++++++++++++++++++

I bet we could accurately say, “A family that neighs together, stays together!”

I already know that this will be a light-weight post to write, which is a welcome change to the last ten or so posts I have created here on my blog.  In addition, I am happy to note that the source of this post must have come from some non-REM sleep time dreaming, something that I welcome because I carry so much of my dream time weight (evidently) during REM sleep – far more than what is either ‘healthy’ or ‘normal’ (a by-product of my depression).

In the non-REM dreaming state we process current life-related information between our two hemispheres toward integration of our experience in an ongoing way.  And THIS topic – neighing and neighbors – is directly related to the last season of the Australian television series I am watching, ‘McLeod’s Daughters’.

The show is worth watching alone just for the horseflesh that trots, gallops, neighs and whinnies its way across my TV screen.  In the middle of this last season there’s a show-jumping Olympic status gigantic gray spotted mare that shows up, and I’m quite sure that it was she that stimulated whatever it was that made its way into my non-REM ‘self-integrated-with-life’ dreaming last night.  Or, perhaps my two-brains were also engaged in processing my listening experience last night to the soundtrack from the movie, “All the Pretty Horses!”

I woke up very clear about the connection between horse relationships with one another and human parallels in our relationship with our ‘neighbors’.  The connection has to be in these two words that neighed themselves into my waking consciousness this morning.  I’ll take a look – and I’ll VERY SURPRISED if my dream information was wrong.

Well, look at this!  My Google ‘Webster’s define neigh’ search brought up neighborhood, neighbor and neigh!

NEIGH

Etymology: Middle English neyen, from Old English hnǣgan; akin to Middle High German nēgen to neigh

Date: before 12th century

: to make the prolonged cry of a horse

NEIGHBOR

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English nēahgebūr (akin to Old High German nāhgibūr); akin to Old English nēah near and Old English gebūr dweller — more at nigh, boor – [a boor is nigh?  I’ll leave this word connection ALONE even though I certainly have one PIGGY neighbor – hence creation of my fence!]

Date: before 12th century

1 : one living or located near another
2 : fellow man

NEIGHBORHOOD

Date: 15th century

1 : neighborly relationship
2 : the quality or state of being neighbors : proximity
3 a : a place or region near : vicinity b : an approximate amount, extent, or degree <cost in the neighborhood of $100>
4 a : the people living near one another b : a section lived in by neighbors and usually having distinguishing characteristics

++++

Well, OK, so their root word origins are different – but they don’t look THAT different to me – so anyone who knows High German and/or Old High German (or ANY German at all!) please feel free to prance in all your origin-of-neighing-neighbors glory and drop a comment.  What do you think?

For me, I guess because of the way I was raised — including my time spent in childhood in the ‘wilderness’ where there were no neighbors and no fences to poke our neighborly heads over to neigh to one another – it makes perfectly good sense to me that the human right early forming social-emotional brain might rely upon a similar network of neighing-neighborly joint-speak to get along and to appreciate one another — because both horses and humans are members of a social species.

Maybe horse whispering isn’t so far away from what all humans do as they chat, banter and gossip with one another (and to mix literalized metaphors as they tweet and twitter with one another)  – and maybe TV’s talking horse Mr. Ed really DID cross the fence between species and talk to both!

++++++++++++++++++

FYI:

I believe this is related to the spectrum of “Are you a sensitive?” – and to the ‘hawk’ and ‘dove’ allostatic load hypothesis by McEwen:

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_sickness
The most common hypothesis for the cause of motion sickness is that it functions as a defense mechanism against neurotoxins.^[7] The area postrema in the brain is responsible for inducing vomiting when poisons are detected, and for resolving conflicts between vision and balance. When feeling motion but not seeing it (for example, in a ship with no windows), the inner ear transmits to the brain that it senses motion, but the eyes tell the brain that everything is still. As a result of the disconcordance, the brain will come to the conclusion that one of them is hallucinating and further conclude that the hallucination is due to poison ingestion. The brain responds by inducing vomiting, to clear the supposed toxin.

++++++++++++++++++