Horses and Women

Mary Gaitskill is one skilled writer that brings out the raw tendencies of human beings. I discovered her while  contemplating to buy a snake stuff toy in Glorietta's many book bargain booths scattered around the mall when a friend of mine pulled out a book simply because the title was "Veronica".
And it was good, it was tragically beautiful.

Contrary to Paulo Coelho's Veronika decides to die, in Gaitskill's Veronica, she doesn't contemplate dying then attempts to do so - she denied it vehemently and successfully died.

Here is a short story that connects death and life.

The Mare
by Mary Gaitskill

I

met Velveteen when I was 45, but I felt still young. I looked young too. This is probably because I had not done many of the things most people of that age have done: I’d had no children and no successful career. I married late after crashing through a series of relationships and an intense half-life as an artist visible only in Lower Manhattan, the other half of my life being that of a drug addict. 

I met my husband in Narcotics Anonymous; he lived in the city then, though we’ve since moved to a small town upstate. He makes a good living as a tenured English professor at a small college. A lot of his income goes to support his wife and daughter from a previous marriage, and we live in an old faculty-housing unit long on charm and short on function. Not owning doesn’t bother us, though. We are comfortable, and we are happy with each other. We go out to eat a lot and travel in the summer. 

When people ask me what I do now, I sometimes say, “I’m retired,” sometimes, “I’m transitioning,” and very occasionally, “I’m a painter.” I’m embarrassed to say the last part even though it’s true: I paint almost every day, and I think I’m better than I was when I showed at a downtown gallery 20 years ago. But I’m embarrassed anyway because I know I sound foolish to people here, people who have kids, and jobs too, and who wouldn’t understand my life before I came here. There are a few—women who paint at home, too—who I’ve been able to talk about it with, describe what art used to be to me, and what I’m trying to make it be again: a place more real than anything in “real” life. A place I remember dimly, a place of deep joy, where, when I could get to it, was like tuning in to a radio frequency that was sacred to me. Regardless of anything else, nothing was more important than carrying that frequency on the dial of myself.  

Read more in Vice: http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/the-mare-000811-v20n6?fb_action_ids=3116648053274&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=288381481237582