Dust and Horses

09 February 2026

My favorite part of the Super Bowl was never the game.

It was the horses.

Not metaphorical horses. Not mascots or logos. Actual bodies—weight, muscle, breath—moving with a gravity that made the rest of the spectacle briefly disappear. The Clydesdales didn’t compete. They processed. They reminded. They slowed the room.

That, more than touchdowns or halftime theatrics, held my attention.

When I think about it now, I realize how ancient that response is.

In Rome, chariot racing was not a sideshow. It was the event. The Circus Maximus held tens of thousands, drawn not by strategy diagrams or statistics, but by speed, danger, and the raw coordination between human and horse. Factions formed—Blues, Greens, Reds—tribal loyalties that ran deep. People argued, bet, mourned, celebrated.

Empires paused to watch bodies move.

The horses were not decorative. They were essential. Power made visible.

Today, our spectacles are cleaner. Safer. Mediated. We gather around screens rather than dust. We watch through layers of commentary, advertising, choreography. And yet—once a year—we still make room for a quiet interruption. A team of horses walking slowly, deliberately, across the field of view.

No contest. No outcome.

Just presence.

Perhaps that is what still works. Not competition, but attention. Not noise, but weight. A reminder that before sport became data, before spectacle became commerce, people gathered to witness the limits and grace of living bodies.

The Romans understood this. Not sentimentally. Practically. They knew what could hold a crowd without explanation.

I wonder what still does.

What stops us without persuading us?
What gathers us without argument?
What earns silence?

For me, it has always been the horses.

Holding attention—real attention—takes energy.

This past week, I spent mine looking closely at how writers move through their work in different states of making. The AuthorKind Archetypes continue to reveal themselves not as fixed identities, but has lived postures: ways of gathering, incubating, shaping, offering, and guarding creative work depending on what the moment asks.

Alongside them, I shared a small phaiku sequence—brief records rather than declarations—written from the same impulse: to notice without forcing arrival.

Taken together, these pieces feel of a kind to me. All are concerned less with outcome than with how attention is held—and what happens when we allow it to shift.

I’m resisting the urge to promise what comes next. Winter has a way of narrowing the lens, and I’m listening for what wants to surface rather than pushing ahead of it. What I can say is this: the exploration continues—sometimes in essays, sometimes in fragments, sometimes in images that think before words do.

This season asks a little less speed, and a little more patience.

As always, thank you for reading—and for noticing.

—Jennifer
JL Tooker

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