I believe that there is a force that breathes beneath the surface of each and every one of us. It longs to be set free, but civilisation and breeding require that it be contained. Society demands that we tame what is wild in us and we all smudge it in different shades. Some of us work through it, some deny it, some resort to pain thinking that it provides a cure, some cry far too much to be taken seriously, some laugh far too much to sound sincere and others sit in corners and dream of what their lives would be like if they opened the door to the cage that cramps them in.
Then the crevices appear, cracks in a painting that has been silent and still for too long. These are splinters designed only for those who can appreciate them and there are few who can.
Yesterday I watched a film, a film that I think was meant to be seen by me. You know how every director, makes a film for one person, an absolute stranger who will see it from every imperceptible tangent because it was intended for them? The artist hopes the others will like it, but only the trifle few will 'get it'…that's kind of what it was. I always thought 'my film' was the Little Mermaid, but I suppose growing up involves more than a right of passage. I was canvassing the shelves at my Tuesday DVD store when my eyes swam across the title 'Flicka'. The cover bore a picture of young girl racing a horse - by no means original. I haven't watched a 'horse movie' in seven years, because they were all I watched for the years preceding. But yesterday I thought it was time I faced my past. I was ready and 'Flicka', I later discovered, meant 'Pretty girl hiding from womanhood'. I couldn't have picked a more perfect pinnacle to plummet down memory lane. Perhaps that sounds a tad vain…like I said, right of passage.
Traipsing beyond all the 'Daddy's little girl loves ponies' tarp… I admit that I have loved horses for as long as I can remember and my 'daddy' loved them too. I recall getting my first leather cowgirl boots when I was five. We lived in Little Rock, Arkansas and even though it was a week before those boots got to experience the thrill of a saddle, I can see myself scrambling out of my bed past midnight, trying them on and dancing across the room while my parents were asleep next door. I was the five-year-old who raced horses because it was the only thing that made her feel big. I always picked 'My little ponies', 'Fashion fillies' and 'Starlight' figurines over Barbie dolls and throughout my childhood my room was invariably covered in pony bedspreads and wall prints. Then came Pakistan, my father bought land for a farm, he bought dozens of horses and the love affair continued.
My father believed in 'breaking' horses that couldn't be broken. I believed in riding them. He became famous for buying stallions that no one but he could ride and I usually just managed by a very slim margin. I also see the day I began to shy away from horses. I was thirteen and he was teaching me how to 'break' a horse. She was a jet-black, Persian mare, gorgeous by all definitions, and just as flighty. I hear him saying that if I wanted the horse and if I wanted to name her (‘Midnight’ after a Rainbow Bright fillie) then I had to ‘break her’. I distinctly recall hating those words so much I didn't bother trying. He would offer me crops and spurs and I wouls cower away insisting that if I fed Midnight enough apples and sugar she would let me ride her eventually. My father and I were at an impasse, and it went far deeper training technique. I had chosen my mothers emphatic weak-ways and that was not something he could forgive me for any time soon.
But I remember my infatuation vividly. I am not prone to infatuation and Midnight was my first. The sensation was defined by the tingle in my toes and the winning tinker in by brain that kept me awake all night just so I could go to the farm early next morning and see her. It was the hours of conversations spent feeding her apples and sugar and talking about how lonely I felt. It was the kind of friendship that comes once in a lifetime. And she felt it too - I know this, because she did let me ride her. I would sneak out in the middle of the night, during our weekends at the farm, in my shalwar and T-shirt, mount my Midnight, take off my shoes, open my hair and we would run.
And all of a sudden I wasn’t stupid anymore, I wasn’t small, I wasn’t a failure and I wasn’t alone. The heart never beats faster then when it is riding the wind and a girl can never feel more beautiful then when she is racing a horse alone at night with her hair open and her feet bare.
The only thing my father and I have ever shared in common was a love for horses. For ten years these beasts provided the openings and the closings for every conversation he and I exchanged. I would read his books on horse-care to solicit his approval and he would watch horse movies with me to ‘be a dad’. We watched them all, the Stallion series – Black, White, Silver; Black Beauty, The Arab and even random rodeo tapes. We spent hours deliberating the merits of each of the horses in the films, whether the extras would actually make better runners or whether the lead was more of a quarter horse then an Arab. We would go to the farm where he would sit for hours staring off into space and I would scamper off to the stables confessing my sins to my four-legged, secret-keepers.
We seldom rode together, because every time I rode with him it was a competition. And I am notoriously ill-favoured when it comes to competition. I was coerced to ride with saddle and I had to win races. I never won, which kept him happy because it meant that he could still feel big and do so by keeping me small.
Then one day, I won.
It happened out of nowhere, I was riding in the fields by myself, when my father came up behind me and before I knew it we were at a gallop. In less than a blink of an eye I realised I had won. While I was gathering my wits, he told me that it wasn’t a race and that I was an idiot to ride a horse without a saddle. But we both were painfully aware of the shift in balance. Winning changes a lot and that was what ended it. He never forgave me for winning and I never forgave myself for not losing.
I was fourteen, when I realised that I no longer wanted to have anything in common with my dad.
The final thread needed to be severed and I was determined to cut it. I was no longer willing to share anything in common with a man I otherwise couldn’t fathom. I told him to sell Midnight and I got rid of each and every vista of horse mementos in my room, right down to my silver Unicorn earrings. Ponies, stuffed toys, birthday cards…the works. I was an artist, I was sensitive and I was human. It was loathsome to entertain the notion that I shared a shard in common with a man so violent, he bordered on boorish. And so I didn’t.
I didn’t share anything.
Seven years later ‘Flicka’ showed another fifteen-year old vying for freedom and her fathers approval by resorting to the resounding thunder of hoof beats. And all the scape-shots of wild mustangs soaring through the mountains, with a young girl fighting for dear life to ride the gale make sense to me now. I have never cried through the course of a film- though i tend to be a bit of a weeper- but I did for this one. A whole two hours, non-stop. It woke me up. I have battled that hailstorm and I know what that freedom feels like. It is a touch of the divine, like racing through sunflower fields, under blue skies in summer rain. And I won’t give it up.
I have to believe that we are more than the sum of our parts, more than the intricacies we inherit from our parents. That the shared hobbies and eye-colouring are only layers to cover a core that is our own. I need to believe that it is ‘I’ who love this freedom and not my DNA. I need to believe that I carve my own curses and that I am not born into them.
Which is why I called my friend at the Polo grounds today,
…And I told him to saddle me up for tomorrow.
Then the crevices appear, cracks in a painting that has been silent and still for too long. These are splinters designed only for those who can appreciate them and there are few who can.
Yesterday I watched a film, a film that I think was meant to be seen by me. You know how every director, makes a film for one person, an absolute stranger who will see it from every imperceptible tangent because it was intended for them? The artist hopes the others will like it, but only the trifle few will 'get it'…that's kind of what it was. I always thought 'my film' was the Little Mermaid, but I suppose growing up involves more than a right of passage. I was canvassing the shelves at my Tuesday DVD store when my eyes swam across the title 'Flicka'. The cover bore a picture of young girl racing a horse - by no means original. I haven't watched a 'horse movie' in seven years, because they were all I watched for the years preceding. But yesterday I thought it was time I faced my past. I was ready and 'Flicka', I later discovered, meant 'Pretty girl hiding from womanhood'. I couldn't have picked a more perfect pinnacle to plummet down memory lane. Perhaps that sounds a tad vain…like I said, right of passage.
Traipsing beyond all the 'Daddy's little girl loves ponies' tarp… I admit that I have loved horses for as long as I can remember and my 'daddy' loved them too. I recall getting my first leather cowgirl boots when I was five. We lived in Little Rock, Arkansas and even though it was a week before those boots got to experience the thrill of a saddle, I can see myself scrambling out of my bed past midnight, trying them on and dancing across the room while my parents were asleep next door. I was the five-year-old who raced horses because it was the only thing that made her feel big. I always picked 'My little ponies', 'Fashion fillies' and 'Starlight' figurines over Barbie dolls and throughout my childhood my room was invariably covered in pony bedspreads and wall prints. Then came Pakistan, my father bought land for a farm, he bought dozens of horses and the love affair continued.
My father believed in 'breaking' horses that couldn't be broken. I believed in riding them. He became famous for buying stallions that no one but he could ride and I usually just managed by a very slim margin. I also see the day I began to shy away from horses. I was thirteen and he was teaching me how to 'break' a horse. She was a jet-black, Persian mare, gorgeous by all definitions, and just as flighty. I hear him saying that if I wanted the horse and if I wanted to name her (‘Midnight’ after a Rainbow Bright fillie) then I had to ‘break her’. I distinctly recall hating those words so much I didn't bother trying. He would offer me crops and spurs and I wouls cower away insisting that if I fed Midnight enough apples and sugar she would let me ride her eventually. My father and I were at an impasse, and it went far deeper training technique. I had chosen my mothers emphatic weak-ways and that was not something he could forgive me for any time soon.
But I remember my infatuation vividly. I am not prone to infatuation and Midnight was my first. The sensation was defined by the tingle in my toes and the winning tinker in by brain that kept me awake all night just so I could go to the farm early next morning and see her. It was the hours of conversations spent feeding her apples and sugar and talking about how lonely I felt. It was the kind of friendship that comes once in a lifetime. And she felt it too - I know this, because she did let me ride her. I would sneak out in the middle of the night, during our weekends at the farm, in my shalwar and T-shirt, mount my Midnight, take off my shoes, open my hair and we would run.
And all of a sudden I wasn’t stupid anymore, I wasn’t small, I wasn’t a failure and I wasn’t alone. The heart never beats faster then when it is riding the wind and a girl can never feel more beautiful then when she is racing a horse alone at night with her hair open and her feet bare.
The only thing my father and I have ever shared in common was a love for horses. For ten years these beasts provided the openings and the closings for every conversation he and I exchanged. I would read his books on horse-care to solicit his approval and he would watch horse movies with me to ‘be a dad’. We watched them all, the Stallion series – Black, White, Silver; Black Beauty, The Arab and even random rodeo tapes. We spent hours deliberating the merits of each of the horses in the films, whether the extras would actually make better runners or whether the lead was more of a quarter horse then an Arab. We would go to the farm where he would sit for hours staring off into space and I would scamper off to the stables confessing my sins to my four-legged, secret-keepers.
We seldom rode together, because every time I rode with him it was a competition. And I am notoriously ill-favoured when it comes to competition. I was coerced to ride with saddle and I had to win races. I never won, which kept him happy because it meant that he could still feel big and do so by keeping me small.
Then one day, I won.
It happened out of nowhere, I was riding in the fields by myself, when my father came up behind me and before I knew it we were at a gallop. In less than a blink of an eye I realised I had won. While I was gathering my wits, he told me that it wasn’t a race and that I was an idiot to ride a horse without a saddle. But we both were painfully aware of the shift in balance. Winning changes a lot and that was what ended it. He never forgave me for winning and I never forgave myself for not losing.
I was fourteen, when I realised that I no longer wanted to have anything in common with my dad.
The final thread needed to be severed and I was determined to cut it. I was no longer willing to share anything in common with a man I otherwise couldn’t fathom. I told him to sell Midnight and I got rid of each and every vista of horse mementos in my room, right down to my silver Unicorn earrings. Ponies, stuffed toys, birthday cards…the works. I was an artist, I was sensitive and I was human. It was loathsome to entertain the notion that I shared a shard in common with a man so violent, he bordered on boorish. And so I didn’t.
I didn’t share anything.
Seven years later ‘Flicka’ showed another fifteen-year old vying for freedom and her fathers approval by resorting to the resounding thunder of hoof beats. And all the scape-shots of wild mustangs soaring through the mountains, with a young girl fighting for dear life to ride the gale make sense to me now. I have never cried through the course of a film- though i tend to be a bit of a weeper- but I did for this one. A whole two hours, non-stop. It woke me up. I have battled that hailstorm and I know what that freedom feels like. It is a touch of the divine, like racing through sunflower fields, under blue skies in summer rain. And I won’t give it up.
I have to believe that we are more than the sum of our parts, more than the intricacies we inherit from our parents. That the shared hobbies and eye-colouring are only layers to cover a core that is our own. I need to believe that it is ‘I’ who love this freedom and not my DNA. I need to believe that I carve my own curses and that I am not born into them.
Which is why I called my friend at the Polo grounds today,
…And I told him to saddle me up for tomorrow.
Good. :)
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