Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

It usually seems best to be absent and slightly missed rather than present but distant.

Travellers can go out into the world with their devices and prejudices intact to smooth their journeys. Yet, etymologically, a traveller is the one who suffers—or at least, one who works (travail). The traveller forgets she’s going home, and forgets herself, too.

Perhaps if I had said to myself, at any moment in the race, I am being competitive. I want to win and I care, I might’ve begun to find the whole competition boring. My competitiveness was like a kite I was refusing to pull down from the sky and examine. I think this increased its power over me. I rode with a mysterious compulsion, not knowing where it came from.

Glee is my favorite train to catch. It really carries me.

You see, Ma, I think I stain the spots I inhabit. When I sit in a corner to write a letter, I can’t sit there again. It feels nice to avoid the memory of me—or maybe I just lust after the new.

I suppose we can all be prone at times to trapping certain countries in their distance, exotic pasts, ignoring their presents.

Why do humans put so much thought into some decisions yet plunge into others like penguins into frozen ocean? I certainly have a fear of falling into the routines of my elders, their eggshell worlds of dangers and do nots.

Maybe home is just all that we leave behind.

Every person I meet is lit by my impressions of those I used to know.

Around the world your horse is often seen as a reflection of your character.

Sport is war in disguise.

Truly I only loved the city for letting me leave.

What had we all missed not growing up in Texas?

Horse smell is the same the world over

We humans speak ten thousand languages - a little eye contact must ripple through them all

The right to buck off a human being is one of the universal rights of horses

Isn’t it disappointing that my resistance has always revolved around really futile matters? Teachers, etiquette, Mongol Darby positioning. Why can’t I get angry about the sad news in the papers? It seems I have to see it and touch it and then I can’t resist resisting it.

Maybe this restlessness is serving to keep some part of me alive. Or maybe I move to avoid making - making words, friends, and love. I do spread my heart thinly as I go. Will I ever accept that the most mythic, meaningful life might lie in the ordinary? The kingdom of details and daily reprises. For now, I’m stunned by all things static. Scared by the idea that a home might exist for me somewhere.

What was it about becoming an adult? The color drained from the days and life became a calendar. I floated in a debris of plausible dates and implausible plans.

Words feel like an insult to truth (then again, even on life’s bright days I feel as though I’m throwing meaning into darkness when I speak).

I suppose we think of pain as associated with an event—an accident, for example. We don’t imagine it going on forever. I found no space for pain and its expression in daily life.

decided if I’m woodland-wild or fireside-tame, and

Still today I can't help slipping from parties without a word, and often I don't make it to them in the first place. It usually seems best to be absent and slightly missed rather than present but distant

I am racing for the finish and racing for something else, a thing that changes with the wind, a thing I may never know nor think nor really see, only circle around, like a startled horse inspecting a coiled snake.

For the first ten minutes Richard follows us. His head and camera sprout from the sunroof of his car. All day I've felt his photography dissolving me. I don't like performing for a future moment, not when the race is about to end.

Our human habit is to make endings of things - close them, wrap them up, slap a cap on unruly time - no maybes involved. But what use is a conclusion or an understanding when all I want to do is open up, mess up, unpack, and unreel?

p.46 My tendency for lateness comes from a fear of feeling committed when early...Time is a muscle that seems to randomly flex and relax in a bid to misplace me and many others. I can't rid myself of the sensation that I'm about to fall off the world, as you might fall off the back of a treadmill.