possibly expect?”

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The strangest thing happened at the barn Sunday while I was taking care of my spotted mare. I’d left her in the crossties to dry after a bath on an unusually warm January weekend while I cleaned tack. While I was wiping down her bridle from a distance away I saw a girl walk up to her and take her photo. This in and of itself wasn’t unusual – people find spotted horses fascinating for whatever reason.

I walked back to the crossties and the girl hovered for a bit near my horse before finally asking, “Are you going to wash her?”

“Uh,” I said, looking at the mare’s wet and wild hair, “I just washed her. She has long hair so maybe she doesn’t look very clean?”

“Oh,” she responded. “What’s her name?”

This also wouldn’t be an unusual question, except that after I answered that one, a bevy of questions followed, including:

Hold old is she?
Where did you get her?
How much did you pay for her?
Where is she from? (as in, her breeding history)
How often do you come to take care of her?

I tried to answer these questions as best I could but I’ll admit some of them threw me off, including, “Is it hard to take care of her?” What does that even mean?

“It’s a big commitment, in terms of time and money,” I said, “but as for difficulty it’s not hard since I’ve been caring for horses for twenty-one years. I suppose if you were a newbie and never owned a horse before you’d feel a bit overwhelmed with the amount of care.”

The girl smiled pleasantly. She then looked down at my furry dog, who was dancing around at my feet.

“Oh, is that your dog? May I take a photo of her?”

The girl had a Russian, or maybe eastern European accent, with a curious affected way of speaking that I could only attribute to being from someplace else.

“Sure,” I said, “but she’s not very good at sitting still for photos.”

“I will take a video then,” she announced. I proceeded to run my dog through her gamut of tricks, which was basically one simple maneuver, “shake.” The tiny paw seems to entertain everyone, at least. Still, I wasn’t quite sure what she was going to do with a video of my dog running around sticking her foot in the air.

I finally asked the girl if she was riding here, or visiting friends, or what. As it turns out, she had recently been hired at the therapeutic riding center next to the pasture where I keep my horse.

“I want to help kids with disabilities,” she said, “but I don’t know much about horses. I am interested in taking lessons.”

I suggested various places to take riding lessons which she promptly punched into her phone. At this point we were interrupted by a lady from the therapeutic riding center who was desperate for the girl to start work today since one of her sidewalkers hadn’t shown up. She agreed to help and said goodbye to me and started to walk away, but then hesitantly turned and came back while I was brushing my mare.

“I have one more question for you,” she said. “I don’t mean to pry into your private life, but do you think having the horse has helped you with guys?”

I’m sorry, come again? My arm holding the brush slid limply off my horse’s neck. “Uh, I never really thought about that, I guess.” She stared at me earnestly, clearly hoping for a revelatory answer. “To tell you the truth,” I continued, “I think having the horses has gotten in the way of some of my relationships. Guys don’t understand why I spend so much time at the barn.”

She nodded enthusiastically but leaned in for more. “But has it helped you?” she half asked, half pleaded.

I racked my brain, and then it came to me. “I think people who work with other people and animals together have an understanding and empathy that people who only work with people or who only work with animals don’t have. I taught riding lessons for ten years. When I first started in my early twenties, I didn’t know the first thing about teaching. I was super shy, I didn’t know what to say to people, and I didn’t know how to respond to their problems with their horses. Luckily, I had a very observant and compassionate teacher who sat next to me and taught me how to teach. She showed me what to look for in riders, how to deal with all sorts of problems, and how to resolve conflicted interactions between riders and their horses. One of the things I learned that really stuck with me is that people who have problems with their horses have the same problems in their dealings with human beings.

“For example, a person who lets their horse get away with all kinds of bad habits because they’re too weak to enforce discipline typically has this same problem in their relationships with people. Their horses and their kids or spouses or whoever usually have bad attitudes, are not nice to be around. These people are door mats. You know what I mean? Other people control them, or ‘walk all over them,’ if you’ve heard that expression.”

“Yes,” she said, smiling.

“The opposite is also true. Someone who’s too dictating and authoritative will make their horses resentful or fearful or aggressive, or all of those things. If you’ve ever been around someone like that, who always has to be right and is often mean to you, you’ll find you have a similar response.

“The other thing you’ll find with horses is that if you aren’t devoted to them 100%, they’ll never ‘give you their all,’ you know? Like, they will never perform for you 100%. If you don’t come out and ride your horse everyday, he’s just never going to try that hard for you. I used to have a young horse I was training as a jumper, and the first six months I had him I only came out to ride him three times a week. He was really hard to work with and neither he nor I were having a fun time together. When I started coming out seven days a week, he literally ‘turned around’ in a month. He was a different horse. I could get on him and when we competed it was like he was reading my mind.

“It’s the same with people. To maintain relationships or friendships of any significance, you have to spend time with people, listen to them, know them, and care for them. You can’t build or maintain your relationships if you don’t put the effort into them.”

At this point I felt slightly embarrassed after going on like this for five minutes straight. The girl cocked her head curiously at me, waiting for more.

“I guess what I’m saying is that horses have taught me moderation and passion in all things. Don’t be too nice but don’t be too mean either. Listen to people and animals. Love people and animals. You’ll get what you give.”

She was waiting for the moral, clearly, as she still hadn’t said anything.

“If you have a nice horse you’ll find a nice man,” I said. “Your horse is sweet because you are, and I’m sure there’ll be a guy who comes along and realizes that.”

Delighted, she thanked me and sort of twirled away, tucking her phone with all of its riding lesson contacts into her back pocket.