Horses

He always returned to this story: the man who had tied his horse to a tree and then left it.

To him it was humanity in one despicable image. Selfish, irresponsible, self-absorbed, forgetful and evil. To him that was everything that was wrong with the world and what was wrong with people. He grew old, had four children. They all had fine and honourable lives.

I write this, but maybe I shouldn’t write about horses. I have seen them. I have even been riding one in a theme park in France. A small and pathetic theme park called Le Chevalier au Cœur Noble. But I know nothing of horses.

Instead I live surrounded by cars everywhere. Machines that pollute, and make noise, so people go mad, get fat, get ill and die.

Is it just me, or are people looking smaller and smaller as the cars grow bigger? The little head behind the wheel seems less and less human each year. They all think that the bigger the car, the more prestigious it is. But it makes them look like little, mechanical dwarfs – little, fat, mechanical dwarfs.

Now you will say, “looks who’s talking,” but my being fat does nothing to diminish my point. Laziness is what it is. People prefer to destroy the environment, the whole damned ecosystem! They prefer to be obese, idiotic and potential murderers. Only afterwards, when some teenager lies smashed on the ground, do they think. And then it is too late.

The horse died under that tree. From the carcass the tree was nurtured and it grew to be more than three hundred years old, the most beautiful tree in the county – until one day an idiot drove into it in his SUV.

I have a car myself. I know what you think of me – especially after this little talk – but I need it to be able to get to my job. Fifty minutes each way every day! I hate myself. I hate my life!

In the evening he walked out to the tree, where the horse had been tied, to pray. And he cried while he was sitting there. He cried for the horse – for the whole human race. His children knew that, in a fit of rage, he once beat a horse so one of its eyes fell out. They remembered him as self-absorbed, overly dramatic and moralising.

They hated the story about the horse and the tree.