From the window I see four horses exchanging gossip around the water trough. Two tails swish; perhaps they're not happy about the subject. "Is it a rumour that we'll have to stay in this over eaten paddock because She says we're too fat? Surely not. I can still see my knees."
Barely. Freya and Dakota both have crests of fat on their neck. My forefinger sinks into flab before I can find a rib on Drifter and Pagan has no waist. Only Balthazar, being the streamlined thoroughbred that he is, looks about right. They'll just have to tough it out. The only other alternative, and one which will have to be introduced later in the summer, is shutting them up in the yards for most of the day. Everyone, including me, hates that. But it's better than foundering.
On another subject altogether. I was thinking about the nature of truth today. Yeah, the big philosophical subject. Truth and how little of it I manage to write. Was it Hemingway that spoke about the difficulty in writing one true sentence. His writing is so spare yet powerful (must reread him one day). But I'm skirting around the subject. I don't write the truth in here. I haven't learned how. Sure, I write about this and that, the outward happenings but as soon as I start to zero in on what I'm really thinking or feeling, the censor raises it's mighty head and silences me with a 'what if'. What if someone read this. What if I'll be judged. What if I'm not really a nice girl with nice thoughts and nice intentions? I wouldn't know the truth if it reared up and bit me. Sometimes I think of something that I think I'll write about; something of importance (at least to me - because it's the Truth) and just as quickly I'll forget about what it was I was going to write about. I am concerned with vanity and other people's opinions (did I write about, truthfully write about my well-deserved humiliation and shame of a few weeks ago? No, it made me look bad. Because I was bad and it's important to myself that I lie enough to keep the illusion alive).
How difficult can it be? Bloody difficult. Nigh impossible. But I'll never write one good sentence unless I can rip the veneer away. It takes more bravery than I possess to be an honest human being - and I'm not talking about garden variety honesty. I've no difficulty with that kind of honesty. It's the honesty within myself that I don't access.
Woke from a nightmare last night. Driving along at night with the headlights illuminating a verge teeming with big red bears. Bears and wolves? Bears and wolves and moose? There were two other frightening critters on this one lane road but I don't remember what they were. Got to a house, my house although I didn't recognize it, and somehow made it inside. Went into my sister's room. White bedspread on a neatly made bed. Two scarves, one red, one dark hanging from one of the posts of the fourposter. Something, I don't know what, on the foot of the bed. But she wasn't there. Hadn't been there for quite a while. It felt empty and abandoned. Went to my room which had a bathroom/shower attached. Closed and locked the doors, drew the curtains but could hear the bears snuffling and crashing through the shrubbery outside. I was so frightened I woke up. Yet the bears, as I drove through them and while in the house, didn't try and attack. No broad bear paws swiping at the car. No yellow bear teeth tearing at the house. Just me and the dark and the sounds of bears being bears.
Now I think dreams that are powerful enough to wake me have a powerful message. Not that I know what that message is, I don't. Bears, bare? Nakedness. The nakedness of truth-telling? What about my sister and that spartan bed. I remember thinking at the time that it was like a blank sheet of paper, waiting to be written on. Yet it was abandoned. Who abandoned it? Me. I don't live up to my sisters expectations. I love her yet I feel distant from her too (now here's a bit of truth). We found during our last trip together, how we tiptoe around one another. Here I was thinking she was the one with the chip on her shoulder (and I was the good girl with the easy going temperament) and she thought the exact same thing of me. I don't get it. I really don't. Tiptoeing around my sister. Impossible. Unheard of! She's the only person who really knows me. But perhaps not so much any more. We have spent too much time apart, led lives that are vastly different so although our beginnings were shared (and no one understands the family home like a sibling), it is no longer the majority of our lives. And what about those scarves, although they were more like squares of cloth than scarves that were meant to be worn. What is the significance of them?
Many years ago I kept a dream diary. I dutifully wrote down every dream I remembered, and I remembered lots! Kept a notebook by the bed and wrote down key words and passages as soon as I awoke. Transcribed them into the journal and then attempted to interpret them. It was abysmal. I think I successfully interpreted one dream from the hundreds I recorded. How do I know? There was a Eureka feeling. Unmistakable. I just knew it was true. A warm wash of success and release. All I ever got from the other dreams was frustration.
But it made me think. Who dreams these dreams? Why are the dreams so inaccessible? Why is it important that they are impossible to interpret and understand? What danger is there in understanding dreams? What am I hiding from myself that is so dangerous? No suppressed memories here. I wasn't abused by either parent or any other person until I was 17 - and by then even though it knocked me for six for a few years, I eventually recovered. My life is happy and well rounded. I don't suffer from bouts of depression. I'm generally happy and content - so why the mystery?
There was another snippet too, of me thrusting my face into another face and saying, "Boy-yea, not Boy-er." My middle name is Boyer, like Charles Boyer, French not English. So, what was all that about?
