Bareback Writing

I know it’s been a year and a month since my last confession–I mean, blog post. But I found this old scrap of mine tucked in a notebook. And it seemed to suggest a beckoning, if not a reckoning. So I thought I’d use it as a kind of stalking horse and see where it took me. I do have some potential stablemates ready to keep it company, maybe. But one canter for Leibowitz at a time….

Bareback Writing

So, jump on. No saddle, just straddle the withers and away we go, like a trick rider, standing up, flipping over to one side or another, while the mount canters around the ring and then, at full gallop, charges out of the circus tent like the show horse in the movie,The Electric Horseman, with his rider, Robert Redford deciding enough was enough, this animal needs to be free, so he propels it along random streets in this dusty Western town, pursued by police cars until finally he breaks out of the grid into the open prairie outside of town and outdistances his pursuers.
Well, sometimes it works that way. And sometimes the horse ambles into the nearest clump of tall grass in the roadside, like a horse I remember named Tennessee that I tried to “steer,” yanking ineffectually on its bridle while it ignored the nuisance on its back. Metaphors do not come with a guarantee of performance. The idea is to jump on and see where the words take you—out into the starry night, up into the weeds — c’mon, horsey, giddy-up, horsey—or often, nowhere. At 3:00, the rental hour is up. The wrangler wipes down the horse, who hasn’t broken a sweat, and asks, “How was it?”

Magical. Exhilarating. We were one animal. The wind in his mane, the wind in my hair; Next time we’ll go full Pegasus.I mime Buddy Hollly on percussion: “Pega sus, Pega sus… Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty Pega sus….”