White Horse Pilgrim

One thousand words

The writing has begun again. It stopped at eighty thousand words and chapter ten of twenty-six planned. Given that the earlier chapters were longer in order to set out the background, I might be aiming at two hundred thousand words. Is that a excessive for a novel? I don't know.

I've set myself the target of writing a thousand words a day. One hundred and twenty days to finish this novel. Fewer if I am more productive or my work less wordy. Six months at five days a week. I've kept up that rate of progress for a week.

It has been fun too: a new virtual adventure. It is exciting deciding what my characters will say and do. The work restarted, they have regained lives of their own. They speak to me, and I try to imagine how they might feel.

I have realised that this novel must not tie up all of the loose ends. Leave something to pick up if I feel like writing another. Let that door remain ajar.

I cannot remember the name of the young lady who took part in a Carpathian mountain riding adventure in July 2007. (The dog, Mina, lives at my new home with D and I. The pony, Pusa, is in Hungary.)

Now, after years spent assembling adventures for others, I am creating one for myself. A literary adventure. From the warmth and light of my study, adventure is flowing. Truly I am enjoying myself.

It's a fascinating exercise to write in the first person. I can write a character who reflects me, but isn't me. I can write as an older person, or younger, or of the opposite gender. Braver, too, and agile so as to spring aboard a horse effortlessly.

Scenic interlude

I could have sat for hours looking at the view from the top of this road-less valley in the Bucovina. I do love those intriguing conical hills. A geologist, I feel, would have found much to comment upon.

The riding style is curious - perhaps reins were being gathered up as I photographed. At least they are loose.

Frazzled

Back from work - to be precise, from the final day of a "development" course - frazzled.

Not like the photo, when I arrived very tired from a long day out in bad weather. That was physical tiredness.

After this type of classroom training event I could curl up in a foetal position for hours, eyes closed pretending that the world is not out there.

The people who run these courses want to take participants beyond their comfort zones. Mine is out of doors, and preferably with horses. Simply being in a room full of people who are being challenged is far from my comfort zone, even if uncertainty and change are things that the guide takes in his or her stride.

At least I've learned to be ready for the claustrophobia that sweeps across me like a wave in such sessions.

The course is supposed to energise complacent people and refocus those in a rut. I am neither. I am restless and curious. But this course has taught me that I am different to my corporate colleagues. Different on a psychological level. I will always be the odd one out.

The trick will be to survive this place. I need the money in order to pay for a place to live and keep my horses. With such turmoil within, no wonder strange and disturbing dreams well up.

Dream world

Unconscious opposes conscious. Dreams protest against the certainties of a life mapped out. That within flaunts another way. But not clearly. There is no orderly manifesto. No, just a mass of dreams to untangle. Dreams so complex that I wake almost as tired as when I lay down eight hours previously. What a game my unconscious is playing.

This is bizarre and crazy. If I did not embrace my unconscious as a partner then I would be angry at the intrusion. But that is the other part of my personality, the second coinage in my currency. It draws me towards healing on its terms. It points out the absurdity of too much seriousness.

Last night it showed that, from my core, I am compassionate. Curious, too, and accepting of diversity. I lost my mother (for such is adoption) and comforted another who had lost hers. One who tried to look far was brought low by fate. It was a strange dream, too weird and complex to describe in a few lines here. But I saw good within me: and that is a benefit to one who judges himself harshly. I looked into my heart and could not condemn what I found.

So I shall give unconscious a long rein to show some more. It has my blessing to dream away. I am riding upon a dynamic equilibrium, taking on rough terrain through suppleness and balance, and surprising myself. One can get older and yet freer?

Now I am being led through a stranger wilderness than ever I explored in the mountains.

Bleak journey in two parts

Dreams unlock that which sits out of reach during waking hours. At night a spring of unconscious material wells up. Strange, chaotic, the flow washes around us in swirls and eddies, buffets and submerges until a dawn of wakefulness casts us surprised and perhaps relieved upon the shore of conscious reason.

It can be a bleak journey. The way can be cold and wild as the mountains at the onset of winter. The trail can be long, the paths friendless, and the nearest hope of a welcome distant.

I dreamt about impending execution for a baseless charge in a society where this was accepted as normal. Then I dreamt about flight from perilous exile where all sign of my life and work had been erased. Finally I was presenting evidence in a court showing how another had abandoned friends to their demise.

Why does this emerge? Life is not unhappy now. Yes, I know that I am unusual, however persecution is absent. What disturbance is circulating in the cauldron of the unconscious?

Focus on erstwhile exile is getting old. I've left. Simply through ageing I could not go back to that job. Why the inner fascination with that which has passed beyond reach?

Glimpses of the arbitrary taking away of life are less surprising. The early ending of a life has shocked me. But that too is a fact that must be accepted. That life is over: now what to do with this one?

Why, when I seek to move on, does the inner part linger to play with a past that has gone?

Out on the trail there is beauty everywhere. Sometimes there is more, other times less: but always some. That is why I loved being out, and still do. The dream world has shown me too little beauty of late. Is it telling me that my conscious self tries to rush on ahead, exposed on ill footing? Perhaps those inner machinations will yield a good foundation, one proof against life's tempests? But they frustrate me. Where is the dream where I rode through lovely woodland? What of the vision of riding up a green hillside exploring?

Or must I seek real woodland and actual hills whilst turmoil is worked out nocturnally within? Now real life is peaceful and often predictable. Problems lend themselves to solution. It was not always thus. Things demand their opposites: Enantiodromia. Stable life causes internal turbulence. Those beautiful dreams came when life was hard. In bad times the unconscious calms. In good times it pushes and shoves and provokes. This is the terrain of neurosis. In that case here's to the growth that waits to be embraced.

Ascending

Achievement requires climbing and not freewheeling. So it is with horses in winter: trudging through mud, going out in bleak weather and finishing up in the dark. So also with writing: making time, sitting down, shutting out all else and finally setting down words. Oh, for more time! It's the discipline to do as much as possible within finite hours that proves hardest.

And then the satisfaction comes. I am transported to an island where my heroine rides, first through the surf in surprise and then uphill to see where she is. Over a smooth sward she rides, higher until she can see all around. What does she think, looking about a new and silent land? What would I think? Food, water and shelter. I've been in that situation before: a simple situation that concentrated the mind. What a joy to shed burdensome complexity, and what a responsibility to meet simple needs.

Whom will she meet? What will be said? My unconscious creeps forth and I begin to see the truth in Carl Jung's pronouncement: that creativity springs from the Shadow part. It is not a conscious function, such as I would use to reason or calculate. No, creativity is a shadowy process. I was going to write "dark", but that is wrong. The Shadow is not evil, simply ancient and archetypal. It contains good and bad, and each bobs to the surface of that mysterious swirling stream.

We rode today, Brena and I, amidst a rushing plucking wind. I thought about how I simply do not control a horse, but rather influence her. On an elemental day her character grows bigger, and her curiosity too. I settle myself to be a calming influence. She settles somewhat, though curious about far-off movements and nearby foliage. One to stare at, another to eat. I sit deep and relaxed. It was a pleasant ride, and now I am back home to write.

Thinking back

Yesterday I gave an illustrated evening talk to a roomful of riding club members.

To prepare I needed only to pick a few dozen images and order them. The words would come. They always do: the guide's patter. Horses and history, geography and wild animals, folklore and odd experiences - they all slip out prompted by visual stimuli. An hour passed like a few minutes.

I glance at that far-off character who looks a little like me, and wonder. What a life he led! What a strange wild primitive place he lived in!

Could I go back to that life? Probably not, given the battering that my body has taken over the years.

And could I go back and live in a village like that? Oh, yes, with such interesting neighbours and lovely countryside all around, in a heartbeat. Obviously there would need to be the means to earn a living. (That is the point where, in a film, the viewer is asked to suspend belief as to how the hero has money in the bank.)

Perhaps I might regret making such a quick decision? An intuitive decision is fast, based upon a deep - indeed archetypal - understanding of oneself and the surrounding world, and imprecise. Pros and cons are weighed subjectively, assessed qualitatively and balanced by feel. There would be joy and regret, and each strong enough to capture attention. I've been there before...

I wrote "in a heartbeat", and that was one of Kelli's favourite phrases. She made her decisions intuitively, making for an interesting life. I was not slow to decide in that instance, and came away with both happy memories and bitter regrets. But with neither anger nor hatred. It was not entirely a bad decision that I took. I'd prefer to say: intuitive, inspired but risky and based upon too little knowledge. My burnt fingers healed.

So, no regrets. that life was there to be grasped, all of it or none. One could not take just a part of Transylvania. Characters came with the country, and temptations too. I yielded to a few, and learnt from the ensuing pain and penance. But the joys came to heal wounds and sooth hurt. So I walk whole again, and with a happily balanced perspective. It could be a lot worse than that.

Heads down

Brena has the right idea. Head down, concentrate on the task at hand (eating, obviously), and don't worry about things.

Work is a bit like that nowadays. Get on with things (and there are plenty of them) without worrying. This is the cold dark season. It's not so bad being in an office. Make hay (the office kind) whilst the sun isn't shining. Avoid the sort of irritating things that bring out the worst in me. (I'm thinking about not becoming annoyed by processes and procedures.)

Tomorrow I am giving a slide show to a riding club. It's about my time in Transylvania. On one level the slides are easy to talk to: beautiful scenery, plenty of horses and some quaint things. On another level it is tempting to comment about the anal way in which riding can be approached in Britain. Finally all those views of green hills and meadows full of flowers can make me very nostalgic. It's easy to imagine that the weather was always fine and life easy then find this new home claustrophobic. The reality is that I am much less stressed now, if sometimes hungering for open space.

It's time to enjoy the memories and create new ones. Now is the time for perspective. Then, when old images jostle with current reality. it's time to get my head down, concentrate, and distract myself.

Castles crumbling

I had been about to write that, since I want to restart work on my novel, posting will become a little less frequent. I was thinking of posting three times a week, or thereabouts. Then I became intrigued by Jess's account of a Medici castle.

We didn't have the Medici in Transylvania, however Vlad the Impaler came by historically when he felt like burning a town or slaughtering its inhabitants. I'd have chosen the Medici any day. Later on the Habsburgs showed up, and for about a decade that territory was on the frontier between Austro-Hungary and Russia. The military roads cut into the mountains are used to this day by shepherds, and tend to be referred to as the "Maria Theresa Roads". Hurriedly prepared fortifications were thrown up too, probably intended for scouts and advanced guards.

We had a regular lunch stop in the lee of an old fortress. It wasn't as impressive as Jess's Mugelo citadel, however there is a practical limit to what one can build on a mountain top in a hurry. There were two steep-sided earthen ramparts enclosing square spaces some thirty metres across. In-between those lay foundations that might have been barracks and stables. The fort seemed more of a point to sortie from than a defensive structure, though a few troops might have holed up there against lightly armed adversaries.

Later these forts would have been dismantled, the wooden structures turn down, in order to deny them to outlaws. There were highwaymen until a hundred years ago, for this was Austro-Hungary's "Wild West" (other than being to the east).

To this day these hills are remote. One could ride for hours in summer and meet the occasional shepherd. Outside the high grazing period of barely four months one might see no-one all day long. This was not a place to go alone and get hurt. Until recently there was no mobile phone signal out there. Even now there cannot be any road access up there. The occasional cross or stone marked the grave of a shepherd or traveller for whom the journey had proved fatal. I was told that lightning was the most common killer, and needed no persuasion to shun the hilltops when thunderstorms approached. Burnt skeletons of struck trees and bushes proved the point. The morning after one especially violent storm shattered relics of trees smouldered pungently, and that after a night of rain.

We rode through the quiet hills one May week and nearly had them to ourselves. On a sunny day that was delightful. The whole world seemed at peace. I suppose that we might have felt a little differently in the 19th century, had we been Austrians in what was a conquered fragment of Romania. Back then we'd have stuck to the roads where gendarmes were posted for protection. But if back then we'd have been ourselves - an Englishman accompanied by two American ladies - we should have been intrepid travellers well on the way to writing a book about exploring lovely remote countryside - and how we survived deep rural food, rustic board and eye-wateringly primitive sanitation. Just as Bram Stoker was fabricating a tale set just a few miles away, we'd have brought back a refreshingly authentic tale.

The real and the illusory

Our first ride for a week - and Brena was full of life and keen to step out. That manipulation by the chiropractor clearly was needed.

I kept the ride slow in recognition that Brena had just been adjusted. She needs to settle back into alignment with muscles that were supporting the problem area relaxed. We can get back into faster work next weekend.

The sun was low as we travelled along the ridge. I was curious to see a peculiar optical phenomenon reappear - the intriguing (if faint) halo around the shadow of my body. It's a kind of solar glory, presumably depending upon dew droplets on the grass. A bank of mist might show up a proper glory and even a Brocken spectre. Now that would be something: a real mountain phenomenon on our gentle hills.

Deer were out on the northerly hillside, lit by the last rays of the sun of the day to cross the ridge before shadow arose to blanket them and the green slope. As usual Brena and the deer ignored one-another, however a hiker put his dog on its lead as a precaution. The man was fascinated by the deer, as town-dwellers often are, whilst his urban dog did not seem to recognise their scent. Out here a fragment of the wild world happily extends close by.

My illusory halo dissipated as we journeyed into the valley.

Tethered to graze behind the trailer, Brena stared at a car travelling slowly along the lane. This is a familiar parking place for hikers so cars do come and go. Every vehicle fascinates the ever-curious mare in a way that deer do not. They do not alarm her, simply something about a moving object intrigues.

With the old white Lipizzaner Pintea it was hot air balloons. He would stare intently at the most distant balloon. I'm not surprised: he would never have seen one of those in Transylvania.

I don't recall Doru staring at anything. He was just too solid and aloof to be interested in anything but food.

Then it was head down to guzzle the rough winter grass, of which there is a surprising amount out here. After years in the mountains, it comes as a pleasant surprise that the vegetation does not retreat to desiccated brown for months on end.

The sun slid down to touch the horizon. I loaded Brena and we headed back. Before dark fell I still had two dogs to walk.