lost in the forest

I've been dreaming of horses again.  Last night I was riding, a long way.

  It is a fairly common thing for little girls to love horses.  I am not alone in that camp.  And I managed to obtain one, against most odds.  It was the only real bliss I knew of and so I set myself to that bliss, and maybe some great fortune added itself to that determination and one day I found myself in love with a grey mare named Synara.  I knew it was bliss before I met her, but the reality outshone my fantasy.  Even in freezing cold and deep snows I would go to her, when I was sick, when I was tired, when I was forbidden....I went.  My devotion was natural.  I didn't mind spending hours teaching her to shake my hand or hours learning to post a trot.  It was love.
True, undying, unconditional love.
    Even after there were boys, even after there was money, it was always about the equine.  There wasn't a boy alive I could love as much as that bliss.  My heart was already captured, the promise of romantic love or children were nothing compared to what I already felt.
  And then.
I was careless maybe, or naive.  The greatest betrayal I have ever committed was my first.  It was against her, against my own bliss.
    I began to calculate the logistical reality of travel and having a horse.  I put it off for a while, I left home and kept her.  I came back and reunited.  I left again.  I came back.
   One day I said something that was misunderstood by the friend who kept her, and adding to that my lazy nature of paying people on time....I was far too nonchalant about money, being a spoiled child still....and I lost her.
     I let my bliss go.

         I cried for years over that.  I have betrayed myself many times since then, and it's all just been paltry heartbreak compared to that first one.  
  I've been running for years.
Mom and Dad figured that I had a wanderer's nature.  They knew I'd leave as fast as I was able to.
  Synara, they believed, was their ace in the hole, she would keep me home.

When I finally left my country, she died.  And I was free, in a way.  Tethered to no bliss.

To ride a horse is to be free and autonomous and locomotive.  It is to be merged with natural power.  To be on horse back, to really be on horse back is to combine absolute independence and freedom with absolute merged oneness.  That is the promise of the horse, that is the bliss.  Every wheelbarrow of shit I hauled, every mane I braided, every riding book I studied was in service to that divine superpower.  

   The horses in my dreams....they are like promises.  They are like lamps.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep......