out of the subconscious

going back to the previous blog and my discussion with artist Z on my horse paintings and hers, i don't know how she got onto horses and i'm not exactly sure why i did, but here's a story. i must have been in my late twenties, post vietnam blues and everything that went with that, wanderings and the inability to see anything through, lots of wasted time, moving around like a gypsy. i ended up at my grandmothers place out in the desert near Phoenix with an old truck and not much else. grandma was special to me, later i'll tell you about our special relationship, but for now it was a place for me to go after so many bad starts and poor finishes, college lay like a mirage out in the desert and i had more units than the cactus i saw everyday, but no degree, and i'd tried every liberal arts major there was, art, dance, english, literature, creative writing, but nothing stuck, no direction. the desert was a homecoming for me, i'd grown up out here, near Scottsdale, and ran all across it's sands collecting horned toads and chasing rabbits, coyotes, and playing pirate in the canals, building my galleys out of old found lumber from the canals. and now i was back, a bit of a lost veteran syndrome, come home to grandma. she and i used to take drives out in the desert, she was so big and fat i used her old metal wash tub as a step to load her into the old blue ford, put my shoulder to her keister up we go and off, me, dark brown without a shirt and long black hair to my shoulders flying in the wind, a salute to my freedom, post service. grandma and i hardly ever spoke, but we had a deep and powerful connection, based on grandma's unconditional love that flowed from her to me and then back, in a rotating circle vibrating in the truck, we literally hummed along the desert floor, i wonder if even that old blue truck's wheels ever touched the road. grandma never dispensed advice, only love and food, homemade donuts brimming with powdered sugar, crepes stuffed with jam, chicken dumpling stew. lots of food, lots of love. the Black Canyon Freeway cut behind her little casita and one day buzzing along on it after a particulary fine day in the desert, we ran into some heavy traffic and loe, there ahead running wildly, rearing, bucking, snorting, was this huge white stallion in the fast lane, cars just missing running into it, there he was fifty yards in front of me. instinctively without thinking, i pulled onto the meridian and jammed the brakes, grandma you ok, and then ran out into the fast lane, cars now just missing me and calling to the horse, running towards him, calling Here come to me you'll be alright, you'll be alright. he stopped rearing and came right over to me and put his huge head on my shoulder and i put my arm around his neck and there we stood eye to eye for a full ten minutes, a centaur ,cars passing around us, but now i swear this is true, it was dead quiet where that horse and i stood, quiet and safe. i remember mostly his eye, big and white, like a whales eye, and there was something in it, something there, but there was no fear, there was recognition. after the cops came and the rancher took the stallion quietly away, after they barricaded off the road, grandma and i drove back to her casita. maybe something happened out there on the freeway, maybe grandma had something to do with it, maybe she set the whole event up, i'll never know, we never spoke of it and some time later i left and went north and got a job in construction and found something I could do and not run from. so maybe you could say that's why i paint horses. maybe you could say that.