it's come back round to that time of year again, that period where i feel pulled in really opposite directions. i've pretty much got a week of uni left before the summer break and i can feel myself starting to get the kind of clingy that ends with me hanging out in the edit suites or watching a movie with ryan and chris in the screening room until like 6pm. half of me is defiantly going I DON'T WANT TO GOOOOOOOOO because i love these kids so much, they're a strange kind of family to me (which is not the right analogy to use at all because hi, incest city) and i will barely see them this summer with what i'm doing, IT'S MAKING ME KINDA SAD.

but then on the other hand, i miss my actual family and i miss my horses and fields and lots of trees, and i know by the time semester one next year rolls around the part of me that likes to say NOOOOOO I DON'T WANT TO GO will be saying the same thing in relation to leaving home again. i am just a walking contradiction, basically. and i like whining.

in an effort to simply have somewhere to post things no one cares about, i had a rearrange of this blog and i want to post properly about vaguely aforementioned horse progress.

it's hard to believe almost a year has gone since i first started this investment, as strange as it seems to call it that, chomper has come so ridiculously far even if our training has been somewhat stilted because of my constant absence while i'm at uni.
it's crazy to me that i can measure what we've done with this unit of time; in a year together we've gone from strangers to friends - i still remember so clearly the beginnings of our relationship, that i just didn't know him, he was simply a horse i wanted to give some attention to because it had been so long since he'd had any. in a year he's learned so much - how to bend, to go on the bit, to walk in a straight fricking line, and of course the obstacles that seemed huge to begin with - trotting (not pacing), and even how to move his legs in a canter. these things aren't things that i could visualise seeing by now, but i guess that's just his nature, he is one of the most willing horses i have ever met, and so amazingly trusting of humans considering the upbringing he must have had with a racehorse past.

this summer i want to go further. i'm getting back into competing, with my mum's horse this time round, hopefully in a few one day events because he's got the skill he just needs someone who doesn't baby him to apply it and actually make him work. and that person is me, however much he pretends he hates me for it. and we'll take chomper out with us for the experience, hopefully we can get him over a few fences with gulliver's guidance and at home i want to start really working him. he most definitely has the potential - he carries himself so nicely with some encouragement, and i can feel when he starts to get something and it catches on as a habit pretty quickly.

i know we need to work on balance - he has a tendency to drop his inside shoulder on a circle which makes his outside leg flick out and completely unbalances him so he has to go off the bit and put his head back in the air to correct himself. i think it comes from leaning on the reins too much, which he is rather good at doing, but i think this is going to just have to be a practice thing - he's still getting out of the mindset that leg aids simply mean go faster (which was fun when we were first learning things like bending and going on the bit), and i think that's just something that needs time to process in his wee brain.
we also need to work on cantering, we've gotten to where he knows what to do, it's just a matter of me being able to teach him that certain leg aids mean that's how we get to where we're doing that, which we have very little grasp of at the moment. he has a lovely, bouncy, forward canter, too, and i want to be able to ride that more than just along the grass verge up the road.
and that ties into transitions, which are an iffy subject. going from walk to trot is fine, he does a little hop but i don't think it's as noticeable to anyone else as it is to me, i'm just the one riding it; but trot to walk at the moment is more like trot to amble to walk, and i kind of want to eliminate that middleman. plus we need trot to canter and back down again before we can go anywhere near a dressage ring.

apart from that, i want to start doing some proper jump training - the very basic stuff we've done so far has been good (well i mean, after he figured out that i wanted him to actually go over the thing in front of him, rather than around or through), he doesn't rush to or from and from what i could feel he was already starting to find his bascule the last time we did a jump session.
i also want to just do some bonding work - we do have a connection now, i think it would be impossible for us not to, and i know he trusts me but it needs to be stronger for me to be happy. there is something that isn't there, and i know i need to stop comparing it to me and porky because that's nine years versus not even one but i want that with chomper, because of the chance that we could really go somewhere together. so there's going to be some reading involved, i think, i want to do a lot and often, so i need some tricks to test out on him so i can see what does and doesn't work.

i spent a summer watching a horse grow because of things i taught him, but it's not really like i'm even proud of me, i'm just proud of him for being able to do it.
when i met him, he didn't know what a regular trot was, and now with a little reminder, he can flick into it with only a bit of a hop. i've never had a horse with more than four gaits before, but this one's got about six.

is it awful that i already want him to be a superstar?

i've learned how to paint my face, how to earn my keep.

my knees are bruised from falling - i’m running away from you, from your need to be indifferent. there are glimpses, thoughts that perhaps i am endearing, etching myself a little bit into you. but then i think, would you help me if i couldn’t get up?
i don’t know the answer, and it makes me feel sick.

the corners of the ceiling are cloudy, smoky candles choking the air out under the door. the lightbulb blew, leaving me in yellowed darkness, sitting in an old woollen jumper. this is the part where i am stuck, i’m thinking of you, thinking if you were here right now…
you know what we are? we are a bunch of maybes, of flowers never picked. maybe it wouldn’t work, me and you, that treasured term “us”. but you never know until you try. of course, you would be the one to say you can’t miss what you never had.

i cover my face with my hands, look at you through my fingers. i can see your eyes smiling. but this is as far as we get, all we ever seem to do.

it’s been a year now, did you know? you probably don’t. you remember me but you don’t like to remember how you felt.

for you i am masks, mostly. but then there is that smile, it’s bare and it’s yours because i can’t help it. i have never been very good at acting, there is that slip and you see me, the bruises that you leave. i think that’s what makes you wary.

i have tried to write you out of my skin, out of my eyes and the spaces between my bones. but it hasn’t worked, you’ve taken up residence somewhere that i can’t find. and now there is that feeling - a deep, endless ocean feeling - that you might never get out.

a message from me to you.

dear little horse-face,

i have known you since i was nine years old. you have been with me for over half my life, and we’ve had some disagreements but you have always, always been there for me. and i know, you don’t fit the definition - you have four legs and can’t speak english - but shit, no one else comes close.

i remember getting to know you; i didn’t even own a saddle, we borrowed one from claire five afternoons a week. there is one moment i remember so clearly - it was after 5pm, and marked the start of my habit of talking to you even though you couldn’t respond. we just walked around, not really doing anything, sand arena under your feet until my mother came over and said i had to get off because someone else needed to use the saddle. you felt so new, i felt like i finally had what i needed, and you haven’t left me since.

and that’s why this hurts. you are moving on, slowly but surely, and i have to move without you. someone else needs you now, another nine-year-old me, and while you aren’t hers yet i feel you slipping. i want to thank you a thousand times, anchor myself to you somehow.

i am terrified of the day you might forget me.

know this, though: i will always have a place for you.

love, me.

back to the roots.

undertaking a new project. his name is chomper.

i'm as clever as the invention of pillowcases.

we aren't really friends.

hymnals from lakefront houses; early winter.

four am holds a chill that creeps under skin, across the skinny planks of the deck, a chill to frighten the wood into a kind of cold that feels damp. three candles ooze wax into the grooves (a slow drip through the gaps) as a group of people sit under the weight of blankets and jackets in weather that feels almost like yuletide in london. how are the stars so bright?

a fog is edging towards the house, a slow crawl of wetness threading through browning weeds and the leaves of low-hanging trees, and soon the thin curls of cigarette smoke from those on the deck will spread, mingling into fog-smoke and enveloping the darkness of night into the grey feeling of another winter morning.
feels strange, doesn't it?

they breathe smoke like dragons at the same time, long exhales ending in sighs across the air. it's an agreement, kind of. the burning smell starts to linger in the creases of the blankets and the linings of their jackets while they sit, a reminder for later.

cheap thrills thinks a wisened house. an owl with talons that leave marks in the thick bark of trees as old as hills hoots, and agrees. the darkness is something they will grow tired of.

but it starts in minnesota, at a place that you could walk across

i think you're pretty neat.

and our children never lie, and no matter how we try, we are not afraid to die.

you traded your eyes for guns and a half-hearted soul; corruption becomes you, you know. oh, yes, with your head held high you're a sight to see, all right.
your fingers lost me in the winter. not that you'd know that, your arms pointed towards deserts and the warmth death settles in the recesses of your belly.
it's only now that you remember, a small smile on the edges of your mind and a little broken wave you stuck in your back pocket, among coins and the sand from windy beaches.
see, that's me, and you want all that back now; your eyes haphazard in their old sockets.

but ahaha, it's over. i hope your heart bleeds.

and the girls are getting sick off snorting coke up in the bathroom.

some thoughts.

music constricts those thin chords of our throat, colourful
our crooked eyes spill and wet the ground with what doesn't like to hide, while quietly
the moon clouds over; we wonder about almost-forgotten werewolves and when we are old, greying with age and our bones ache beneath our skin, we will look back across a wide expanse of years at it.
we will think about echoing chimes and the patterns of great and ancient forests, weathered
we walk alone along rows of white picket fences, the piercing darkness a comfort for tiny bats; we hope, too desperately, that things might work out and we will rock comfortably in our chair well after seventy years have passed us by.

studies in hearts growing fonder and out of tune

hmmm, your eyes have faded
leaving only open scars
and the flowers have died in the night.
you are a pity, aren't you?

you act a lot like music, you know
noise that shakes bones
even in the confines of flesh.
these are uncomfortable decibels
i am unfamiliar with.

to me you are things.
pieces of fiction fragmented
and taped together on a wall;
you are a friend i don't know
the places i no longer like to visit.

however...
there are many things i would do for you
i would cut at the creases
in my fingers,
and bleed upon glass.
hang myself from blue cotton
until i fall off the tapestry
of the world; unthreaded.
i would become
a flurry of snow particles
the sun across the earth's back
if you asked me to weather you.

i am something to pity, probably.

there is a teapot that sits in the grass
and in evening storms
the water spills over the rim;
i pull metaphors from the mouth
and think things you will never ask about.
because why would you?

it seems my horsehair strings are broken,
but still a sound comes out
hold on hold on
you can be more.

oh and i'm sorry,
i didn't water the flowers sooner-
they are skeletons.

i call shotgun, you can play your r&b tunes.

send your lifeboats out.