constellations #111: rio
I loved this pony, and I mean this literally, more than life itself.
Rio has been dead now for almost exactly a decade but I can still draw the brand he had on his left hip, which he had supposedly gotten as a colt Out West somewhere, from memory. A bay Mustang gelding with an anxious temperament, a nonexistent lead change, and big, brown eyes, he was 13.3 hands tall, meaning that his shoulder was just above my eye level when he first came home to my family. I loved this pony, and I mean this literally, more than life itself.
Here is the most free I have ever felt: young, probably eleven or twelve years old; in the big field between my parents’ backyard and the neighbors’ that has since been turned into someone else’s property, bordered by a stone wall at the end; on the back of Rio. My sister is there, too, on another scrappy pony—probably taller and more confident (both she and her horse). One after another we exit a trail into the field and turn to face the stone wall. We take a deep breath. We get up into a half-seat, we loosen the reins, we nudge the horse with our heels, we click our tongues. Go go go go go, we say, and then we’re moving: a trot, a canter; go, we nudge, we nudge, then we are galloping, then faster, then faster, then as fast as we can, until the trees and the grass and the sky all blur together, until our eyes are watering, until we’re out of breath, until we can hear our blood pounding in our ears. Go go go go go. We are gripping the saddle with our legs, we are pushing our feet down into the stirrups, we are burying our hands in the horse’s mane. I don’t know how long this lasts: five seconds? A minute? Forever? It is terrifying and magical, transcendent, obliterating.
Suddenly the stone wall is getting close. Suddenly we are aware of how fast we’re going. If I fell off right now, we think, I’d break all my bones. We sit down in the saddle, we pull back on the reins, we coo whoa, the stone wall is getting closer, we pull back, we pull back. For a split second we wonder what would happen if we never stopped moving. But then the horse’s gallop slows to a canter, to a trot. To a walk. Our hearts are pounding. We drop the reins. We let the horse shake his head, let him catch his breath. We scratch his neck. We say good job, buddy. We laugh. We exhale. We turn the horse around. We walk back to the start of the trail.
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading; I appreciate your company, especially during these radically unfree times. I hope for freedom—and not just the memory of it—for you & for all of us.
xo,
M
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P.S. This time last year I was: thinking about crushes and libertines; and before that, writing about love, spiraling out, lacking intuition, and looking at wall drawings
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P.P.S. Here are some other things I have been consuming lately: the new Algernon Cadwallader record; the new Wednesday record; Julio Torres’ show Color Theories; Rilo Kiley live on the rooftop at Pier 17, under a nearly-full moon (!); Ada Lea live at Night Club 101, followed by a date shake & fries at Superiority Burger with Mad (perfect); Chappell Roan live at Forest Hills (which I reviewed for Pitchfork); Boys Go To Jupiter (loudly spilled my candy not once but twice during the 90-minute runtime; sorry to my fellow attendees); the Leonora Carrington show at the Katonah Museum of Art; a fruit whip from Happy Zoe Vegan Bakery as a personal reward for running an errand for a friend; the Burger Diva anniversary party to celebrate my friend Christina’s beautiful burger blog; a wedding where my friends went through so many cigarettes that the caterers, per the groom, said they “hadn’t seen that many people smoke at an event since the 80s” (not exactly bragging rights but funny nonetheless)