To be clear, I’ve never actually seen a man about a horse. I wish I had, not only because I like people and horses, but also because there’s something about this sort of clear-cut, no-nonsense focus that pulls at me.
The morning my sister’s father in law died, he left his wife and home saying he was off to see a man about a horse. I love how husbandry settles in layers over this provincial beginning to an exceptional day. While this isn’t my story to tell, I’m caught up in some of the notions that float like dust motes around it— a distinct sweetness, an oblique haunting, a practicality and direction that frankly escapes most of my days.
How would it be, to know exactly where you were headed, to be on your way to the very place that the desires of your heart pointed you towards? To have, even for one, final day, a decided-upon destination? To set off to talk with a horse guy– one who would surely tell delightfully tall tales about the horse (concerning its magical boulder and ravine-traversing powers, its glorious lineage, its value), to gaze upon the animal in question, breathe in its horse-ness, stroke its shoulders, let auburn glints– flashes of sunshine off flank– dazzle one’s eyes. I can even now smell the sweet hay, feel the stiff velvet nap of the horse’s neck and the soft whiskery velvet of the horse’s nose… and I try to imagine the sure confidence of making a good horse decision, with the horse’s warmth radiating from the palm of my hand to my core.
I live in a community where this particular slant of being seems to come natural. Well, I shouldn’t say “slant”, because it’s entirely upright. There’s people– young and old, men and women– whose life rhythms are determined by seasons: planting, harvesting, the precarious births of lambs and calves in early spring… determined, but not dependent upon, because self-actuation and self-sufficiency is as fierce here as humor is mild. These sally-forthing people care much about– and yet move quickly through– the fates of their corn, wheat, alfalfa, livestock. They mourn in efficient gestures the early and late frosts, the grasshopper pressure, the newborn calf, birthed afield outside the barn and left to freeze to death by that rare, sad pariah of the herd: the stubborn, confused cow.
And then they move on with the day’s work– bringing the other cows in with a load of hay, absorbing the contented sounds of their livestock’s chewing with satisfaction. They greet a neighbor with understated anecdotes and dry jokes. I could listen a long time to their voices, the slight tang of humor and grit laced through them.
One of the first years we lived here, half the community showed up spontaneously to help one farmer whose corn had been crushed, just ahead of harvest, in a micro-storm… showed up entirely, I believe, out of affection, respect, and a practical understanding of feasts and famines. A half- township of people spread out in a field, leaning over flattened stalks, gathering ripe cobs. Like a scene in a Tolstoy novel (or Laura Wilder’s memoirs), saving the harvest.
I said I have never gone to see a man about a horse, and it is true… and lately, the longing to be a woman who would is a thing too. At least, the longing for a way forward for my too easily distracted brain, my unsure hands, my broken heart (not to be a drama queen– but current deficits in feeling useful, accomplished, competent… in addition to any other minor, everyday thing, like missing my children, losing an apricot tree’s bloom to frost, seeing less and less hair on my head– this equals heartbreak).
Today I don’t know anything well enough– including myself, and what I want (what I really, really want)– to set off to see anyone about a horse, literal or metaphorical. Or a cat, or even (without the swirling demands of my snake-loving daughter) a bag of dead, frozen mice.
Having gone so wildly afield with the ducks…
Having begun (I don’t care if this sounds irrelevant; to me it is so germane) but not finished countless paintings (lately, collages) and craft projects (oh, the seashell fragments, the crooked box of blue broken glass, the pistachio shells, the duck feathers and bits of twine), and abandoned nigh to twenty sewing projects (the sheer mass of which crowds me right out of the laundry room– the laundry room being my last hope for an art studio/private writing space, as well as a pantry and sewing room). Having choked for too many days on morning pages (my most important writing project). Since I tend to live in a slant, versus in straightforward single-minded perpendicularity.
There was this weekend last month that Frank and I meant to celebrate, my birthday landing somewhere in the midst. Frank took a couple days off, both of us eager to party in some nebulous (but promising) way. On the Wednesday before that weekend, yearning to wear something new and beautiful on our as yet undefined upcoming celebrations, and knowing it would likely be chilly, I decided to finish one of three half-sewn jackets in my procrastinated sewing pile… but then, I couldn’t just pick one, so I picked two, compromising my focus.
Nevertheless, I was determined. I’ve met crazier deadlines, accomplished more outlandish feats before. Hang on to that thread, girl! Do the things! Nothing gets done if nothing gets done!
The fit had gone slightly amiss in one jacket (my too-narrow shoulders in conflict with my too-full bust meant the neckline gaped unbecomingly), and the drape of the other was wrong, and there was a need for buttonholes (or loops), and just the right buttons for each jacket (covered buttons would be best), and these simple things I was sure I could tackle in a day, besides also maybe a bit of writing, drawing (if not painting), meal-making and cleanup, not to mention duck duty– leaving at least one day before Friday (that would be Thursday) that I could clean the house and make cake, and awake Friday morning (Frank’s first day off) a contented Scarlett O’ Hara, with the sun breaking over my out-stretched arms. Ready to play in not just one but two beautiful jackets (so I could switch one for the other from one day to the next), warmth and loveliness amidst the still vague but certain-to-be-wonderful festivities that awaited.
I spent the whole of that Wednesday trying to cover one button (out of seven) for the first of the two jackets, hour after hour, with failure after failure. Desperate for any success, I swerved my afternoon attention to a pair of trousers that I’d nearly finished two months before– all it was missing was buttonholes, which I decided to sew in by hand (thinking hand-sewn buttonholes would be prettier? They weren’t). Which probably took longer to do than making an entire cake and mopping the kitchen would have.
I did finish the trousers. This seemed both miraculous and devastatingly anticlimactic.
Towards afternoon on Thursday, having ruined yet another button cover kit (finally, I read a byline in tiny script beneath the instructions, which said to only use thin fabric… mine was a thick brocade, so… no wonder) and wrecked the first jacket (but not convincingly/completely wrecked? So that I am still unsure whether or not to throw the whole mess away?) by cutting a new neckline in it (slashing a new neckline), I gave up. Sat down, defeated, to work on a poem (which went nowhere, really). Eventually, I abandoned that too, and put all my scant hair up into two slim barrettes (this is how scant my hair is– only two barrettes), and put on old unlovely jeans to go to Costco with Frank to buy some essential, irrelevant-to-birthdays thing I cannot remember anymore– other than it definitely wasn’t pie, cake, or ice cream. Which were really the only things I actually wanted. Besides two perfectly tailored beautiful jackets with buttons that matched.
Friday, the time for sewing projects long past, we drove a couple hours south and took in an art exhibit featuring Brian Kershisnik’s work. Well, Frank milled around patiently while I feasted my eyes upon it (I wore the trousers with the new buttonholes, and alternative hair to cover my scant locks… a whole new psychological world to explore there). Here was whimsy and delight, droll and sacred beauty. A woman leaned into her journey with a constellation rolled up into a star-studded ball on her back. A child poked a dead mermaid’s tail with a stick. Another woman napped, with a small group clustered nearby, hesitant to awaken her. I couldn’t speak… struck by the beauty, intensity, and wonderful strangeness of inspired focus, ideas translated with confidence into image. Projects started, worked through, finished.
Before we returned home, we visited two of the three daughters we miss so much, and our one and only (and favorite) granddaughter, and were happy.
Saturday dawned, and there were still no jackets and still no other celebration plans (I couldn’t decide, wanting too many things all at once, and Frank wouldn’t, because it was my birthday weekend)— besides this one random default: my sitting alone, head wrapped in a bandana, with my laptop at the kitchen table (because the laundry room, with my little “desk”, still overflowed with projects), typing a thing to publish on my obscure blog (yes, there were tears; no, there wasn’t cake). Whilst Frank cleaned the garage and listened to a Brandon Sanderson book (appreciation for Sanderson is a minor irreconcilable between Frank and I).
Frank had long been chafing at the chaos in the garage, and even I was sure that if the garage were organized and tidy, it would establish a much-needed habitat-for-clear-thought boundary. Both our ways of being in the world would be less slant, more upright… there might even be an obvious way forward. Enough focus to see a man about a horse, build a photo booth for our son’s wedding (Frank’s current dream), finish sewing one jacket before beginning another. Start and complete important, beautiful things (no more impossible buttons). Or just chuck, with light hearts, everything out but… what? the ducks? And drive down south to play with the granddaughter.
