About a year ago, I had this euphoric
image in my
head of a
horse, stood on a hillock in a glorious mountain
valley. Its head was raised to the sky, the wind lifting its mane above its withers. I couldn’t see the front of its head, as it was facing away from me. I can’t remember what colour it was either, because Spirit in Stallion of the Cimarron has the exact same pose when looking at the night sky, which is where my mind got it from I suppose. In fact I think the mountain valley came first, green under a blue sky, hillocks stepping their way down towards some unknown end, the
mountains to the right of the horse tall and smooth like slate, but layered and glistening with a rainbow sheen like an oyster shell. It was a beautiful image, but like so many things when I call it up in my mind now it’s only vaguely euphoric, because my mind isn’t really there any more. It will be again, but it hasn’t been there for a while.
It just came in my dream I think, the night I got back from clubbing with my friend Charlotte. I hadn’t been out in ages, there was cheesy music and I didn’t even care if I pulled, which I didn’t, which is unusual for me (caring, I mean). Maybe like a racehorse that’s been cooped up the going out is suddenly magic, nothing else matters, not the men, not even my friend. I felt exhilarated, as well as in my subsequent dreaming of that image, and all weekend afterwards, whenever I closed my eyes I could see that image and feel incredibly happy about everything and everyone.
Then came problems. Then came the
puma, just like in Spirit. If something bothered me, I would imagine the puma pouncing on the horse, and the horse successfully attacking and chasing the puma away, and the anger or irritation would instantly lift from my shoulders like its mane. Sometimes it was hard, but in my mind I persevered, and it worked. But it doesn’t seem to work now.
Why? Because that image is not there in all its glory anymore – it’s slightly altered, for various reasons, reasons which I was unaware of or - I want to say blurred against, but that’s not right – so now it’s hard to fight anything off, because if I manage it, that valley isn’t the same anymore anyway.
Even if I can see the horse standing there, in the valley, its head can’t bring itself to rise towards the sky, and the sky itself has a darker hue. Glory cannot be returned to unless it is already there in some way, at least in this image. So now the puma often has the horse, its jaws pressing into its neck, its bulk on its back, while the horse shudders and flicks itself about, only to more often than not fade away and then the valley darkens too.
Too many things prevent the original image from returning. Happiness cannot be achieved when there are dark
clouds, or if the horse can’t bring itself to raise its head again. The dark clouds are always there, even if they’re just a shadow over the mountains – whose sheen has now dulled considerably – and it stops the horse from looking to the sky and feeling its mane fly on the wind, its heart lifting.
I want to see that original image again, but I don’t know how it will work. Sometimes there have to be darker clouds that you can’t do anything about. Now it feels like a clear blue sky and a horse with a raised head is wrong, naïve even. It doesn’t have the same naïve ephemeral glow as in childhood, but it’s a version more tethered to the real world, or so I thought.
Now the horse is just standing in an overcast mountain valley, its head level, waiting for the rain that’s coming. The rain will keep the grasses green. But it feels lonely for the blue sky and rainbow oyster-shell mountains. One day it will see them again, but who knows how many rains and storms there are to come. Once they have been and gone, I don’t know if the valley will ever be the same as it was.
More summaries about the Mountain Valley