Amy L. Wink, Ph.D.

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Blue

amywink April 3rd, 2010

The pastures and roadsides are turning blue after our wet winter. And not just blue, but red, yellow, lavender, purple, white, and green, green, green. Thank you, Lady Bird Johnson, for your grand idea.

The horses are fat on the lush grass they haven’t seen in years and we are not yet driving.

This spring has been crazy-hectic, one-thing-after-another, not-a-minute-to-breath, too-many-trips-to-the-vet kind of season. I am reminding myself continually that something beautiful is being born.

In January, I joined the American Driving Society with big plans to participate in the “Hours to Drive” program.

So far, I have logged a whopping 4 hours in 3 months. Perhaps I’d be better off logging “Hours of Not Driving” but the reward for that is an entirely different hue of blue!

So, to get things in gear, I’ve set April 24 as The Day to get back to driving regularly. This gets us past most of the time commitments of April (most related to Plum Creek CDE, April 17-18).

As far as my own writing, since I created my Desktop Folder for “Horse and Writer” on January 1, 2010, I have done absolutely zip on the book. . . . other than stare at the outline I have tacked to my bulletin board, right beside the Hours to Drive log sheet (and thus making the parallels even more clear, yet again).

Still, the necessary and positive end has come for other things, making way for what may now begin.

March was a month of significant endings.

Tristan, the last of the graduate school dogs, died. It is hard to be without his joyous presence now, but for 17 years, he did the great work of dogs.

I finished my work on the Embree diaries with the donation of the original diaries to the Bell County Museum in Belton, Texas. I was able to meet many descendants of Tennie Embree in what I can only describe as the perfect closure for this project. The original diaries are now safely “home” and the rest of my research materials for Tandem Lives will soon be donated as well. It has been a long, long, long trip with these diaries and I am glad to have completed the journey (1995-2010).

After similarly long time, I paid off my student loan. “Paid in Full” is a beautiful phrase.

Last summer, while I groomed Will in the barn at Haven Hill, a thunderstorm charged the air with bolts of lightening. Standing peacefully with my horse, with his sweet scent of sun-warmed grain and grass, I thought “this is my real life”.

“And, behold, the LORD passed by,
a great and strong wind rent the mountains,
and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD;
but the LORD was not in the wind:
and after the wind an earthquake;
but the LORD was not in the earthquake:
and after the earthquake a fire;
but the LORD was not in the fire: and
after the fire a still small voice.” (KJV, Kings, 11-12)

In the middle of the storm, it was a quiet thought and I have been thinking on it ever since. And I am ready to begin.

May I have the courage today
To live the life I would love
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no longer.

John O’Donohue, “A Morning Offering”

creativity , creative practice , nature
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On Achieving Goals

amywink January 7th, 2010

This past weekend was very hectic, with a family health emergency that resolved positively on Tuesday, and today we expect Arctic air that will drop our temperatures to the teens and twenties overnight, and leave us in the 40’s during the day– temperatures 20 degrees below normal.

This, of course, means no driving but I am still considering my goals for 2010. In December, I returned to Haven Hill for a lesson and it was wonderful to return and see all the activity continuing even in soggy conditions. After visiting with Marlene and Tom, Jerry and I went out for as much of a drive as we could in the slurry caused by recent rains. I hadn’t had a lesson in a few months, (since August, I think) so it was wonderful to get back and see how I’d improved after practicing more consistently this fall with Will. Jerry and I chatted about my progress and past and future goals for driving, which we had not really discussed in much detail before.

Since then, I’ve been considering what goals I achieved and what lies ahead. I consider our Anniversary Drive the complete achievement of my past goals for driving: we were able to enjoy fully driving at Agarita; Will was responsive and willing; I was confident and relaxed. The joy of that day remains with me still and I often look at that photograph and feel the warm core of strength and calm happiness I felt that day.

As important as that glorious day was, our first drive at Agarita was probably even more important because I was able to manage Will’s fear, work through his introduction to the new place, using my skills as a driver to work through his anxiety while never feeling the fear myself. I had worked long and hard to overcome my own fear, to calm that internal electrical jolt that I often felt when I started working with horses. That fear did not originate with horses but certainly materialized most visibly when I was with them–as if I was plugged directly into their own startle reflex. That fear tangled with the Ridiculously Rigorous Perfectionist who was unveiled during my lessons, and made for a . . . .well, a challenging learning experience. Jerry once said ‘Confidence, confidence, confidence” was the necessity for driving and working with horses. Tom says there’s no “I think” in driving (and interestingly, this is exactly what I tell my students about writing “I think”). Fear and Perfectionism make confidence impossible.

When I stopped feeling that electrical jolt, when my heart stayed in the right place and didn’t rise to my throat, when my body did not tighten, but remained relaxed, when my voice did not rise, but deepened to calm my horse (and when he listened and stopped), that was a momentous occasion. That was the beginning of our new work together, the moment when we became a team. That was the moment I achieved what was most necessary goal.

~~~~~

I’ve been watching This Emotional Life this week on PBS. Extremely fascinating stuff about our brains. Also The Human Spark started last night and I was amazed by the wonderful cave carvings and cave paintings of horses shown early in the first episode.