There is a beautiful novel called How To Be Both, by Ali Smith and there is one passage I read today about an artist from medieval times whose spirit is transported to our time, and into the life of a woman obsessed with her work. The artist is “shot like an arrow” through time and into the modern world, she relates, very much against her will, away from the beauties of his Lord’s palace.
What saddens her the most, she says, is the lack of animals on the streets and lives of people: “but now find myself out in the cold grey and horseless world; such state of horselessness, an unfortunate luck for its people, a creatureless world I thought until I saw some doves flying up in a flock like always, the same doves though greyer, filthy, squatter than, but all the same their wings and the clatter of birds were a salve even to the heart I no longer have.”
The artist can only imagine that such a world, without animals, without horses, is a Purgatorium, and she believes she has been sent there as punishment for her blasphemous depictions of Jesus Christ as being older than 33.
The presence of even these animals comforts her, in her other world the horses were everywhere, a part of everyone’s life, partners in the theater of chance, the lives of human beings. She knew them so well and loved them so much, she cannot imagine a life without them.
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I could not help but think of the New York Carriage Horses, and the fanatical effort to drive them out of New York City and into a purgatory – for them – and for many of us, a joyless and disconnected life, if there would be life at all, away from their lives and work with people and into the closed world of the private preserve, sealed off from human beings, with nothing again ever to do or see but eat and drop their manure.
And this would be the fate of the lucky ones, they would call it rescue and congratulate themselves on their holiness, a step, perhaps, closer to heaven. Purgatory, according to the doctrine of the Catholic Church, is the place where souls go after physical death to achieve the holiness necessary to go to heaven. No one in purgatory can remain there forever, they will either rise to the next level of holiness and go to heaven or they will go to hell.
I think of the horses at Christmas, they are speaking to me, an aging and idiosyncratic writer with a farm in the country, and I marvel at their connection with me, even from afar. Beautiful and proud things, mystical and timeless creatures. The seers and psychologists were right a half-century ago when they warned that people were becoming disconnected from one another and from the natural world and the world of animals. People disconnected from the natural world, they warned, become broken and grey and cold and angry, it is as if a part of their souls and memory have been cut away and lost.
These broken people would one day need to connect with the animal world to heal, warned the prophets, or their lives would become joyless and fragmented and detached from the spirits of other human beings. Their souls would bleed, leached of compassion and joy. But in our time, the powerful movement is to drive the animals away, not keep them with us.
How curious, to think of this at Christmas, because this is what I see and feel in New York, where the horses have lives that are so rich and full or purpose and give so much joy and healing and connection to so many people for so many reasons. Hundreds of thousands of people flock to see them every year, they choose to pay money just to touch them, listen to them, take a short ride in a beautiful park. If you watch the children look in awe at the horses and reach out to touch them, you will understand.
Where else can they find this wonder in their lives?
The cups of the New York Carriage Horses runneth over, they are safe and fed and around people and horses every minute of every day, they move through the center of the city – a horror to some people, a miracle to me – and past the great skyscrapers and throngs of people to their park, where they are seen and touched and love by so many thousands more. Every clip and every clop reminds us not to be greedy, to remember who we are, who we came from, to hear the cries of our mother, the bleeding earth. To heal.
What animals anywhere give more pleasure to more people and have more purpose in our fragmented world? Yet there are these people who cannot see it, who cannot see the curves of the beautiful horses, cannot hear the timeless and healing clip-clops of their hooves, see the steam coming from their nostrils on cold winter mornings, cannot hear their snorts and their piercing whinnies, their constant calls to one another, passing along the news and stories of their lives, their great patience and passion for work.
I am not a political person, I cannot judge the mayor and his allies, I don’t know if they are doing a good job or not, I only see their coldness and disconnection around the horses, they seem frightened of them, enraged by their existence, unable to connect with them or feel their spirits. They seem cold and grey and angry to me, broken and disconnected from the natural world.
Why is it that some people can see the loss that would afflict all of us if they are banished, and others simply cannot? I think of the artist when I think of the horses this week, I think of the Purgatorium.
If you stop and close your eyes, and turn off your devices and quiet your spirits and listen, you can picture life in Central Park when the horses are gone, when the big cars come whirring through the park to replace them, when the cars and trucks are all there is, when the children look for them, but over time, forget what they are. Will not the park then be a Purgatorium, a horseless and animaless world, a cold and greyer place drained of color and magic and romance and history? By then, they will have banished the bear and the seals in the zoo, too, there will only be those doves and birds and hawks hiding up in the big towers, the creatures that comforted the artist and told her she was not in a hellish place.
This is what the horses mean, why they are so important. They have always been a part of the human experience, from the ancient men who roamed the world, to the cowboys who rode in the West, and the Native-American tribes, to whom the horses were life itself, to the big work horses that built the cities and made them grow and come to life. In our hurry and greed, we have forgotten the horses, and what they have meant to us, and what they have done for us, and we left them only this tiny slice to live in in our overwhelmed and soulless world, in our greatest city.
They are left with a handful of stables, crowded traffic lanes to the great park, which was built for them.
And even that we would take from them. Even that we can’t spare for them. The city that built the astonishing park can no longer remember what it is for.
All around them, the greedy and angry men and women hover and drool, the money around the horses is a great tide of greed, a Tsunami, hovering over them, ready to crash down and wash them away. When they are gone and forgotten, they will take the color and light and wind and rain with them, that is the warning of the Indians who lived with them for so long and so closely.
In their tiny corner of the city, even in their beautiful park they are nearly overwhelmed by busses, trucks, cars, pedicabs, motorcycles, joggers and walkers, taxis and skateboards. No one talks of banning or banishing the motor vehicles, the engines, even though the horses were there first. But the horses adapt, as they do. They still shine there, stand out, fit in, are still sought after and loved, their lives filled with as much purpose as our narrow visions can provide. Every time we look at them, they remind us that they are not busses, trucks, cars or pedicabs, they are something apart, something magical.
Over time, and in New York City, we have failed them in every way, we yield nothing to them, we could make their lives so much easier, so much safer with so little effort and will, yet we deny them even those small comforts and accommodations, and still they thrive and still they belong.
I wish these powerful and brave spirits a meaningful Christmas, I know they will bring joy to so many people at this time in the beautiful park, as they always do. I wish the people who drive them and live and work with them safety and joy, I wish them vindication and justice, they have suffered too much and for too long at the hands of the cold and grey people. In the smart city, people laugh at the arguments over the horses, this is a waste of time, they say, there are more important things to think about and do. There are many big buildings to build, big issues to debate, things to buy, new restaurants to find.
When it comes to Mother Earth and the future of the animals in our world, this is always the answer, always the choice. This time it may be different. The horses are our guardians of the pass, our animal warriors at Thermopylae. They are making a last stand, they refuse to run or be banned. If they are gone, the artist’s vision will come true,
If they are gone, the great city and the great park will become a cold and grey and horseless world, an unfortunate place for the people who will live in a creatureless world, cut off from the best friends and partners that human beings ever known.
The horses tell us to beware, the cold and grey people think they will get to heaven if they drive the horses away, but the horses caution us to remember what a Purgatorium is, and the shamans and chiefs of the Sioux tell a different story, they say the broken people will be going to hell if they banish the horses again, a place of their own misguided creation.