Going for the Right Kind of Raciness

Just a few miles away from this college campus, horses in peak condition are arriving from all over the country.  Racing season is about to begin here in Saratoga Springs, as it does every July. Downtown, you can feel the excitement building each day.  Once again, both the appealing and the unsavory aspects of the “sport” will be laid out for us to consider, if we choose to do so.  It’s all got me thinking about the double-edged nature of the words racy and raciness as they apply to human behavior, too.  I care some about propriety, but I like a quickening pulse just as much as the next person.

I’ve been going down to the practice racetrack before breakfast, just to watch the thoroughbreds work out.  After being first turned away at the main entrance gate by guards who said I needed to have an official badge from the New York State Racing Association, I discovered that I could just park on the side of the road and peer through a chain link fence to see a whole lot of running.  There are stretches of emptiness, but then a dot on the far side of the track turns into a beautiful creature with legs pounding the dirt, moving fast around the curve, and someone up on his stirrups, completely focused.  It’s not all galloping out there; I see the full range of gaits, and what looks to be tender bonding between horse and rider. These athletes are being put through their paces calmly in preparation for the clamorous races to come, when there will be real stakes – for everyone involved.

Half wishing that I could climb that fence and take a few turns around, I remember what it felt like back in high school when I was lucky enough to ride regularly.  Cody had in fact been a Quarter horse racer before a friend had gotten him and then in turn gave him to us; he would still take any chance to go all out once in a while.  Mostly I’d ride him in our fields, doing figure 8’s and jumping fences my brother had made for me, but sometimes we’d go out on trails, too.  Once we arrived out on the openness of the power lines, he sensed his good times were about to start and started prancing and gathering his head in on his bit.  So long as it was going out rather than coming back, I could let him stretch out his neck and take off; I always experienced that particular thrill that comes when you’re on just this side of danger with no guarantee that you won’t cross over any second.

Dictionary definitions of “racy” – the adjective – include:  “full of zest, vigor” as well as “verging on impropriety or indecency” and “risqué, off-color.”  Not much of a clear borderline there.

I experienced how the “could-be-this-or-could-be-that” phenomenon plays itself out (off a horse) a few years ago when I came back from a party where a certain classy kind of clothes were being displayed and sold, among friends.  Encouraged by a few of the women to try on some things – clingy jeans, colorful tunics — that I never would have looked at off the rack, I emerged from the dressing room to hear them say, with utter confidence, “Oh, Polly, that look really works for you.”  Too easily convinced perhaps, but also ready to shake up my identity a bit, I went home with a few purchases, eager to show my man.  Unlike many husbands (I’m told, anyway) he is not shy about buying me clothes and has a good eye for style, too.   This time, however, his look noticeably drooped when I came in the room, transformed.  He didn’t think this particular kind of raciness worked, and right away suggested I look at another more flowing line of clothes suitable to a woman of my, ahem, maturity.  In retrospect, he may have been right; I’m still not sure where I stand on this, to tell you the truth.  But I definitely am in favor of our hearts racing when we look at each other.

Michel de Montaigne, the great essayist from the 16^th century, wrote that “the end of our own race is death.”  True enough, and — sadly — those sleek animals on the track endure painful injuries and shortened life spans while some fat cats make wads of money.  In many ways, the whole operation is unconscionable.  Furthermore, our own lives are richer, intellectually speaking, if we can make our way forward not just at a breakneck pace but with a variety of gaits.  In an essay about Montaigne called “The Sanest Man Ever,” Algis Valiunas said that The Complete Essays give us “the living record of thoughts on the move – strolling, ambling, stalking, galloping, pausing for reflection, doubling back to reconsider.”

This kind of try-anything approach to thinking, maybe even to living, won’t reliably put you in the winners’ circle. But on most days, anyway, it just might bring in enough zest that you would barely even miss the rest of racy.