Horse week…who says a week has to start on Sunday or Monday?

Oh, hallelujah – it’s Thursday. Who doesn’t love Thursday, so full of hope, so full of to-do lists for the weekend coming – thursday rocks, this singular day with its own evening charisma, this eve of the eve of the weekend. And so rather than choosing a color but instead a topic, the photo/anecdote/book theme has been nominated. 

This week’s (personal) photo challenge is … HORSES.

When is lunch hour not a lunch hour? When you  need something more than, or rather than, food.  So I eschewed the sandwich, the run to Trader Joe’s for a small tray of sushi, the coffee-and-scone at Starbuck’s.  I snarfed down the lunch I had packed – celery, banana chips, yogurt – just after a fairly energetic meeting and just before a re-org of files and project planning. 

By noon, I was ready to escape. The sun was out. It was a light-jacket day. I fled down the long hallway to the  building’s foyer and into the air, my keys and earrings jangling.

I had no idea where I was going but this morning, I had tossed my camera into my purse. 

I thought about going home. There is so much to do there, not the least of which would be surprising the dogs and taking them for a mid-day walk. And maybe scrubbing and polishing things, some good honest work, getting that shine on the hardwood floors and bannisters. Maybe reading in the sunlight in the living room, a place we rarely sit during any day. How does it look at lunchtime on a weekday?

Little matter. The car chose the path.  I turned into parking lot at Longview Farm. A lovely walking park. Lots of trees, forest, a pond, rimmed with walkways and a fountain at its center. People, dogs, picnics. Lots of little kids, the kind that Moms stay home with, some grandparentss. Some walkers, one runner, and hopping out of one car, a tiny little Boston terrier, like the one in the ad that’s trying to get back home, the one that makes me cry. And right behind this tiny Boston T, a King Charles spaniel. Egads. Breeds on parade.

I took my camera, locked up my car and strode toward the pasture. I could see the horses, far from the path, munching munching munching smack dab in the middle of the field, far from the madding weekday crowd. I didn’t care. I would use my zoom.

I didn’t recognize either horse. I am a fairly frequent visitor there and have already several times visited photos of the Longview horses on these blog pages.

Nope, I knew neither horse. Didn’t care. One came over, came closer. I had no horse snacks today, no carrots, no peppermints.  I clicked away. Hadn’t I taken all the pictures there were to take of the blond Belgian who had preceded him, of the quarter horse with the big white star between his ears, of the old horse, a two-toned sorrel? Wasn’t the scenery where I have been so many times now static? Was there more? Oh, yes. 

I have often thought how cool it would be to keep the camera in one spot and take pictures like so many have done. (Have you seen the movie SMOKE? Harvey Keitel’s character sets up his camera every morning on a corner in Brooklyn, in front of his cigar shop and let it take pictures. He happened to catch the image of a customer’s wife on film, before she dies. He pastes the daily pictures into an album, album after album. It’s a great film, really, if you can be patient and let the story unravel.)  Where would I set my camera if I were to go for the repetitive idea? Certainly at a horse barn.

So this week is horse picture week. One could do worse. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches (Robt Frost); one could do worse than be a photographer of  horses.

Book Selection …

Lonesome Dover by Larry McMurty. It’s a 1986 Pulitzer Prize winner. I am not intimately familiar with the requirements of a PP winner, but if it had anything at all to do with length (ridiculous, I know) than that would be part  of it. It has taken me ages to get through the first 70 pages. I will keep going. Not in one sitting, though.

It’s the saga of  some Tx Rangers taking a herd from Texas to Montana. All the guy stuff, the land, the space and the space within each of them is in there. I started it because in some book on writing, I had read the McMurty did great dialogue and that he got away with mixing point of view s within dialogue. Breaking rules without doing one damn bit of harm; on the contrary, in fact. So whether reading for story or for technique, Lonesome Dove seems a fine choice though not exactly a beach read. And it will be easy to resist getting the made-for-TV movie on Netflix. Nope, not gonna do it.