Girls and horses

Years ago, I was unable to appreciate the beauty of brunettes and had an eye just for blond girls. The Perfect Girl was 1.80 meters tall, had short blond hair and blue eyes. But as it happens, the Perfect Girl destroyed the Platonic ideal.

I met Uli in the library. We used to work in the same floor: I was doing Greek, she was working on Turkish. It seemed the perfect match: tall, slim, cultivated girl with a strong interest in books and foreign cultures.

We met just two or three times, until I realized that her only obsession and passion was Urielle. Her mare.

I like horses and can ride fairly well (the cowboy way, not the boring, Olympic, civilized, Uli way). Our conversations were about how depressed she was when she figured out that Urielle had an injury. How anxious she was because Urielle was about to undertake an operation. How relieved she was when she learned that Urielle was on the way to recovery.

Not even with the most effective hoover you could suck up more than a two minute talk about literature, Turkish language or any other topic. Besides her mare. Her love for horses did not even drive her to read horse related literature. I kept asking myself if she shouldn't had become a veterinarian, jockey or official mare lover, the Angelina Jolie way.

I had forgotten the moral of Uli's story, until I bumped into this paragraph of Travesuras de la niña mala, by Mario Vargas Llosa:

"Odiaba los caballos con todas sus fuerzas y también a todas sus amistades y relaciones de Newmarket, propietarios, preparadores, jockeys, empleados, palafreneros, perros y gatos y todas las personas que directa o indirectamente tenían que ver con los equinos, malditos engendros que, además, eran el único tema de conversación y preocupación de esa horrible gente que la rodeaba. No sólo en los hipódromos, en las pistas de entrenamiento, en los establos, también en las cenas, las recepciones, los matrimonios, los cumpleaños y en los encuentros casuales las gentes de Newmarket hablaban de las enfermedades, accidentes, aprontes, proezas o desgracias de los horribles cuadrúpedos. A ella esta vida había conseguido amargarle los días, y hasta las noches, porque, últimamente, tenía pesadillas con los caballos de Newmarket".

Sometimes, Life precedes Literature. Sometimes, a horse can change your life.

Fotos: David LaChapelle (2001)