Morgan: how are you and your toes?
Jess: ha! :-) both I and my toes smell rather horsey at the moment (horsey is literal -- i just came from horseback riding) but other than that, very good. I am welcoming spring (even if they're calling for snow in syracuse this week). how about you?
Morgan: english or western?
Morgan: what type of horse?
Jess: english.
Morgan: i like arabians. i ride both. but love bareback the mostest.
Jess: hmm.. what is gwazi? she is part arab, part something else. I love them too (arabians). sometimes I have a hard time bareback. I think if i owned a horse i'd be more prone to riding bareback, but now if i ever get to do it, i'm in a lesson and i have to *work* and that isn't fun. I'd rather ride around and enjoy the freedom of it.
Morgan: i fell in love with this bitchy wonderful arabian once. she loved me. she bit everyone else.
Morgan: it was girl and horse love at first sight.
Morgan: her name was delia. i taught her to barrel race.
actually. we taught eachother and we kicked butt.
Jess: those are the best. I fell in love with a thoroughbred once. she bucked me off six times. but I loved her and i think really she loved me. but she was three years old and scared.
Jess: that is neat! you ride western?
Morgan: yeah, mostly.
Morgan: i learned enough english to suffice when a western saddle wasn't available or when i wanted to enter an english class at the little country horse shows i spent a few summers going to
Jess: that's cool. I didn't learn to ride until I was fifteen, so I missed out on girlhood riding.
Morgan: riding kept me sane
Morgan: funny, i've never really written about it.
Morgan: i spent a few great summers at my friend's farm and the barn where they kept their good horses . . .
Morgan: that summer, i taught rachel how to walk gracefully, and she taught me how to break someone's nose. we play wrestled in the haypile in the barn and played with the kittens, there were about 20 . . .
Morgan: it was great.
Jess: that is so amazing.!
Jess: I spent summers with my cousins out in their woods. it was wonderful. we would romp around and play in the pond and swim and play all these silly practical jokes. they were my sisters when I didn't have any.
Jess: I have so many wonderful memories from those years. It wasn't summer unless I was out there with them, getting unbelievably dirty and doing the most bizarre, most wonderful things.
Jess: ack
Jess: oops. i forgot that hitting enter sends.
Morgan: hm.
Jess: the closest I got to a horse there was those of their neighbor, which had a pasture down in the woods adjacent to ours. We used to fantasize about hopping the fence and riding the horses, but we were too scared for that, surprisingly. So I just tied reins to my bike instead.
Morgan: did you ever watch national velvet?
Morgan: i loved that movie..
Jess: yes. and black beauty, too.
Jess: I was in love with unicorns.
Jess: I had a place next to my house where I would feed them eucalyptus leaves and other things I'd pick in the yard. I dug a little hole and I put it all in and then I'd go play in the front yard and hope that they were coming to eat. I thought I was one of the few people in the whole world who could see them because I believed they were real.
Morgan: i went to horseland every night. i was the queen.
Morgan: it was a recurring dream.
Morgan: in which. basically. all my my little ponies were alive. and worshipped me.
Jess: that's a nice place to go in a dream.
Morgan: i remember eating lots of jellybeans there. my parents thought it was really funny.
Jess: i bet horses secretly love jellybeans.
Morgan: they LOVE licorice.
Morgan: they really REALLY LOVE good 'n plenty.
Morgan: those little candy licoricey things.
Jess: yes (I love them too).
Jess: once, when I was young, I found the cure for cancer and mixed it in a white tin bowl from my grandmother's bathroom. It didn't look like much: mostly twigs and mushrooms and leaves and some water. but it was the cure for cancer. Only no one listened.
Morgan: stupid grownups.
Morgan: they never understood that my experiments with tomato-smelling hair products (ketchup + shampoo) could some day be important.
Jess: or that bottled honeysuckle was a really great business venture.
Morgan: it would be.
Morgan: i loved honeysuckle.
Jess: me too. I used to sit for hours next to a bush we had which was covered in honeysuckle vines. I tried to bottle it but I was too impatient and too eager to have it all myself.
Morgan: i would sit next to our outdoor shower (we lived next to the beach, so we had one, surrounded by a tall wooden fence) for hours and suck little drops...
Morgan: the bottom of the vine, the part that i could reach, was all picked away and the top was still thick ...
Morgan: then i learned to bring a chair outside.
Jess: :-)
Jess: I was determined to clear our entire bush of honeysuckle blossoms. I never did. It was even too much for me. I think those vines generated flowers much faster than my stubby little fingers could pick.
Jess: you had an outdoor shower? I think outdoor showers are the best of man's inventions.
Morgan: i always loved my fingers.
Morgan: i have my grandmother's fingers. i have child hands, very young skin. but long fingers.
Morgan: i can stretch over an octave on piano. my grandmother was a pianist. she was teaching lessons by age 13. she was giving solo concerts in new york at 15. she got married. and that all went goodbye.
Jess: wow. (sigh) it's sad to see things like that happen, although I suppose if you give it up willingly..... (I suppose?) I can reach just over an octave on piano. My fingers are long but my hands don't have that wide spread. I never liked my hands too much until high school, but I always liked my feet. Even before I thought I would like to show my feet off, I just liked what they could do, how everything felt underneath them.
Morgan: i just recently started liking my feet
Morgan: and i think it is because i wear fire engine red toenail polish
Morgan: all the time.
Jess: that definitely helps.
Jess: I'm one of the few people here who walks around barefoot in the dorm, and people stare at me like i'm licking the floor or something, with comments like "ew, that floor is so dirty!" -- but I just like how the floor feels underneath my feet. and I always believed feet to be more graceful than shoes. I don't like making sound when I walk.
Morgan: i have fun with shoes. but i love being barefoot.
Jess: i can't wait until it gets warm enough to go barefoot. i almost did today, but it was still too cold.