I Touched A Horse

Yesterday I went to visit my friend Aristotle, who lives at the West end of the Ranch in a house on a hill, which he calls Acropolis. We have passed many hours sitting on his deck, kvetching and philosophizing, and I am always grateful for the touchstone of his friendship. His son-in-law and granddaughter had visited him the previous week, and they pulled over along the way to look at the friendly horses who come up to the fence by the road. Upon arrival at Aristotle’s house, the little girl had run in excitedly with this gleeful announcement: “I touched a horse!”

It occurred to me (of course) that this is pretty much the meaning of life. That kind of wonder and amazement could justifiably accompany any number of experiences that we often take for granted. Imagine if we really paid attention, and gave it all its due of wonder and respect? I don’t know if it would ultimately help save the planet, but it surely couldn’t hurt, and in the meantime, we’d have a lot more joy.

It reminded me also of when my eight-year-old best friend Virginia telephoned me to say, “Cynthia, guess what?! BEST news ever! Someone borrowed a book! People are using our little library!”

I am trying to maintain this mind set, but it isn’t always easy, even here in wonderland. We’re being bombarded by more bad news than we can possibly assimilate, problems that seem insoluble. Maybe we can use some wisdom from the gurus at this junction, starting with these words from Indigenous Hopi elder, White Eagle:

“This moment humanity is going through can be seen as a portal and as a hole. The decision to fall into the hole or go through the portal is up to you. If you…consume the news twenty-four hours a day, with little energy, nervous all the time, with pessimism, you will fall into the hole. But if you take this opportunity to look at yourself, rethink life and death, take care of yourself and others, you will cross the portal. Take care of your home, take care of your body…when you are taking care of one, you are taking care of everything else.”

In addition to social demands, White Eagle emphasizes that there is a spiritual dimension to the crisis we are navigating. “The two go hand in hand,” he tells us. We are advised to look at the big picture from above, like an eagle.

But we should also let ourselves feel happy sometimes. I’ve been telling myself that for a long time now. It is through joy that one resists. So, is this world a portal to pass through, or a hole to fall into? We get to choose.

Someone told me with great certainty that she believes there are many realms, maybe even billions of layers of reality, that are no less real than this one that we perceive. I think it’s quite feasible, but the dimension in which I’m living is already so bountiful, I can barely take it in.

My friend Treebeard used to do a mathematical proof to demonstrate that everything that was happening was actually impossible. And yet, here it was, happening.

One day, not so many years ago, my husband stopped by to visit his elderly mother, and he found her standing in front of the window, looking out and watching how the wind was rippling the grass and trembling the trees and pushing white clouds into a swift glide across the sky, seeing it as though for the very first time. She began reciting a poem about the wind by Robert Louis Stevenson:

I saw the different things you did,

But always you yourself you hid.

I felt you push, I heard you call,

I could not see yourself at all--

O wind, a-blowing all day long…

She spoke the words like a song or incantation, and the moment became a timeless spell, held only by the porous transparent vessel of poetry.

“I haven’t thought about that poem since I was a little girl,” she said. “And suddenly it came to me. It’s from A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson.”

It was a spontaneous special-delivery gift from her childhood ninety years earlier. How time slips around, unbound! Another miraculous and unreasonable thing. How many layers deep is each moment?

Right now I see that hummingbird again, outside my window. There are dangles of blossoms on the macadamia trees, and on the pomegranate tree red flowers, like flamenco dancers, beginning to swell into fruit. A neighbor is waiting to go for a walk with me. I have touched a horse.