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April 29, 2017: Creativity Clinic Day #2: The Image

I wrote the following two dispatches during the second day of the creativity clinic. A good opportunity for me to write and share my ideas. Like my deceased friend Wendy Bishop, I try and take advantage of writing-related opportunities.

I spoke in introducing myself yesterday to the group about for me, the connection between Centered Riding and writing IS the image. Figuring this out did enable me to advance my ideas on this matter. I am still bouncing back and forth between the two, well aware that this is a vital link in my life’s work. Gosh, how important this seems.



Someday I will write about my friendship with Jackie. I will begin with an image that now is firmly embedded in my mind, my dearest friend ever, in the arena, walking alongside a standardbred mare named Buttons. Her hand was on her neck, the two were connected.

Jackie moved assuredly, her stride matched that of Buttons. Both moved in a steady fashion.

As I watched, I thought some about our friendship, which began in high school when I went up and talked to her. She was drawing a horse and I said that I too liked horses. This opened communicative doors that never closed. Our writing/artistic endeavors have been the glue that has kept us in communication with one another. And our horse interests have diverged and converged, in odd and interesting ways.

I also thought, as she walked that mare, about her high degree of inner resolve. She has been so tenacious, for 20 plus years teaching art classes full time in a catholic high school. And this resolve manifested itself in walking with Button. Jackie is small, and she can make herself smaller. But she was larger than life in walking this wonderful horse. Both remained steady on their feet the entire time they were together.

Jackie has recently taken to doing sculpture work – is currently working on a bust of a greyhound. Maybe, she said later, she’d do a horse head. And so, I cannot help but wonder, might this be a lateral career move? A shift from working in two dimensions to working in three? What is prompting this is that she is suffering from macular degeneration – right now, she says that her condition has stabilized.

Could it be that her drive to create is manifesting itself on a subconscious level? Could it also be that her drive to be creative is so strong that it is manifesting itself in a new artistic genre? I do not know, and I’ll bet she does not know either.

What I do know is that an image is what brought the above speculation to mind.

Okay. So what I wrote might very well be something that I might include in my next book, a memoir – Coming Up for Air, one in which I write about the Centered Riding basics and the effect they have had on my life. Maybe I will come to the above realization in the final chapters, one on clear intent and the other on grounding. I am not sure. I am never sure. I just know that I have a framework of sorts, one that I can easily work off of.

The Trigger

Okay, so the little felt horse that Colleen made was a trigger. Chestnut, and with a thick felt mane, it reminded me of my horses, who I miss dearly. I then proceeded to draw a horse head on sketch paper and noted that there was a likeness to Tinni, my older, steady eddy gelding.

I then, with black charcoal, attempted to draw the heads of Raudi, Hrimmi, and Tyra. Alas, the other drawings did not resemble the three others because I was using black charcoal and they are chestnuts. Darn and double darn. I also cannot draw worth a shit. What to do? I finally rubbed out the sub headers, that is the names of the other horses but left the header, Tinni.

Acting upon my original trigger made me feel terribly homesick. I have not talked much about home with this group, and maybe I should because I am now homesick. I did not get homesick when I was younger because I did not have any home related identifiers. Actually, I did get homesick my first semester of college, but never allowed myself to admit it.

  • I’m very much enjoying being creative and being around creative people – I am also enjoying making the riding/writing connection. This for me is life affirming and very, very necessary. Right now I most miss Tyra, the youngest horse in the herd. She’s a courageous horse the color of a copper penny. And I also miss the other three. And I miss the dogs, the goat, the chickens, Pete.
  • All this brings to mind the question, what am I going to do with my life and in what direction is my life taking me? I do not know if we are going to remain in Alaska. Most likely we are. Right now I’m here, in the state where my roots are and this really strikes me as odd because this is coincidental. Roots, we grow them and they are then always there. Going to call home tonight and be reassured that all is okay. I will then let go of my feelings of homelessness. I suppose that they will again surface. I will then allow these feelings to surface again. Center. Breathe, grow, ad infinitum.

Next: 120. 4/30/17: !!!!!! agility clinic !!!

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