The Dream of Books and Horses
When I was five years old, I had a dream. I don’t remember the dream, exactly, but I remember waking up and knowing two things with utter certainty. One day, I would write a book. And one day, I would have my own horse.
I was elated. It was as if my young self had slipped through a time warp to inhabit my now-self, able to see both my life’s purpose and its fulfilment.
The Horse
The horse came true long before the book got written. It’s as if The Universe recognized that a young body is more suited to riding a horse, and the life experience that comes with age gives depth to a book.
The thing is, owning a horse requires a certain income. Even today, my writing abilities aren’t up to that particular privilege. So I had to find a career that would finance that part of the dream.
It wasn’t as if I decided ahead of time that a career in the lab was the solution. The truth is, I fell into lab work by accident. Or maybe it was fate. I was writing the final exam of my undergraduate degree when one of the invigilators, who also happened to be one of my professors, stopped at my desk. I don’t know if anyone else has ever received a job offer while writing an exam. The following Monday, I started my first real job. Every morning, I was responsible for milking six cows enrolled in a nutrition trial in the research wing of the Animal Sciences Department at the university. In the afternoon, I analyzed the milk samples.
All of which gave me the funds to pay for an apartment and riding lessons. I took a lot of riding lessons before I could afford my own horse. I’m now on my fourth horse and have nearly five decades of riding lessons behind me. I’d say the horse part of my dream has been fulfilled.
The Book
Book-writing has also been a long journey. I spent years carving out time every day to write. Like the riding lessons, this practice-writing brought me a lot of joy. But my day job drained so many brain cells, there weren’t enough left to string 80,000 words together into a coherent, interesting piece of work called a novel.
But now I’m ‘retired’ and my time for the ‘books’ part of my dream has arrived. And, surprise! Horses and my decades-deep understanding of working with them are appearing in my science fiction. In the Modified Humans books, horses appear peripherally as part of the protagonist’s character arc. Here’s an example from the last chapter of Immunity Cage:
She had to steady him on his feet. He bore the indignity and took in the broad pastures across the driveway. Emma was already at the fence, patting a pale horse with dark eyes that had come to investigate.
Shaman. His Shaman.
Emma’s field sparkled with pleasure. Shaman’s streamed and pulsed in simpler tones around his muscled body, a field that seemed to flow out of the earth, twitching and flickering at the smallest stimulus – a chirping bird, breeze stirring through his silvery tail.
So my dream of books and horses is coming to pass. How many people are lucky enough to see their childhood dream literally become reality?
I’m savouring every moment.