White Horse Pilgrim

Words, images

The weather has been testy. Showers came and went, temperature fell and rose again. Mud remained.

This weekend I rode twice, went to church, saw the new Underworld movie with D, and still added nearly three thousand words to my embryonic novel. More than that, ideas crept into mind that will enrich the plot.

This combination does pose a little incongruity. Well, not riding and writing, for the novel has equestrian characters. (Obviously - I'd get bored writing a thick tome without horses.) There are even a couple of quasi-undead in it. But I didn't mention Underworld over coffee after church. I don't think that anyone else from the congregation would have attended. The thing is, having lived in Transylvania, I am partial to the occasional vampire movie.

Beyond, out in the wide world, birds flew free as ideas. Birds flapped and glided, strayed and straggled across one photograph after another. (Do look for them in the first and third images.) They do not worry about what people think! And neither should I, the outsider. It's not so much "screw them" as simple realisation that I follow a unique path. I look inside from beyond, so I see the view from a different perspective. The one discomforted by that probably has his (or her) eyes clamped tight shut. But I don't rock the boat: its occupants do that.

Clouds draw apart, sun shines through. Blue sky at the onset of evening, filigree trees, curves of hill in silhouette. This is my land. The land beyond. A country beyond office or shop or road. I love it here.

Drying

After a two-hour ride that included four good canters, the hairy (and unclipped) Brena stands drying covered in an army blanket. Thus clad I let her graze a little then travel back half an hour in the trailer. Now she has her rug back, and the blanket is drying in my study where a reassuring odour of horse is evident. Now back to writing today's thousand words!

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.