Feeling Far Away from the Arena I Love:It is a strange thing to come to terms with the fact that things are so seemingly an intrinsic part of your being continue on without you. This New York Saturday night, cold, blustery and quite uninviting, I am sitting at my dear old desk watching a live streaming of the final night of competition at the Grand National and World Championship Morgan Horse Show in Oklahoma City. How can I not be there? It is almost easier to feel as though it has ceased to exist, been put on hold because my ability to attend has been temporarily suspended. My trainer is jogging by, vying for the world title she wants with all her heart and I am not on the rail offering words of encouragement. Rather, I am saying those helpful things and they are going unheard. It’s a surreal experience to say the least and I have to be ok with it.
It seems so long ago that I was last there but in many ways, the familiarity of the Oklahoma state fairgrounds, the sweet smelling bark mulch, the cold mornings and warm afternoons, is as near to my heart as if I were there yesterday. And yet, for all my words of woe and feelings of exclusion, when I do return, I will find the people and horses quite unchanged. As with all good things, there is a fluxuation and a fluidity to the Morgan horse show industry. Young stars, both equine and human are brought in, not to replace the old ones, but to challenge them. It’s a beautiful thing really, but surely a struggle to let go of, for as I watch the miniaturized form of my trainer Judy jog across my computer screen aboard one of my favorite friends, I wish so fully that I were there in person to cheer her on.
3 comments:
"When nature has called into existence a genius of surpassing excellence in any vocation, it is not her custom to leave him alone: on the contrary, she for the most part gives life to another, created at the same time and in the same locality, whence the emlation of each is excited and they mutually serve as stumlants one to the other. And this, in addition to the great advantage derived from it by them who, thus united, make their efforts in common, has the further effect of awakening the minds of those who come afterthem, and who are excited to labor with te utmost zeal and industry for the attainment of that glorious reputation and those honors which they daily hear ascribed to their distinguished predecessors..."
from Vasari's "Lives of the Artists", Masaccio
that's "emulation"
and "stimulants"
...scusa
oh man there's like 10 other typos in there... blogger crapped out on me so I typed the quote for a second time hurriedly and didn't edit. Now I've destroyed the effect. MAN....
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