How I Learned about Vice.

No doubt that horses and vice have been interconnected for thousands of years.

Twitch a gelding’s lip with a chain looped steel rod when your 7 years old and you realize real quick that there might not be such a fine line between violence, force and control. 4”2 and a twist of the arm-between he and you- suddenly an asymmetry exists that isn’t mimicked in the rest of society.

Small overpowers large.

Weak controls strong.

Female subdues male.

Walk down the centerline of a double-barreled barn at dusk, with horses stabled to your left and to your right, the concrete and stone still damp from the mornings mucking and pieces of sawdust floating through the air, momentarily captured in the spotlight cast by the setting sun breeching through tiny cracks in the stall doors and listen.

STAMP.

STAMP.

KICK.

STAMP.

STAMP.

KICK.

Like a dragon in a cave you’ve heard the echo of the stud down the corridors all day and for hours have wondered what he looks like. Your imagination has begun to get the best of you at 9. Fire breathing and cloven hoofed this fear, this unknown, excites you.

Approaching his stall, making sure no one spies you falling prey to the temptation of his ferocity and beauty. Lying at the furthest edge of the barn with a buffer of empty stalls placed around him, a veiled protection for the mare’s nearby who send him into an untamable rage with even their slightest tail swish.

Feigning innocence as you near him. Moving in towards the door as you approach. Tension builds as the hoof slamming pauses and you rise up slowly onto the tippy toe’s of your stained red stripped Sperry’s to see in, holding your breath as though you were underwater.

His nostrils pulse. Opening and closing rhythmically. He takes you in with the wild whites of his eyes and curls his lip into the Flehman Response. With his arching crest stretched high into the air as though he was blind and searching he begins to pitch about the stall snorting and clopping his hooves onto the revealed mat below As if to greet you he smacks the door sending a vibration of energy through your fingertips deep into your bones.

Later that night as your dad drives you home in his 1984 Thunderbird you stretch your hand out the window against the force of the air listening to the gears move from 3^rd to 4^th to 5^th and notice that the vibration of the stud still purrs with power in your bones.

14 years old + 10 = 24 years old + 7= 31 years old. 31 + the formula below= Hipster Yuppie

1 Pim's Cup w/ extra cucumber.

1 Beat-up copy of "Historical Thinking" by Sam Wineburg.

1 Pair skinny black diesels.

1 Almost too tight Target Owl (IZOD) w/ popped color, black of course.

1 Pair of ginormous black & gold windshield sunglasses/1985 Japanese Grandma style, thrifted.

1 Pair beat up black low top converse..laces disheveled.

All my preppy hipster Yale fantasies have been doused out for this summer. No hanging with Souky Saperstein of Wesleyan stock. Or was it Bennington? No introducing myseslf as Stevie-Jo, the intriguingly sophisticated central-valley girl secretly living out her latent teenage Hotchkiss prep school wet dreams. Though Yale offered me a huge scholarship ($2,800.00), my school district would not match the money awarded. Apparently developing their teachers into experts on the Eastern Front of WWII is of minimal priority. I can only hope this didn't blow any future opportunities, as this was a real career break. The kind of thing that could have gotten me back in over at C.K.M in the H.I.S.P program. I'll save the Dead Poet's Society fantasy for another day.

Instead, this summer I am playing wifey/workhorse...packing boxes and arranging 75% of the details on our new move into our hipster/yuppie lifestyle. We finally move in on Sunday and I am hoping my body will recover from the physical labor its been under for the past two weeks. Hot-yoga helps. On similar sporty-spice news.. I interviewed with and got hired by Sugar Bowl last week as a ski instructor for this winter. I am thrilled about this and the possible connections it may provide in both the winter wonderland realm and the horse show world. It will also provide some additional income and cost-breaks to DB and I as I am going 4/5 time next year...only working to 12:30 each day I feel sorta like a 1950's house-wife.

Things have been tough with Pop and Mother. I feel really sad around them. I am thinking about returning to therapy. The general theme: It just hurts that I get so much love and appreciation for the whole of who I am from DB's parents but can't get an ounce from either of mine. It was hard enough when Mommy Dearest didn't give a hoot but now that Franklin has jumped ship I am occasionally a real mess. I thought this part of my work was done. For whatever reason it has resurfaced in a terrible ache at the pit of my stomach...maybe that is where a baby is supposed to go.

"I told you no wire hangers!!!!"

DB is loving and supportive which is fantastic. And I have made a handful of new friends who are loving... though I miss all my old girlfriends who have moved away. I do spend a good amount of time in a land of delusions and figments (or is it enchantments and joy) imagining the uber-cool boutique or sake bar I could open next to Espresso Metro and how I would be able to walk to work. Or.. how I will turn what I write-down into a best selling memoir...maybe totally honest...or maybe totally overly embellished. Maybe even a modern day antitheseis to Joan Didion's early works.

When not imagining my own possible greatness I am spending much of my internal life mourning my youth. Olympia. Evergreen. San Francisco. Coffee shops. Raves. Wicker Park. You know, riding public transportation with big ole' studio headphones on... trying to figure out how to make the world a better place. I still turn the idea of starting a Books to Prisoner's program over and over in my head. Needless to say, I'm in a minor identity crisis. I suppose it's natural to come into something like this when you make 100's of editing decisions on your past, present and future simply by deciding what to put in a moving box. Then watching the rest of your rubbish get picked through by random strangers at a massive hipster yardsale. Its quite intimate to watch people touch your things ...maybe even fondle them...and either take them in or leave them behind. Its subtley liberating and completely horrifying at the same time..to have all of ones ridiculous material possesions splayed about for a bunch of un-named onlookers.

Not much different than this blog I suppose.

Anyone want to watch reruns of Thirty Something with me?