Pale Male Esq February 5, 2005 At the Transport Board 4 meeting tonight the advisory board voted to deny proposing a ban of the Carriage Horse Trade. This time there were six men representing the drivers/owners each of whom spoke to endorse their love for their animals. More than a dozen people spoke to support the ban, but in the end the board said they need to see the results of a study to provide evidence that the horses are mistreated (or something to that effect). After hearing the board's decision most of the supporters began to file out but the small group of horse owners stayed back and snickered and giggled as they did throughout the meeting. One of them pointed me out as 'the guy who takes pictures of us in Central Park!’ I listened to the words spoken by the board and wondered where they learned to talk like that—the jargon, the decorum, the coldness. The room was much bigger this time than the one used on January 18th and had an uncomfortable heat which felt more like a room with no airconditioning in summer. I periodically scanned its bland furnishings and at times studied the faces of some of the board members. At one point I thought of how far out, ridiculous and insanely stupid I was going to sound if I asked the panel to have at least one horse present at any future meetings. How then if I ever visited The Land Of The Houyhnhnms, will I ever explain to those noble creatures that the fate of their fellow men were judged and decided by a group of Yahoos without the slightest representation of a single one of their kind. I left the dusty building and walked across 42nd Street and up Eight Avenue. It will be agreed unreasonable to expect along this particular path, to come across even a single face with which to associate some sort of rational human quality. Nevertheless I searched as many faces as I could while I picked my way through the pungent plumes of cigarette smoke cast from many of the very faces which I studied. On several occasions I chose to tread through the grimy sludge at the edge of the street rather than to inhale the poisonous fumes bellowing out of the faces of so many seemingly rational people. I looked at the hundreds of cigarette butts on the congested sidewalks and street gutters and imagined their journey into the complex drainage system beneath the shallow ground. I could have almost seen them floating through the countless channels and intricate conduits until they settled far, far away from the city itself and more so from the actual persons who disposed of them without care or concern. I thought of the many other careless habits and practices of my fellow Yahoos and even of my own, and how so many of those habits gravely affect some innocent animal somewhere on the planet. Along my weaving course I brought my mind back to the horses—those big gentle creatures who have suddenly, at the hands of man, found themselves haplessly deprived from their birth right to total freedom. If it was at all possible, tonight I would choose to dream that I was living in the Land of the Houyhnhnms. Even if I had a choice in this dream I would still remain a Yahoo as a sort of punishment for not being able to do more for the New York City Carriage horses. In my dream I will sit high in a tree downwind from the dreadful stench of the other Yahoos, and all day I would admire the peaceful life of those beautiful humble Houyhnhnms. And if seeing that the Earth can have tranquility in the hands of creatures free of greed and deception, my only wish will be to never awake. email: lincoln@palemale.com from Jonathan Swift 'A Voyage To The Land Of The Houyhnhnms' (the last of four stories in Gulliver's Travels)-- Houyhnhnms - the superior inhabitants of the land resembling horses. Yahoos - detestable beings resembling humans. Pale Male - January 8, 2006 Pale Male - January 8, 2006 Lola - January 8, 2006 Lola - January 8, 2006 (Last Year) - February 12, 2005 Gull over The MSB PondJanuary 28, 2005