Let me explain this picture. Even to an unschooled eye, you might see that my best buddy, Legs, is an aging horse. He was so fine in his day, but he wasn’t ours then. He has only been ours, broken. For a long while it was a kind of broken that was easily managed, but his aging has added more insult, more burden. We are compensating for what he is challenged with, but we are losing the battle; a battle I am determined to lose as slowly as possible. Animals do not intellectualize their status — what they were before, what they are now — but we do and, damn if that isn’t self-inflicted torment. I grieve for Legs and what was. I have gotten to the point that I worry what others see when they lay eyes on his skeletal topline and his toothless mouth, tongue hanging. But today, with the sun shining on him and the best bits of hay spread open for him to nibble, I saw Legs in all his beauty. What he carries, he carries without complaint. He is happy, he is safe, and he will never walk a single inch of what remains of his path alone. That is beauty, too, just shining through a different lens.
Day 35
findingjubilee 