There’s a speed limit sign that my local municipality has placed in my front yard. It was vandalized a few weeks ago—someone covered it with red paint. The other day, the municipality sent out two workers to replace the sign. I was digging holes for daffodils, while they were working, and overheard the following conversation:
“Hey, lately my thoughts have been about horses.”
“Horses? In what way?”
“I don’t know. Kind of an earthly sense, like out in the woods or something.”
“Oh, something like in a biblical way?” He paused for a moment. “Not that there would be anything wrong with that.”
“No, not like that. More of the urgent combination of man and beast. Like we were one against nature.”
“You mean kind of like a mountain man?”
“Yeah, that’s closer. Mountain men are cool. They lived for months in the mountains harvesting beaver.”
“Well, I’m not so sure it was that good. Remember there was that economic crash of fashion in the mid-1800’s.”
“Oh, yeah. Back in the day when belts were uncouth, and all men wore hats and suspenders. Those hats went out of fashion around that time.”
“We have it so easy now. We can wear what we want to. Like jeans or argyle socks.”
“That’s not always such a good thing. Your toolbelt totally makes your butt look big.” He paused. “Like a horse.”
“You’re back to the horses, again. So if it isn’t like a mountain man, then what is it?”
“More primal then that. Kind of like when people were only animals themselves, living in the proverbial garden of Eden before the knowledge of sophistication sullied our innocent psyche.”
“You really think it was a knowledge of sophistication that banished us from the Garden? I always thought it was our intellectual ascension that caused us to wander from that idyllic life in paradise.”
“Well, our initial phase of existence in the garden was based upon our basic needs. You know, kind of like what Freud was talking about when he referred to the pleasure principle.”
“I thought that was Janet Jackson.”
“No, it was Freud. He said that the moment that we recognized that our lives were not merely bound by the pleasure principle we left the garden. That’s when we became slaves to the pain principle by entasking ourselves to making our lives better and wearing neckties.”
“Freud didn’t say that.”
“No, but he would if he was here today. It’s obvious.”
“Well, I know what’s obvious—it’s what you need. You need a yurt.”
“A yurt? What’s a yurt?”
“It’s a felt tent used by nomads on the steppes of Asia.”
“And how would that help me?”
“Those nomads live with their horses. If you had a yurt, you could set it up in your back yard and imagine that you were a nomad living at the edge of civilization. You’d sit back on the floor, which would be piled with rugs and pillows sipping fermented mare’s milk while you sharpen your steel for tomorrow’s battle. Your woman would be over in the corner pre chewing flank steaks that would be your dinner, and your children would all be outside playing with your herd and drawing their art in the dust. It would be glorious.”
“Hmm, that might work. But I’d still need a horse. But now I think it’s got to be a mare.”
“You have to be careful. Horses can get sick. Also, it might bother your wife.”
“No, that wouldn’t bother her. It would actually help me solve a problem.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know what to get my wife for Christmas. I’d get her a horse, but she’s already got that Segway.”
“So what would you get her for Christmas?”
“Well, you know that they make ropes from horses. I’d get her one of those.”
“That’s cruel! How can you make a rope from a horse? You’d kill a horse just to make a rope?”
“No, you make the rope from their hair.”
“Oh. You know, felt is made from hair. Maybe you should buy her a yurt.”
