Echoes Upon Echoes

On The Love Of A Good Pencil... And Beyond

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What we do now echoes in eternity. ~ Marcus Aurelius

There’s something about putting pencil to paper and watching words and drawings develop that sets my mind at ease. The soft rasping of the lead against parchment is like a plain music that slows my breathing. I am pulled into another world, one of simplicity, of one of the most basic forms of creation available to mankind. To move something capable of leaving a mark across a receptive surface, to see our thoughts and feelings take form in a visual representation that speaks from our minds and hearts.

I love pencils, I always have. Especially the old classic, 2HB. For me, that pencil hits just the right note of softness and shade and feel as I scribble and draw whatever comes to mind. Still, pencils have one flaw that bothers my sense of perfectionism, especially when I was a child, and that is that no matter how good the eraser, you can never entirely rub out a mistake. And if you try too hard, you usually end up spoiling the paper as well as the drawing or neatness of a sentence.

US Eventing Hall of Fame equestrian and author, Denny Emerson, recently wrote a wonderful post on his Facebook page, Tamarack Hill Farm, about the similarities between horses and the wax tablet used by writers in ancient times, the palimpsest.

What he means by that is best said in his own words: “After one use, the writing could be rubbed off, so that new words could be added. But there were usually traces left over of earlier words, so palimpsest have been used to describe such things as civilizations, the new one retaining echoes and traces of the former…A horse is a palimpsest. We get a horse that has had prior owners, riders, drivers, and the responses that horse gives us reflects those earlier experiences.”

Mr. Emerson goes on to say that: “…reactions are messages of prior treatment, earlier experiences.”

As I sat with those words and let them simmer in my brain, I felt the many echoes of the many horses I have handled over a lifetime wash over me in a massive wave. Right after it came my own echoes, the echoes of countless people that have crossed my path, for better or worse, leaving their mark or maybe, a scar. The obvious conclusion followed swiftly on its heels. That we are all palimpsests.