An Avatar riding to Manderley, bareback

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again...We can never go back again, that much is certain."

You know what novel begins with that line, right? Of course you do. Well, last night I dreamed I went riding bareback. My dream-mount was first my good old appaloosa mare Singer (the now-deceased mother of my pony Rindle) and later Dragon, a Shetland pony I got when I was ten... My mount's head bobbed in front of me, my two legs hung on either side of a sleek, smooth coat as muscles pumped and legs reached.

It was a long satisfying trail ride with much scrambling up banks, ducking of low-hanging branches, jogging along the shoulders of paved roads, and cutting through woods and fields. It felt as close to a real trail ride as I've dreamed in a long time.

I needed it.

Remember when the movie Avatar came out?  I remember someone commented to me after hearing that some people were depressed to the point of being suicidal after seeing that film. Its world was almost too perfectly balanced, unreachable to the point that it made them despair.

I said, Oh, you don't get it?

Because I did.

Admittedly, my take on it was skewed in a logical direction: I was moved by the experience of a paraplegic placed into an athletic body that allowed him to run. ("My take" being that of a current above-knee amputee who, for the greater part of the past thirty years, though athletic, fit, and able to ride horses, still was unable to run after an untreated bone disease destroyed her left knee in 1975 when she was thirteen.)

Avatar: I've watched the whole movie maybe three or four times; but I've watched one scene at least two dozen times:

Jake wakes up in his Avatar body. He sits up and looks at his legs. Wiggles his toes. Swings his legs off the table (to the consternation of his handlers) and stands up. The man in the booth shouts "Jake! This is dangerous!"  Jake steps closer and smiles, baring sharp Navi teeth as he says, "This is great."

Before they can sedate him, Jake is through the door, jogging and then running bare-assed in a hospital gown, blue tail waving. You know how wonderful it feels for him to run with new legs. You sense how warm the dirt is under his bare feet and between his toes. You can taste the sweetness of the Pandora fruit he bites into, and feel the juice running down his chin. It's the sensation of coming home to your own true nature. At home, once again, in your body. A body that does what you ask.

I cry every single time I watch that part. Yeah. It figures.

Tonight when I fed my horses in the cold darkness, the little pony scarfed down his meager handful of sweet feed as always and burst out of the shed he shares with the goats. He stormed over to the pasture where I'd just fed Rindle (elderly daughter of Singer, the appy mare I trucked out here to New York state when I was twenty) and Gifted Potato Princess Laredo, the sane and sound appy mare it has been my privilege to get to know the past nine years, since she was a filly.

My mini-stud stuck his head into the empty plastic bucket I use to carry sweet feed. He snorted: it was empty. Then he arched his neck and pawed furiously at the ground. 

Meaning, I DIDN'T GET ENOUGH!!

Meaning, WHY ISN'T THERE MORE??

Meaning, IT'S NOT FAIR!!

Yeah. I understand his point completely.