I was up late and woke early and XO was out of chocolate croissants, so that although it was a glorious day I felt a bit frail and mostly glad that I would be riding Bella.

But also just a tiny, secret bit bummed, because she’s little and has an upside down neck and doesn’t really come on the bit like the BIG horses.

MOAR FULE ME.

“Dez,” I said to Dez, our lovely trainer: “should I be using a driving seat with Bella?” This is the sort of rubbish I get out of books.

“You already use too much driving seat,” said Dez, who is lovely. “I want her to move off your legs.”

So off we go, and I am pushing her and pushing her and also messing with the bit, because for heaven’s sake Bella you are a grown horse, do not be ponying around with your nose in the air.

“Leave the bit alone,” said Dez, fountain of loveliness. “It’s more important to get her moving forward.”

Okay, so, this isn’t working, why don’t I do a crazy thing and try what the trainer says. Leave Bella’s ridiculous head in the clouds and ride her off my leg into a light, consistent contact.

Trot without stirrups, counterflexion, circles at counterflexion, true flexion, canter, drop stirrups, flying change. Lots of work at the canter, me trying to sink into the saddle, hold my legs soft and still at her side. Not use a driving seat.

I started to feel her finding her own cadence. I tried to sit still and soft and supple, and actually felt my hips creaking, too stiff to move with her. Dez has always told me I do this, but I never felt it before. I tried to soften, and tried to soften, and tried and tried and tried.

And Bella reached her neck down into the contact.

Well, I thought. I’ll be damned.

She wasn’t arch-necked and picture-perfect like Archie and Dillon and Omni. Her little neck is too short for that. But she was moving off my leg and accepting the contact, and I had done it without my hands, just with patience and my seat.

Next we did a distance exercise and I threw away the reins and she ran out on me in front of a six-inch log, the little brat. But later again we jumped a course most of which was 2’9″ and half of which was oxers and all of which felt enormous to me. And we rode it in that same forward gleeful canter, united in a single purpose, counting strides and hitting good distances and taking off and landing like Fred and Ginger. I eased her into a trot with the biggest grin my face is capable of.

But the biggest happiness didn’t wash over me until later, when we were walking back to the barn, and I looked at the sun shining on her iridescent orange withers and her strawberry blonde mane. She may be little on the outside but don’t be fooled. Bella is large, she contains multitudes; she has infinitely more to teach me.

Showjumping is in and of itself a pointless pastime, I know that. On the drive down, Katie and I were chuckling about our habit of driving thirty miles to ride horses round and round in a small arena, and how we might explain this to our great-grandparents. But equitation is also an art, and like any respectably pointless human activity it contains both nothing and the everything that that tiny point of nothing is connected to. It is teaching me history and psychology and anatomy and genetics. It’s teaching me how to learn.

I propose a third domain of study, beside the sciences and the humanities. I shall call it, the equanimities. The queue forms to the left.

Sundays have been perfect for a while now. They start on Saturday nights when I go to bed early BECAUSE I AM OLD AS DIRT, and curl up in my lovely bed with my lovely cat and a library book. They continue when I wake up and kiss everyone goodbye and walk over to Cafe XO and have a pain au chocolat warm out of the oven. Then Katie and I carpool down to the barn and talk about books and politics. Then we have a showjumping lesson, on horses dappled with good health and shining like Akhal Tekes, under the sparkling aspens and the benevolent smile of the Stanford Dish.

Then when I get home Jeremy is making French toast for the girls. Today was even better than usual because my lovely Yoz had come over with his lovely Dexter. We walked up the hill, kidnapping Martha and watering Fitzmurgistead Farm on the way. We sat in the sun in the playground and went to Tacos Los Altos for burritos and Jamaica and went back to the park and Kathy and Rose and Salome came and found us. And then we wandered home and drank wine and played Fluxx and I made tagine and it was unctuous.

Now we are watching the adorable Brian Cox, and I am wondering what I will say to him when I meet him in London next week.

Sundays! There should be more of ’em.

(Even if you love me dearly, you are not expected to read this; it’s mostly for my future reference. Also: my birthday saddle is back from the saddler’s and the new knee pads and blocks have made it amazing. I sink into it and ride like a centaur.)

Colin’s daughter Sam McIntosh has moved back to New Zealand from Europe, and is spending a couple of weeks in California, so she took a bunch of us for lessons. She is a Big Deal, considered one of the prettiest and most correct Grand Prix showjumpers in the world. I was nervous as hell.

My usual Tuesday night lesson I was surprised to see that I was down to ride the big blood-bay gelding Dillon. I rode him once, when he arrived, and could not make head nor tail of him. He’s very tall and very long-backed and was, at that point, quite green. I couldn’t get him to go in a straight line and therefore I couldn’t get him to go around corners either. I’ve seen other friends ride him since and knew that he has no vices to speak of, so I wasn’t scared. But Tuesday night made it obvious that either he had improved or I had (actually both). He goes along in a nice light contact and is very responsive to my leg, not in a hot way, just in a friendly, forward, willing sort of way. I still had trouble getting him to track around a corner with his hind feet in the prints of his front feet, but Dez gave us a clever little exercise with a shallow serpentine from the quarter line to the rail, and that helped a lot.

Wednesday night I ran late, and I couldn’t find Dillon’s bridle, and my hands were shaking. I saw Beth and she said “How are you?” and I said “Nervous as hell, glad I am riding with you and Austin,” and then Sam, who was standing right there, introduced herself and I felt like an utter tool. And then I was late getting out and warming up.

And then I just stopped freaking out because, why. The sun was slanting through the aspens and Portola Valley is beautiful and there is nothing I’d rather be doing. We rode trot circles at the far end of the arena. Colin was watching and he chuckled: “They never sit up straight like this when it’s me teaching.” I sat as still as I possibly could, concentrating on keeping my shoulders back and my hands still and my bum in the (awesome new!) saddle and my lower leg quiet. We trotted and cantered poles and changed direction after and did figure eights with the poles in the middle. Then Sam gradually added fences.

This, of course, was the first time I had ever jumped Dillon. Being as long and thin as a noodle he has an enormous stride and is maybe the scopiest horse I ever sat on. The first exercise was the canter poles, then a hard right turn to a vertical, then back over the canter poles. Hard enough getting that turn, although I could feel my lower leg holding me still and my core balancing me on the landing side. Reassuring! Next we did a bending line over the vertical to a pole on the ground, then a more-than-rollback to the wall.

Then, the first course: the wall to the bending line, a rollback to a HUGE oxer (me biting my tongue not to say “That’s too big for me;” I checked later, it was only 2’9″), and then a one-stride both elements of which were also huge (2’6″:). I sank into my heels and kept my contact as light as I could. When Dillon tried to get fast, I tried to lift him back in front of my leg then leave him alone. As Sam said afterwards, there were a few mistakes, but it was effective. My lower leg was there, my balance was there, and the speeding up and slowing down came from that. My confidence has improved as a direct result of my improved fitness and strength. And from my point of view, there were a couple of moments where we hung in the air like planes over San Francisco airport, like ringed planets. I had time to think, “This is going rather well,” before he landed. It was like a dream. Music of the spheres.

Then we jumped the whole thing going back the other way! He got much too fast over the one-stride to the huge oxer and I dropped him in a dreadful spot, but did I mention how scopey he is? He overjumped it, and I stayed on. He bucked, which is more than fair, but I got him back in hand nicely for the last three. Then we did it again, and Sam pointed out that he actually needed more canter going into the double so that I could rock him back for the oxer. I tried it that way and he jumped it perfectly.

Sam’s very different from our usual trainers, in that she’s quiet and apparently very shy, and doesn’t say anything while you’re actually on course, just lets you figure it out for yourself. Makes me feel much more competent and independent. What really impressed me was how she increased the difficulty of each exercise while building on what we’d achieved in the exercise before. There was a huge amount of narrative logic to the lesson.

Colin said: “I’ve never seen you ride that well before.”

Utterly illogically, I was even sicker with nerves the next night, Thursday. I was hideously early and warmed up in the dressage arena for about half an hour, until my feet had gone to sleep because I was forcing my ankles so far down at the walk. Sam said “We’re going to ride in the big ring,” and my heart sank with my dead feet into my boots. It was a long walk out there.

And of course as soon as I put Dillon into a trot, the circulation came back into my feet. I could feel all the work I’d put into my lower leg, all the two-point and sitting trot with toes pointed up. I could feel the new muscles in my core. I didn’t need to haul on the reins because he likes a long low contact, and he is honest and kind and mellow and will come back into my hand if I so much as think of collecting him. All this without being the slightest bit lazy. By this time, of course, I loved Dillon with a desperate passion.

“He really likes you,” said Sam.

Pole on a bending line to a vertical with a ground pole before and after, then four strides to another pole. Easy uphill, much harder downhill and we kept missing it until Sam told me to add a stride in the first part. Then he popped through it, five, vertical, four, pole. The vertical kept getting bigger and bigger, by the way! Oh, that feeling of having him collected under me, his short stride, his calm competence. That was key to the whole lesson.

We added an oxer (that kept getting bigger as well), then we did exercises, and finally a course bigger than the moon: panels to a water jump, inside turn to the original vertical, another vertical, a picket fence, a one-stride. We sped up and sped up. Second time through, we crashed through the first two fences, then managed to get it together as we went along.

Finally, what Sam called a jump-off: water and panels going the other way, very sharp turn to the black oxer, winding back through the other fences to the original vertical, jumped at an angle, then the one-stride going the other way. I knew I had to balance him going into the water and panels – the opposite problem to what I’d had the day before. And I found that popping canter again, as I had done in the five strides after the pole. He popped over the water and the huge panels like they were nothing. I felt my seat deep and square on the sharp turn into the oxer, then put my leg on and took off and landed like we were one being. I found my line across the vertical at an angle, then as he wanted to race into the one-stride I caught him and made him add the extra stride, and he was full of joy and so was I.

“He goes really well for you,” said Toni. I couldn’t wipe the huge stupid grin off my face.

I remember looking at Beth and Austin in the sunset light, Austin with the look of eagles on his face, and thinking “Let me keep this. Let this be one of the memories I get to keep until I die.”

Julia, Ada, & Claire, a photo by jon_gilbert on Flickr.

And all I have to show for it are a couple of hours lying on the couch with my cat, drinking hot tea and reading my Lionel Shriver novel.

Win!

I sat in Cafe XO this morning contemplating my pain au chocolat and my coffee and my unopened Lionel Shriver novel and my forthcoming riding lesson, and I experienced perfect happiness.

Now I am at home after a great lesson and my cat is draped across my collarbones like a mink stole, purring like fule, and Jeremy and the children are off seeing Kung Fu Panda 2 and I am contemplating the hot shower I am about to have.

Rest of my life’s going to be downhill after this, is what I’m saying.

win the first: I ask Claire to run through her recital pieces. “Okay mama, I will play them all once.” “Fine. I just want you to feel confident and proud on Saturday.” Pause. “Okay mama, I will practice them all twice.”

win the second: I trot across Geary to Peet’s to order my medium coffee. It is already made! My barista knows what I mean when I tell him: “I don’t even NEED a Ducati!”

Saturday was epic: wushu, then Fairmount Fiestaval, then a dentist’s appointment, then the library. We were received with amused delight everywhere:

…which was great fun right up until their swim lesson, when the paint got washed off but on the bright side, Julia earned her red ribbon. Their swim school is wonderful at providing these regular positive reinforcements for swims well swum. As part of my program of feigning maternal competence, I have all their ribbons pinned to a notice board in the living room. The new ribbon was pinned up with great ceremony.

Then I abandoned the children with their father and put on a little black dress and went to Writers With Drinks with Rebecca and Yoz and Gilbert and Heather, which was fab. I picked up milk on the way home and was interrupted from complaining bitterly about Safeway only ever having two registers open, even when there are thirty-eight people in line, by Rocky, who is making Indian tacos at El Rio and wants to open his own place. “It’s all good,” said Rocky. “You’re right,” I said. “I totally have to seize more day.”

Dad, a photo by Goop on the lens on Flickr.

Architect, raconteur, bon vivant. I don’t think any woman has ever had a better father-in-law.

Really ace weekend. Dinner at Brenda’s Friday night – crawfish beignets zomg – and then Source Code, which was epically popcorn. And then drinks at Yoz’s, where he pulled out his phone and said, “About this blog post: is Juniper Arwen Anemone Sagan Donner Hermes really a real name?” and we said “Oh my God, haven’t we introduced you to the Ximms yet? You’ll love them, they are lovely!”

Saturday I mostly slept. I slept late, went to the farmer’s market with Salome, which these days is mostly sitting outside Sandbox eating beef piroshki and drinking De La Paz coffee and talking about our lives. Then I went home and napped for hours. Then we took the girls swimming and Jules went to Azucena’s party and Claire and Jeremy and I had yummy vegetarian Indian. When I got home Bebe lay on top of me purring and saying “You remember how you slept late and then had a long nap and I got to snuggle with you all day? That was aces.”

This morning I rode Omni with Toni and Colin and jumped VAST FENCES, possibly as high as 2 foot 9. I have undeniably improved. I visited Salome on the way home and played with the boys while she tidied up, then we went back to my place and collected J and the girls and walked up the hill and had lunch in the garden behind Progressive Grounds, and bought books at Red Hill where I took a picture of a job ad for Rose, and visited Good Prospect Community Garden and picked lemons, and met Kathy and Martha out for a walk, and went to Holly Park, and picked up dinner at Avedano’s and now we are home and dinner smells awesome and I am fond of my life.

When Kay and I were kids living in the far-flung suburbs of Sydney, we used to dream of living in New York City. The appeal, to me, was specifically being able to order Thai food at 3am. Now, of course, my digestive system rebels at such outlandish notions. I do eat home-delivered Thai about once a week, but at a civilized hour.

That said, my daily life in this very dense neighbourhood is far better than long-ago lonely teenager could ever have dreamed. Yesterday I bumped into Ann Hughes and Jakie, Julia’s future husband, as I exchanged library books in the Mission branch of the SFPL. I got home in time to take Claire to wushu, and then I put on gardening gloves and attacked the weeds in our flower bed. Gilbert and Ada came out and found me there, so Gilbert went off to run errands while Ada helped me in the garden and Julia sat on the stoop and made up stories to entertain us. And then we all went to collect Claire from wushu. Did I mention she has her green belt? No? Really?

I’ve been sleeping erratically, waking at 4am and drowsing fitfully until the alarm goes off at dawn, so it was a bit surprising that last night, squashed between Importunate Cat and Julia, I had the best night’s sleep I’d had in ages. Not to mention an elaborate and escapist dream. He was an exiled North African prince. I was a cypherpunk anarchist whose help he sought, but instead I subjected him to long lectures on the evils of kleptocracies. We lived in a sunny north-Mediterranean city whose skyscrapers could be raised on pneumatic lifts to avoid tsunamis. You know. That old story.

We all woke very late and had to scuttle to get to school in time for the bell.

I keep forgetting to mention that while we were up at the Big Yellow House I figured out the secret to happiness. It is to make enough money without hurting anyone, if you can; to work humbly at something impossibly difficult (like fiction or equitation); to find the people you can love unconditionally and love them with everything you’ve got; and to play games with them. Hence the world-historical importance of Carcassonne and mahjongg.

I didn’t promise that it was going to be original.

Rode Omni today. Big Roman-nosed true black Thoroughbred. He’s the one I call “The Professor” in public and “Black Beauty” in the privacy of my own dork head. I was hungover and underslept, and he likes to carry his head on one side, and buck, and go into reverse without warning; and sometimes all three at once.

But I didn’t fall off. We rode a pretty intricate little pattern, circling into one fence and rolling back to the next and jumping that on an angle to cut inside another fence. I jammed my heels down and kept my hands low and when he got antsy, I tried not to react.

It works best when I establish a good rhythm, let the obstacles come to us and keep my chin up on the landing side. Isn’t that always the way?

Right now I am aching all over. How I know I am getting my money’s worth.

17_vows_are_made

Originally uploaded by yatima

Would marry again!!11!

Seldom has there been a more opportune book. (Opportune is a fantastic word. Let’s use it more.)

…those who felt the lowest amount of stress possess a personality trait called “dispositional resilience,” which was defined by three components: they remained connected to other people, rather than isolated; they felt that their grief was manageable and under control; and they embraced and learned from new experiences, rather than avoiding or feeling threatened by them. They were psychologically hardy, optimistic and able to rise to the challenge…

I already know that happiness is a choice. Now I am starting to believe that strength can be a choice, too.

Claire in the back of the car with a notebook and pen. “Hey mama, guess what? The eighteenth binary number is 131,072.”

Sitting in the sun at the barn as a Dopey the half-Clydesdale is led past me, and seeing him as he really is: a huge strange alien beast with a vast wise eye. Like a dragon.

Going out on the harbour with Badgerbag in the Daisy, and the marine battery failing, and us having to row back to shore. Two fortysomething Internet feminists, in a boat, marooned, capable, happy.

After my first year at uni I got a summer gig on an archaeological dig at Port Arthur, the big Colonial gaol site and open air museum on the Tasman Peninsula. It was fantastic, my first adventure away from home, prefiguring Ireland and America. I got to try on different selves and to spend my days in hard physical labour and my evenings flirting and learning to cook. (Zucchini should be peeled and sliced and blanched and served with pepper and too much butter. Whatever you do to them, eels hand-caught out of the well are gross.) And despite its awful history Port Arthur was, and is, gobsmackingly beautiful. Every Benthamite Panopticon should be built out of sandstone and set in parkland, on a cove.

In 1996 there was a huge, terrible massacre there. The person responsible has said that he did it in order to be famous, and so I have not spoken or written his name since I read that, fifteen years ago. (Boy, I sure showed him!) But my desire to expunge his infamy reflected a deeper conviction that the massacre was an aberration, a rain of lead from the sky. It wasn’t about Port Arthur. It wasn’t some terrible reflection on human nature (Port Arthur’s awful history is that.) It wasn’t how life is. I resist all efforts by heartless men with guns to define the human condition.

The Columbine book is super-interesting in this way, because it discusses Eric Harris as a fully-fledged psychopath. (Dylan Klebold’s is a very different case.) Harris was, as far as anyone can tell, clinically aberrant; as if incapable of empathy at the genetic level. He was a rain of lead from the sky. He doesn’t tell us anything about bullying or nerds or people who wear trench coats or social life in American high schools. He is a natural disaster, like a hurricane or a flood. And this is most movingly expressed by Patrick Ireland, who is best remembered for climbing out a window with blood pouring from the bullet wound in his head. What kept him going through the hours it took him to crawl to the window? Not hope, as it turned out. Trust. At his valedictorian address to his class, Ireland said:

“When I fell out the window, I knew somebody would catch me. That’s what I need to tell you: I knew the loving world was there all the time.”

Life is mysterious and amazing.

Have I mentioned how splendid horses are? No? …that surprises me.

Thanks for all the Kate Bush and Kinks thoughts! For your next assignment, please discuss Abba, Michael Jackson and Queen.

I’m totally having a royal wedding party. There will be Pimm’s. Stay tuned!

I thought I’d been dropped in the deep end. My first ride back, after three weeks away with only two rides in Sydney, was on Manny, in the indoor arena. But he’s a new Manny. I rode as light and soft as I could, and he did big blowy sighs (which is a VERY GOOD thing; it means the horse is happy and relaxed) and the first time – the first time! – I asked him for some lengthening in the trot, all I did was unclench my diaphragm and he immediately stepped his back legs under himself and lifted his shoulders so he could reach his front legs further out. It was MAGIC. Then we did a canter and I collected it just by clenching my diaphragm, and there he was, uphill and happy and bouncy and fast-but-controlled. A Ferrari in third gear!

We didn’t really jump, just did patterns over poles on the ground and a couple of teeny fences, but when the big white dressage horse was being lunged next door and bucking on the end of the lunge rein I knew he was going to infect Manny’s mood. So I concentrated really hard on staying the same and not riding defensively – keeping my hand and elbow and shoulder unlocked, letting him move forward, and jamming my heel down as far as I could so I had a strong base to follow him. And Manny was perfect; soft and happy and responsive. And he did pick up the white horse’s mood, and he did buck, and it didn’t matter because my heels were down and my core was strong.

It’s Manny that’s improved, far more than I have. We were talking about it afterwards and Toni said “It’s like he’s looked around and taken a deep breath.” He used to get complicated because he was over-anxious to please. Now he knows he won’t be punished for mistakes, he has relaxed and is able to enjoy himself. Every horse that comes into this program gets better: fitter, happier, more delightful to ride. It is an awesome pleasure to behold.

When we arrived at Currawinya everyone was already out on Mum and Dad’s new screened-in back deck. The horses next door were walking through their paddock. Drawn to them as if by a magnet, I purloined an apple and went down. The horses had no interest in the apple, had clearly never been given apples as treats before, but were happy to stand with me and breathe their warm breath into my hair. Thoroughbreds in beautiful condition, their muscles hard, their skin like silk, their trimmed hooves hitting the ground at precisely 45 degrees. Curious and friendly and respectful of personal space. Handled by people who understand horses and like them.

Ross and Julia came down to meet us and the horses and I walked over to the fence. “Their heads are big,” said Ross, as the horses inspected him and Jules. “Yup,” I said. “Make them go away,” he said. “They’re freaking me out.” I pushed their shoulders and they ambled off, then I piggybacked Julia up to the house where my Mum gave me a glass of champagne. The sun set, gloriously.

Dad made pappadums, bhajis, rice, dal, beef curry, tandoori chicken and his own potato curry. Everything was perfect, and there’s enough left for dinner tonight. Port wine trifle for pudding. As we got ready to leave I realized Mum and Dad don’t have a dishwasher, so I filled the sink and my brother Alain picked up a teatowel and we washed up together like two halves of a whole, as if we had done it a thousand times before, as if we had done it, in fact, with these exact plates and pans, all our lives.