Start with the first*

Late summer abundance

Frank¹ ran me over a week or so ago. Something frightened him and he leapt - effortless shove of shoulder and chest - and me on the ground, stunned. I saw stars, my ankle throbbed, sharp needles of pain - enough to make me grit my teeth and hold my leg. He circled back, snorted at my still form. Nosed my back.

After quite a long time I sat up, assessed the world, found my cap, my glasses, my earphones. Glared at the horse. Perhaps it wasn’t so bad. But already the blood rushed down and my ankle ballooned.

*

It’s the last days of summer and the ground is a heart holding heat beneath my bare feet. I put Frank out on the hill with the oldies while my ankle heals. I collect nectarines, test their ripeness by gently resting them in the palm of my hand and if the tree releases them I take the fruit inside for breakfast, their flesh the sweetest blessing. Everywhere is abundance. Grass heads heavy with seed. Apple trees bowed with fruit. The mulberry lit with the a hundred silver eyes feasting on red jewels. But despite all this I can’t shake a feeling of fragility.

This week - watering, washing, weeding, polishing, mopping and sweeping - I have repeated a David Whyte poem² I’d copied into my journal.

Start close in, 
don't take the second step 
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in, 
the step
you don't want to take. 

I’m thinking about the nature of fragility, about its power. About vulnerability in the face of change and of how we (I) can live without racing to an endpoint. The poem is asking me to sit with the unknown, to be comfortable with it rather than rushing forward to some fantasy arrival point.

*

Earlier this last week I had the vet coming. He was on a tight schedule and I promised to have the two old horses waiting for him to check their teeth before winter. I don’t want to risk not being able to catch them (unlikely, but Murphy’s law - if it’s going to happen it will happen when the vet is waiting) so I ask J to drop me out on the hill the evening before. They all rush up at the sight of a bucket. I put a halter on Belle, boss mare, and then on Frank, who happily stands as I slipped the rope over his ears. We walk home.

I let the old ones into a paddock near the yards ready for the morning and keep Frank with me. He’s up on his toes, snatching at the restraint of rope around his head. I sent him in a circle away from me, I’m suddenly tired in the face of his bold, young strength. He trots - each step powerful, fierce - the only thing that holds us in some sort of conversation is the long lead rope. Soon his ear turns, his lips start to whisper, then nicker and lick and he lowers his head. I don’t so much stand still as think still and he walks straight up and blows on my face and we watch as the others gallop the sweep and dip of their new paddock. Then we, me still a little lame, leaning on his wither and he, quiet now, walk to his paddock right next door to where the oldies are pretending they are yearlings. When we get to the gate, I slip the rope halter off his head. He stands and blows sweetly across my face, nuzzles my pocket for a treat and then watches me limp off.

MM

Reading

Nobel prizewinner Annie Ernaux’s, Getting Lost, has been translated into English and I am 100 pages deep. This is her journal kept through a torrid, passionate affair with a Soviet diplomat. For fans of Helen Garner’s diaries and interior writing, this book is extraordinary. And in a not so tangeltal a leap Jessie Cole has an essay in SRB on art as love (and everything in between). It’s such a thoughtful riff on the private and public production of art. The last paragraph is like a small truth bomb. Friend and sitter, CF, sent me this essay on fell running and it chimed very precisely with why I love swimming the ocean, walking and riding and why it’s important to keep doing all these things. This very funny essay on name synasythia, made me giggle - no idea where i found it...facebook? I poured over the photos in this article of early 20th century Scotland taken by 14 women photographers - (Margaret Fey Shaw’s especially - that croft, that cow). For the writers and the curious - this wonderful glimpse in American Vogue of an exhibition into Toni Morrison’s process at Princeton. And finally poet Maggie Smith’s excellent Substack - For Dear Life - on getting unstuck.

Listening

Thank you to everyone who listened to the first installment of The Farm Diaries. I think the next one drops tomorrow. Skye Manson has done a wonderful job of taking my words and voice and giving a quiet meditative quality to this series. At least you are all telling me she has - obviously I can’t bare to listen. But we hit No 1 in the Arts section of Apple Podcasts on debut! And this recommendation from sitter LD is next up on my listening - A Promise Lost: Lost Birds of Tasmania.

Doing

Finished the audiobook of Graft. And then got my ducks in a row for a quick trip to Holbrook for some hands on help on the domestic frontline. Also, part of getting my ducks in a row was preparing for a new arrival in our household next weekend (hint, its got 4 paws and a wagging tail).

Until next week Sitters.

1. Frank is my young horse for those new here.

2. *David Whyte, ‘Start Close In’, Essentials, 2019.