snippets, 5-10-2017

When horses teach mindfulness, it sticks (Listen to Your Horse). The ranch where I'm taking lessons does a lot of equine assisted psychotherapy work - good stuff. Might it not help stave off dementia and Alzheimer's, too? Seems that athletic activity and mindfulness training are just what a doctor would order. Guess I'll let you know in 84 years (I ain't leavin' until I'm 137).

trail notes, mmxvii-v-vii

porch notes, mmxvi-v-vi

lesson notes, mmxvii-v-vi

Rode Hot Shot off the lunge line for the first time today; we did some loose, easy walking and a few changes of direction in the round pen. He took good care of me. It's such a pleasure to work with him - it's like he makes it easy to give him your full attention because you know he's absolutely giving you his.

trail notes, mmxvii-v-v

snippets, mmxvii-v-iv

(It's great to) suck at something (NY Times). "Or, as the great father of surfing, Duke Kahanamoku, wisely advised: 'Be patient. Wave come. Wave always come.'" (Nickers.)

more snippets, 5-3-2017

"...what may be above this grass belt I know not yet, for our view ends at the top of the wall of the great S.E. crater. My men say there are devils and gold up beyond, but the German authorities do not support this view. Those Germans are so sceptical."

"My face and particularly my lips are a misery to me, having been blistered by yesterday's sun, and last night I inadvertently whipped the skin all off one cheek, and it keeps on bleeding, and, horror of horrors, there is no tea..."

"It is...advisable, if you wish to produce an opinion generally acceptable in civilised circles, to follow the usual recipe for making opinions -- just take a prejudice of your own, and fix it up with the so-called opinion of that class of people who go in for that sort of prejudice too. I have got myself so entangled with facts that I cannot follow this plan, and therefore am compelled to think..."

- Mary Henrietta Kingsley, Travels in West Africa, 1897

snippets, 5-3-2017

How to make soulful eye contact (NY Times). "To really experience the power of eye contact, [performance artist Marina Abramovic] suggests a minimum of one hour of sustained gaze." An hour? Holy wow. I once lost touch with the corporeal world by holding an infant's gaze for about a minute. An hour would probably open a portal to another dimension.

trail notes, mmxvii-v-i

trail notes, mmxvii-iv-xxx

lesson notes, mmxvii-iv-xxix

I don't know which steps of life's journey brought me to this place, but I'm glad they did.

trail notes, mmxvii-iv-xxvii