the adventure of ponies (allegory of the absolute)

of course, they weren't really ponies, they were miniature horses: bright, sassy, trusting and two feet tall, trotting in the morning fog on my way to work. I stopped to take pictures, and noticed the gate was open, and several ponies separated into an open paddock, where they could wander out to the road.

the property has been up for sale for awhile, so nobody was around. There was only what turned out to be a long wire panel still three feet short for a gate. And that at the expense of cold fingers and rusty wire fasteners randomly dispersed and weedbound.

well, fortune smiled a man with truck and know-how, but as he snugged the rope and turned to leave, he said, real sorrowful and mad, "too bad they're all going to slaughter," and drove away.

jaw dropped, and fumbling the rope through tears, mind blossoming with the view of fucking pollyanna delivering these beautiful spirits quite handily to the jaws of death, yet still cognizant of the proprieties involved in loosing a pasture gate with intent to free them. A thought emerged of rustling and all that entailed, and i drove away.

it was like a lever jammed my brain, as i realized kaBOOM how i could not know how to help. And this presented as a matter of livelihood, and lives, and was quite disorienting. All the while i am sobbing for the picture of the ponies in my mind and retrieving the ipod nano my daughter just sent me used, from where it was flung off the road after thunk-thunking the bottom of my car. Trailing from the ear-phone cord. Through the door, where it trailed from my pocket, having likely fallen during the fence escapade, and tangled in tears.

sigh ;-)

so my mind turned to see how easily it involves itself away from the point, of what to do. All options appeared to point to the slaughterhouse, as i was yet raw and emotional and questioning whether i was willing to live in a world where we grind up beautiful, bright spirited ponies. My imagination blossomed with sweating biceps and cracking whips and terrified creatures leaping into iron jaws, chomping, with bellows belching steam and the walls pulsing red. Forever.

then i realized i did not know who these biceped whip-crackers were, nor what motivated them. Perhaps they were farmers, who view flesh in units of profit. Or undereducated and supporting too large a family. But i could see that it has been happening for a long, long time, this grinding up of ponies. And i couldn't see the end of it.

so i wept for us all, born to witness such inevitable inhumanity, affronting all that is good in us, as we are pressed through this coarse seive into an unbecoming baseness. And for those of us caught in the horror of the ordinariness of the killing fields, as if the clock is punched with one long howl, handily denied by blindered transports and eventually dispersed, as are we all, to soil.

and then, halfway to work, i realized how all of this separated me again from the reality of what to do next, for the real ponies. The conundrum of how to help, and how could i possibly know? And self-chuckle-chiding about the intractably soupy seduction of story over living souls. Sheez!

so the mind, flip-flopping, is relieved that evening to see the pasture gate flung wide again, all karmic debt resolved. A voice declaring Run! blared in my skull, as a stampede of golden midgets careened into the dawn...

but no, it couldn't be so easy. For my mind knew too completely i could not know what was best, whether the ponies were in or out of the pen. I could only participate in moving forward, this way or that. I noticed down the road there was activity at the barn down there, where usually there is only someone feeding the livestock twice a day, and wondered if they might be aware. But then i imagined they were the owners, and would merely tighten the noose again...

so, flippy-floppy still, my mind somehow sleeps. So much to ponder, and each seed exponentiating. A mandala, unfolding its secrets.

The ponies are in the road the next morning, and again the inward bugle blare "Run!" and easing ever so slowly through, so as not to scare them. But they spooked anyway, and ran straight back to the pen, eyes all afright and rolling at me, as my heart sank, and i saw the inevitability of these ponies, running into the grinder. As if no matter what i did, my impact was puny in respect to the overwhelming force of the inevitable, already in flow since time began.

This time i called my husband, wanting nothing more than a pair of hairy, tattooed arms to bury my sorrows in, and somehow magically make it all go away, and all the ponies and all the children and all the wretched and forlorn forevermore be happy ever after, like they said it would be, back when i still believed them, believed such nonsense, all conjured those lazy afternoons, curled round the books with flowing pictures, stirring clouds of mirrored fairy-dust in my mind.'

Sobbing, "The ponies are on the road!"
Hubbie, "What?" Static....
Me again, louder.
"What? The phonies on a roll?"
Grrr!
"What!"
"THE PONIES ARE ON THE ROAD!"
"Huh? The bones are where?"
Me, clipped, repetitive, droned until he said "Oh. The ponies. Are on the road."
silence
"Mary. Go to work"
rather brusquely, I thought.

"Okay -- Fine!"

I drove on, through tears, feeling mightily misunderstood and for the ninety-millionth time, swearing off men. Even if i was married to one of the hairy apes, evidently horrifyingly capable of averting their gaze, as ponies are funneled through the seething antechambers of death, for whatever gain is derived. As if somehow not looking makes it okay.

and i saw all of us, to some extent, in an antechamber of death, and must at some point be ground, even as the ponies, without mercy through jaws of steel.

and there was no other way.

well NOW i'm a happy camper!

but swinging back around, focusing on brainstorming help-desks, like the humane society, and resolved to pursue when i could, at work. Well, as it unfolded, the first help-desk rolled most obviously down the hall in the guise of our nurse, Patty, who owns property and horses very proximal to the ponies.

well, she promptly pooh-poohed the idea that miniatures of this quality would ever be slaughtered, and had i possibly thought of trying to find out what was really going on?

sigh. Don't you hate it when that happens?

so then flooded in the brilliant idea that perhaps my husband wasn't a neanderthal after all, and that i could kill two birds with one stone by assuming that he would be happy to help, were he given specifics rather than vaguely disconcerting damsel-in-distress noises.

so of course, he would be happy to run over to the adjacent ranch, where i'd seen activity the day before, and ask them if they knew about the ponies. He called to say nobody was there, but there was a note on the pasture gate thanking whoever rounded up the ponies, with a name and phone number to call should it happen again.

long story short, Lara ended up thanking me for intervening, and inviting me over to shoot pictures of the ponies anytime.

and the wicked witch melted as dorothy noticed that kansas is in technicolor too ;-)