Day: June 19, 2014

If you wish to draw on your own instincts and judgements about the New York Carriage Horse controversy, I would urge you to do as I have done if you live anywhere near New York City – even if you don’t.

Go to New York on a Sunday afternoon. Go to Central Park South. Watch the horses, the drivers and the passersby and also watch the demonstrators who gather every week to shout at the horses and drivers and tourists and children. You don’t have to do anything, read anything, or shout anything. You have no need to quote any experts, read any stories, wade through the stats,  listen to ideologues, politicians, or pundits.

Just stand and watch and listen for the joyful noise,  let your heart and mind work for you.

On these corners, at the edge of the great park was where my beliefs about the future of the horses and the nature of the people who own and drive them came into focus, crystallized. It is perhaps the most important and revealing part of the story and yet it is the one almost completely lost in the blizzard of arguments and accusations that shroud the horses and their future. It is a story about the heart and soul, not rage and argument.

You have to find your own truth in a wrenching thing like this, and this is how I found mine: I listened for the joyful noise, for the lives in joy.

I am not a conventionally religious person. My spiritual values are  probably closest to those of the true Jesus Christ than any other writings, and those of the Kabbalah as well. They reflect  the wisdom of every great spiritual master in the history of the world – Gandhi, Christ, the Dalai Lama, Merton, King. We are urged, sometimes commanded,  to live life with gladness, gratitude and praise. They all  remind us in different ways and difference voices of what is important in the world, we are called up to make a joyful noise – not angry ones –  unto all lands, and unto the Lord.

We live in a polarized world, our leaders, our media, our technological wizards do not make much joyful noise. If you wish to hear it, go to New York, it is a powerful experience. The horses know how to do it.

Standing on those crowded sidewalks, I saw the faces and heard the noises made by the horses, and by the men and women who feel and share the wonder of loving animals and connecting to the natural world in the few ways left to us.  I saw the joyful faces of the children, lovers, tourists, office workers, passersby and parents who come upon them, look at them, touch them, and are in turn touched by the healing power of animals. And by the great and ancient and natural work animals and people have done together since the beginning of time.

This is the mystical power of the horses, the sacrament they bring to us, the most precious thing that one either sees or does not see. It can not be argued, only felt. It is what this poignant confrontation is all about.  I believe every person who really loves an animal, or who truly loves another knows this joy and recognizes it right away. I see it in the smiles of people who see my dogs, meet my donkeys, touch the carriage horses,  encounter animals on the street, in parks, zoos, circuses, farms, county fairs,  anywhere they still remain.

The smile – the joyful noise – is the signature of the true animal lover, it never lies or misleads.

The joyful noise is never mentioned in the endless stories about conflict. The mayor of the great city does not seem to feel it or grasp it. It seems sometimes that he cannot bear to look upon such a bright light.

In the faces of the demonstrators who gather every weekend, there is no joy, no praise, no gratitude, no connection. No mercy or compassion. But you can see it in the face of every child who comes up on the horse, and every lover who consecrates a relationship in a carriage ride through one of the most beautiful and grand spaces in the world. If is perhaps the most fitting backdrop for joy and love.

The protesters are many things, not one thing.  I only know a few of them, most would not speak with me, but they do all seem to share a common things: they are joyless, incapable of praise or the gentle dialogue that is the signature of every great spiritualist or spiritual movement. They seem unable or unwilling to listen, so they cannot hear the joyful noise. They are not progressives, but heretics in a funny sort of way, they never touch or look at the horses, they will not speak or listen to the drivers. They seem unable to smile.

If you stand there long enough on this frantic sidewalks, the sounds of the buses, cars, trucks, the sirens, the symphony of the New York streets, the drivers calling out to passersby, the demonstrators changing their angry slogans, there is this almost physical imbalance, this lack of proportion and balance. I got a sense of life, joy, connection on the one side, anger, coldness and disconnection on the other. It isn’t that the carriage drivers are perfect, I would bet they are  not, nor do they need to be. But they are so very human, brimming with life, feeling and freedom.

I look for the twinkles in the driver’s eyes when they see a camera, or a child, or a customer,  or encounter one another. I watch their faces when they touch the horses or give them their oats, their sense of the magic in the children’s eyes, their grasp of the romance in the hearts and shy demeanor of the lovers.  The children and the lovers can make you cry, they are so pure and innocent, they are drawn to the joyful noise of the horses, it is a noise that can be heard thousands of miles and oceans away.

“Enter into his gates with Thanksgiving,” says Psalm 100,”and into his courts with praise; be thankful unto him and bless his name – his mercy is everlasting.” There is mercy on one side of the street, there is none on the other. Where would Jesus stand, I wonder? He made his little donkey work every day, rode him for many miles in the hot desert sun and through the dense and filthy streets of Jerusalem. Jesus loved his donkey for this work and his donkey loved  him back,  to this day every donkey in the world wears a cross on his back.

I would not care to think of Jesus as an abuser of animals or a cruel man. He was neither, any more than the carriage drivers.

There is a profoundly spiritual part of this controversy, I see it in the horses, they exude it and inspire it, I see it in the drivers, different kinds of people, most of them have this glint of joyfulness in their eyes and faces, and in their hearts. They exude praise and gratitude.  I cannot find it in the angry and judgmental people who call them names every week and scold the children who want to ride in the carriages.

“Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands,” commands the Bible, and you can hear this noise and feel it in the park, around the horses, in the stables, in the eyes of the people in the carriage trade, in the owners too. If the horses are banned from New York, this joyful noise will leave with them. Will we find it in the ugly green electric cars the mayor wants to replace the horses with?

Will we see it in the faces of the demonstrators who will simply move to another corner and bring their angry noise into all of the lands the horses once occupied?

The mythologist Joseph Campbell urges those of us on the hero journey of truth and self-awareness to participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, he reminds, but we can choose to live in joy.

For me, it is always a transforming spiritual journey to stand in the great park and listen to the big and beautiful horses.  They talk to one another as well as to us. You can listen for the joyful noises yourself, and you will understand everything you need to know about the New York Carriage Horses, and where they truly belong.

You can listen for the joy, or one day,  hear the awful silence if it is gone.

Maria and I had our annual pre-Open House argument this morning about who is the bigger Prima Donna, me or her. “I may be bad,” she said “but you are the worst. You are Prima Donna The Worst!” We both nearly choked laughing at this description, and I sputtered some denials, but I can’t say it doesn’t fit. I can see it on my tombstone, or more likely, on a hanging piece made of my recycled underpants and socks (she has already stolen many pairs of my shirts and jeans, they disappear constantly) and sold for $20.

I think I might try and get a sweat-shirt with the title printed on the back, like one of those jackets governors wear during storms or FBI agents wear on raids. Or maybe a cap.

“Oh yeah,”  I said, trying to recoup, “well you are Prima Donna The FIrst!” I’ve always thought artists are worse whiners than writers, but Maria is convinced writers are worse whiners and complainers than artists. She listed all of the things I complain about in my writing life – editors, agents, reviewers, publishers, readers, copy editors, lawyers, online advice-givers,  competitors, my sales, my place in history. It is pretty impressive when you hear it listed in that way.

Then I listed all of the things she complains about when she has an art show – the placement of things, cost, the attitudes of some of the artists, what people will pay, space, time, hard work. It is also pretty impressive, but somehow it wasn’t as long or as deep as my list of whines and complaints. Of course, I told her, I have been doing this for more than 30 years, and I am, after all, a venerable author, a five-time New York Times Bestseller. (This sends her nearly climbing up the chimney, it gets her sputtering and stomping her little artist feet.)

Still, Prima Donna The Worst is a great title, it is better than Prima Donna The First and every time I think of it, I have to laugh. I can’t say it is not true. It is good to know yourself. Another argument lost. I remember the advice a wise and happily married man gave me shortly after Maria and I got married. “The most important words in any marriage,” he said, “are: you’re probably right, dear.”

Prima Donna The Worst. You’re probably right, dear.