Chasing Our Tales
The dust rose up and haunted the dawn, obscuring the air just the same way as my irritation. I watched as the grey gelding went round and round, running as if the whites of his eyes were reflections of the ghosts he thought were chasing him.
“Can I try?” I tampered down the bitterness that stung the back of my eyes. If my grandpa would just give me a chance, he’d realize that I could gentle this elusive creature. I slid between the rails of the roundpen and made my way to the center. I tried my best to dull the resentment that slithered around the forefront of my mind. What he was running from wasn’t real, just as my first impressions of him. I figured then that that was Vincent’s magic. He felt things that didn’t exist in the present, and conjured them up like the cloud of dirt he cast into the air.
Reality had been suspended the day I met Vincent. For a bit I neglected my devotion to worry of the future, and for a moment I had been free. Grandpa and I paid a visit to my great-grandfather ten minutes from our ranch. He had a field where my grand-uncle’s two new investments served as decor not uncommon in the state of Utah. But the latest addition was unlike I’d ever imagined, a white phantom on the cusp of the emerald hill.
Escaping the suffocating boredom that inevitably permeated the arms of familiarity, I set out to meet the new grey after greeting my great-grandfather and left my peers’ artificial prejudices behind the door. As soon as the old door slammed behind me the foreigner raised his head, inquisitive brown eyes finding me immediately. The other gelding, Tuck, showed me no respect, telling me the grass he was grazing was more exciting than my arrival.
I leaned up on the chipped white metal rails of the fence and whistled. Of course Tuck ignored me, but the new one, Tucker, made his way over to me, curious caution in his step. Tucker stopped two feet in front of me, assessing my credibility with his fluted grey nostrils and his brown eyes so wide that my affection tripped and fell right into them. I struggled to piece together his past as I introduced myself, stepping forward deftly. I puffed my greeting on his soft nose, and after he returned a puff of his hello I waited for him to grant me permission to touch him, stepping back, drawing his trust towards me like a syringe. I didn’t know what kind of memories humans of his past had given him, and I edged tediously around the possibility of triggering his fragile state.
He was by far one of the most tender horses I’ve ever met. And I decided that he was too ethereal for the passive name of Tucker. With each stroke from my hand he bowed into my touch deftly, a supple willow giving to the whisper of a breeze. My fingers followed the mottled pattern of his flea-bitten coat, reminding me of Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night. I adhered the artist’s name to the quiet beast, and since then I couldn’t peel it from him.
“The only thing missing is a horn.” I later told my grandpa.
“He came to you, huh?” His blue eyes gleamed impishly and he chuckled softly, “No one ever can catch him.”
I wore that statement on my chest like a medal of honor, as if somehow Vincent approaching me made me a fabled maiden from fairy tales. Exasperation and exuberance took up residence under my skin, and it seemed as though the only way to preserve this sort of excitement was to gush about it ceaselessly to anything with ears. I couldn’t find words adequate enough to describe the connection I felt with that horse, but I could talk until my tongue was stiff trying. A unicorn had been discovered. Vincent was the invincible white horse from tales of lore.
And I was determined to work with him.
The fateful day of anticipation came, and with it, my newfound terror of failure. Ghosts, like shadows, have a funny way of finding you wherever you go. The challenges you once buried in the past have a way of rising up from their graves. Some would say ghosts aren’t real. They’d also say that about unicorns. Vincent’s existence rebukes those claims. If you strip away the distractions and falsities that are the only thing people seem to care about, you won’t find an alicorn on the forehead of a horse naturally, but it doesn’t make him any less of the majestic creature whose presence serves as a generator of wisdom and wonder. You won’t find a demonic apparition lurking in the alleyways as advertised by Halloween and horror shows. But there are thoughts whose lingering presence rakes along the nape of your confidence and riles up fear until you can’t see anything but the haunting ideas of something you think you could never escape.
Right before my very eyes Vincent summoned our ghosts the day I rode him. He didn’t come to me when I whistled, instead he ran, transforming from a timid, passive beast to a fear-filled charger. Eventually my grandpa and I caught him at the expense of an hour and energy we had hoped to store for the trail ride. Grandpa kept asking me if I was sure that I wanted to ride Vincent, we had other familiar and trustworthy horses that I had ridden before available. But I repeatedly let my fear of being a weak coward drive my response. Not only did I say that I wanted to still ride him, but I acted as if Vincent’s docility hadn’t been consumed by this suffocating panic he was displaying. In reality, my core was petrified. This new horse hadn’t only beheaded my fantasies of being the one person who was sensitive enough to ride him, but in turn he ushered in the putrid essence of the fruits of my unending insecurity and adorned me with it.
Quickly I pried the yearning of a fantasy I could never have from my mind the same way one has to eventually resurface after exploring the depths of the sea; one simply cannot live in fantasy, believing otherwise is death. Death of which sense is to be determined by how much one is willing to acknowledge. So I made the choice, I acknowledged my terror for the ghosts they were. My fear was real, though the thoughts of what they’d do to me didn’t have to come to fruition. It was now my turn to gift Vincent my patience, and maybe then he’d also realize his power.
The mountains breathed a reverent hush into our lungs as soon as the engine of the truck was shut off and the horses had been unloaded. Vincent’s mule-like ears were on a constant swivel, apprehending the intermittent applause the leaves bestowed when the ignorant wind passed through. I felt his nerves through the stern leather saddle the same way I would had he stabbed me in the back; the trust he’d invested in me didn’t exist. He lifted his hooves as if they were wings and he was preparing to take flight at any moment. It didn’t matter if I was on his back or not. I was an afterthought.
The ride actually ended up aligning itself with my reveries more so than I would’ve thought, but Vincent’s spookiness still pained me. After all I’d done he still honored the fears that told him he was somehow in danger, and assured him he wasn’t the magnificent creature that was clearly safe. Just when he seemed to start believing me, he’d relapse and call his ghosts back to cloud his vision, because he’s used to the ghosts, and the pain they would cause him was safer in familiarity. I wanted him to realize his strength so badly that I kept him at our ranch with my horses overnight. I wanted to work with him. I wanted to reverse the spell he’d put himself under.
Vincent had to be back home the next morning, but somewhere along the lines of his delusions, it never occurred to him that he had to be caught in order to go back to the comforts of his pasture. Grandpa went into the roundpen where Vincent had stayed overnight and began the process of joining up, but as I could’ve predicted Vincent would come to a halt but bolt as soon as grandpa would move to touch him. I sat there watching him with my frustration sinking deeper and deeper into my conscience until I refused to be a bystander anymore.
I moved to the center of the pen and got Vincent running faster and faster until his figure was obscure in my eyes, blurred by the dust and tears coating my narrowed pupils. Internally I was screaming at him, loud enough for him to hear it through my tensed arm extended to propel him along, or in the harsh click of my tongue to spur him round and round. Yes, I screamed at him silently, begging him to know he was safe, begging him to see what I saw. I decided if he was going to cling to his alliance with the ghosts then he could run until he realized the only thing exhausting him was his own avoidance. But he kept going round and round, even when I withdrew pressure.
“We’ve got to get going, sis.” Grandpa informed. Vincent paid no care, speeding up as I stopped urging him forward instead of stopping and coming to me. And like a branch overladen with fruits of my own disappointment, I snapped and took one firm deliberate step in front of the spooked equine. He stopped abruptly, those wide brown eyes laced in white watching me warily.
“That’s enough.” I stated, looping the lead rope around his neck. Entertaining the dubious thoughts only remained bearable for so long. Vincent wasn’t the helpless ninny he was imitating. He was a Bucephalus spooked by something that was unavoidable but harmless all the same. It struck me that the naming of Vincent wasn’t fitting simply because of the enchanting brushstrokes on his hide, but because he was a tortured artist, fearful and unknowing of his strength, torturing himself in avoidance of that which was benevolent and gentle.
And it wasn’t fair, I decided then, that something so beautiful would be not only blind to this fact but be so keen to strain all form of sense to something that was no longer here. That’s the trouble with ghosts and tales. Oftentimes we allow our fears to take precedence over what really matters and those there to support us through the challenges we may be facing. And we’ll deny the existence of what haunts us, but that only makes it worse, making us run round and round in circles until exhaust offers us back to our habitual fears, and then they’ll feast on our denial. Only when we stop trying to escape will we give those who care about us and ourselves the chance to see how incredibly powerful we really are. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll find that the ghost we’ve been running from is also a unicorn.
Written by Skye B. Lindsay, no part of this may be copied or used in any other form unless expressed by written permission from the author.
A majority of this was written in 2018 as an essay, it has been modified to fit the blog and the author’s views today.