The emptiness of change

Life can change so fast sometimes that it reminds us to live in the moment and not become complacent.  It is good to be reminded that everything changes in every moment – form arises and dissolves.  Last Tuesday I had a great time with both horses working on ground exercises with them in the arena.  It was so good to be with Red, working with him more closely than I have in a while.  He is such a fascinating mixture of sweetness and belligerence, willingness and stubborness.

Then by Thursday I was too ill to drive to the yard.  It hit me so fast, and I am still recovering.  We went up together on Saturday, but I was too shaky to walk down the field for Dee.  I wish I'd had my camera with me.  It was such a wonderful thing to watch her walk up with 'ö-Dzin – not too close, but continually looking across and checking he was still there.  Then she waited patiently for him at the gate and put her head in the head collar. 

The weather is also so changeable – one day quite warm and then snow the following day.  There is a magical quality of seeing the world through flakes of falling snow; the greyness of the sky with hints of rainbow colours; blazing red-gold sunsets; brave buds and sprouting plants.

And then there are the sadder changes – the emptiness of loss.  Two of my blog friends have lost their horses in recent weeks: first Cilla of Front Shoes Only lost Lizzie last month, and now Linda at 7MSN has lost Lyle.  I feel I know these people and have loved their horses even though I only know them through reading their blog.  A little cold shiver runs down my back mirroring the wetness of my face as I read of their loss.

I'm blogging when I should be going to bed because I didn't enjoy being in bed last night,  I didn't sleep much for coughing.  But tonight is another night and so it will be different.  There is no point in anticipating an unpleasant night – I might sleep deeply and well.  Even if I do not sleep it is still a new night, a new experience and will not be the same as last night.  I may feel refreshed and have my strength back in the morning.  Whatever the night or the morning brings it will be a unique experience and there will be something to appreciate through my senses if I am open enough to embrace that. 

And so... good night.

R.I.P.

I find myself still feeling quite distressed at the demise of the guinea pig. Why is that? Why do I dwell on his final, painful day as a memory, rather than on his whole lifetime of happy memories? There is a guinea pig shaped hole in my life, and that hole—that emptiness— is uncomfortable. Emptiness is uncomfortable. There is nothing we can do with emptiness except let it be as it is. We find it preferable to indulge the memories around the hole because we can do something with them – they have a form that can be manipulated, felt, potentised. I hurt, therefore I am.

Memory: in the winter we would bring the guinea pig into the house when it was too cold for him to live outside. Every time I opened the fridge he would squeak at me, because he knew there was food in the fridge.

Perhaps you are thinking that I should ‘get a grip’. He was only a little guinea pig, called Tsi-tsi Pagpo (Mouse-pig) – not a significant existence in the great scheme of things. Yet my response to his loss and my indulgence in the memory of his final hours is an example of how we live our whole lives, clinging to the form of them and trying to ignore the emptiness of them. When emptiness arises we try to fill that hole as quickly as possible with a new form. I am finding it useful to meditate on the free-fall of my habitual indulgence in avoiding emptiness that is still potent despite having been a meditation practitioner for over 25 years.

Memory: occasionally the guinea pig would escape his run in the garden because it had been placed on an uneven patch of grass. One of the cats would come into the house and meow at us until we took notice. We would then find the other cat sitting next to Tsi-tsi Pagpo, keeping guard, until we came to return him to the safety of the run. Both cats seemed to understand that the guinea pig was part of the family, and not food, and he seemed to know that they were not a threat to him.

Writing this post is my final indulgence in feeling the edges around the hole of our guinea pig’s loss. I will allow myself to become comfortable with the reality of the emptiness of the guinea pig shaped hole in my life. I will not mourn a projected future that included him, but has never existed. I will not dwell on a remembered past that is no more. If happy memories of him arise, I will enjoy them and then let them dissolve. When thoughts of the pain of his final hours arise, I will feel sorry for them, and then let them dissolve.

I wish I had a photograph of him to put up with this post, but find that I do not. I thought I might put up a picture of my purple toe, but then decided you probably didn’t want to see that. So here is a picture of one of Tsi-tsi Pagpo’s feline guardian angels instead.

Bareback riding

Yesterday I decided to ride Dee down to her field to turn her out, rather than lead her down. I used to ride bareback quite a lot at one time, and feel it is an excellent way of improving one's seat, and also a method of creating a closer sense of connection with the horse. However I had not ridden bareback for nearly a year - certainly not since I injured my knee last October, so I was a bit trepidacious.

When I started riding again about six years ago - after a gap of approximately twenty five years - I went to a riding school and had lessons. These were practically the first lessons I had ever received. I learned to ride when I was about eleven at a riding stables near Solihull Lodge, just outside Birmingham. I doubt such an establishment would be able to exist today, as being taught to ride consisted of being put on a horse in a training ring and just going round and round at different paces until it seemed that you were staying on okay and managing to post at the trot. The girl who was in charge of teaching had been taught to ride by gypsies. Her lessons included bareback riding, where we were told to lean right back, almost lying on the horse, to find our balance.

Although I appreciate that such methods of teaching are insufficient to aspire to disciplines such as dressage, or to become a proficient show jumper, they did imbue me with an instinctive sense of riding. My riding may have been crude (and probably still is), but I was relaxed and confident, and capable of riding even the most difficult horses at the stables - and in fact used to prefer one spirited pony that most of my group would not ride. After only a few weeks of these basic lessons I was going out on hacks. After a further period of time, I was leading groups out on hacks. At a weekend we would regularly hire out several of the horses for a few hours and would be able to just take them off on our own. I'm sure such freedom of access to riding stable mounts would not be possible these days.

Despite my lack of formal training I must have acquired something of a reputation as a capable rider, as I always had access to a horse that the owner needed exercising. I enjoyed the freedom of in effect having my own horse throughout my late teens without actually ever being able to own one, as this was beyond my parents' means. One horse I cared for - a six year old called Whiskey - was known as a 'horse-without-brakes', but I used to ride out on him for whole days, often alone, without any problems. Another horse I exercised for a lady had the most uncomfortable saddle it has ever been my misfortune to sit upon, so I used to hack him out bareback. I used to come off fairly regularly, but still had fun.

So it was with pleasure that I climbed on Dee's bare back to ride her down to her field. I put the training pressure halter on and looped the lead rope round to make a rein just in case she decided this was a great opportunity to race to the field. But no, she was quite happy and relaxed and we quietly plodded down the lane.

Half way down the track it occurred to me that I would have to get off! I have had to adjust how I dismount since injuring my knee. I can no longer vault off athletically as I used to, but have to slide off slowly in order to ensure that I touch the ground with as little impact as possible. This controlled slide was not going to be possible to achieve without a saddle and a stirrup to assist my descent! It brought an aspect of my Buddhist training clearly to mind - a reminder that our consciousness is mounted on our current physical form and that one day we shall all have to face the experience of dismounting from it. We may try not to think about our mortality but our death is actually the only thing in our life we can totally rely upon occurring. As a Buddhist I try to notice the 'little deaths' that continually happen - the death of the moment, of an occupation, of a state of definition. The Nor'dzin who was writing this before you actually came to read it has now died - she is gone, gone, gone forever. The you that just read that sentence is also gone.

So I was grateful for this potent reminder that I had created for myself by getting on Dee's back. I smiled at the inevitability of the situation, and when we arrived at her field I slid down as carefully as I could. I still landed more heavily and from a greater distance than usual, so the walk back to the stable was a bit of a hobble, but I am still glad for the experience and my knee had recovered by the time we were ready to go home.