The Barn of the Arduous Metaphysics, Part the First

I once heard a story from a wise wizened llama just arrived from the windblown woods, all matted fur with a half-grin. The llama gamboled when he was younger, brushing his bristles against what in three days would be the ninth fencepost of the Barn of the Arduous Metaphysics — a triumph of muscle and brainpower, unseen since the long-faded days of yore when the little town’s old ladies paraded about as they pleased on languid afternoons wearing nothing but gardening gloves and perhaps a stitch of knitting about their necks, and the dogcatcher’s chiropractor sang after the office closed, sang in the dusky light as he lounged next to the lantern-lit carrot-colored fountain in the city square—that is, until his arm went missing and was assumed to have been taken as a souvenir by a visiting band of harlots called Fluorescent Sex that sauntered through town when time would allow, flaunting fresh bosoms and worn leather kilts that reeked of dollar-store plastic cups and cedar smoke, ravenous for dental care so they took an arm instead, yes, this was when the first hallowed barn was built on ninety-foot stilts and a floating bordello bobbed high above it like a balloon seeking the sky , pulling on long tethers affixed to the barn’s wide roof— but the llama had almost forgotten this, due to the fact that just after he’d emerged from the windblown woods, he’d chanced upon an unfortunate sailor who with one fell swoop had removed his own trousers and performed a series of convulsive reenactments of the moon landing, culminating in the consumption of two liters of whisky and a number of over-the-counter antihistamines.

All this the llama told me. I was distracted momentarily by his astounding breath control. He held his head high on a sturdy, noble neck. When I finally regained my composure and the llama unfolded his limbs from where they’d collapsed in the dust and then stood again, wobbly as branches, we took a moment to stare each other down. I peered at llama. Llama peered at me. I looked deep into his llama-eyes, into my own wet reflection, and suddenly I was he and we was me and I stood on four spindly legs and the roaring of the llama’s ears was the roaring of my own.

We ran. I rode just behind his eyes. I was a harmony in and amongst the singing of his cells, slightly dissonant ‘round the edges and balancing there because of it. The llama’s skin kept me in. Once, the llama told me, his skin ran away for a day and a night then finally stumbled home near dawn. They didn’t speak for a while after that.

I did not worry. I jived behind his eyes. Our jostling went to the beat of our feet that bounced off the dry ground at the same speed as they had when the llama had first run towards the barn and the floating bordello. This was the correct speed for such things. This was a dire mission. I felt suddenly noble. Noble like I’d only ever felt in dreams where I’d huddle with a sword at the center of an old walled city waiting for the roar and crush to topple the walls — an urgency that swelled my dream heart and made my dream muscles loose and taut at the same time, resigned and ready for something I’d never seen but knew was coming.

Our skin drank in the spreading violet of the late sky. The harder I think about it the faster it flies, like trying to balance on one foot, or the slippery instant upon waking where a dream begins to falls away. It’s tricky, the inertia of memory. It slides in a different direction than time, skidding off at acute angles out of pores and cells and eyes, or stamped on dry ground beneath pounding feet. The faster we ran the further memory slipped until we had none at all, and each footfall was an instant and each space between was its opposite and into these rollicking moments we flew. Roused by the rattling ground, worms undulated upwards to see us clatter past.

We began to talk through the roaring in our ears. “Here is the history of everything that is and will be and was,” his blood told me. “If llamas had kitchens I would have cooked the world but instead I eat its passing with my eyes. And here we are.” A prune-faced woman seemed to grow taller as we passed. Stopped. She pulled us toward her with a hum and we stepped back, one foot, another foot, and lowered our head and peered. She looked into our llama eyes, deep into her own wet reflection, and stayed solid in her skin then spoke through the roaring of blood in our ears. Tittered, like a young girl, which tickled the cells I was floating with. She sighed at the end of her sentence and then we were off and knowing and she stood, dark in the sinking day behind us. The light had fallen like cloth that we cut through.

Over the next hill, silhouetted against indigo sky, a little building bobbed high in the air. We yearned toward it, strained with our eyes, and we did not run faster though our blood roared louder. I slid against the llama’s cells which were now on the verge of singing several octaves higher than they ever had, and rocks kicked up and struck our spindly shins and we started tumbling to save time. The inertia of going was the inertia of knowing and the barn swayed slightly on its stilts far ahead and the bordello hung high above the barn’s dark bulk and everything was entirely full of everything else and we only knew what leaked into the inside and rolling and faster and faster

and then

suddenly

stopped.

The sky turned white. Sinister.

The unfortunate sailor was splayed on the ground just in front of us. Dust had settled into the spaces between his fingers and the dip just under his nose; it rested in the concave of his throat, coated his naked kneecaps. We leaned over, stooped on brittle limbs, and I slid to the front of the llama’s eyes. This very spot was where the llama had been standing before suddenly careening backwards through miles and days and years to emerge from the windblown woods with matted fur and a half-grin to tell me the story of the barn and the arm and the harlot band. We peered at the unfortunate sailor for several hours, examining every limb and bit of hair and the slight reek of tobacco and tepid lagoons that lingered in his pockets. I could have left the llama then but I felt too fluid and so stayed, holding onto the edges of his cells that were suddenly humming uproariously.

The cells attempted a reenactment of the moon landing but didn’t have the feet to lift into partial gravity. I attempted a roaring. I said, “Shall we onward?” The llama said “right,” and we picked our way around the sailor, nimbly as we could with ancient llama joints.

The spaces between footfalls were longer. Up and over the hill ahead of us, small echoes began to sneak through our skin and we saw, through the dust, the stilts. A triumph of muscle and brainpower. The llama leered, leaned back, and reared up, which I did not expect. We shuddered in the shadow of the barn. The prune-faced woman’s hum droned in the air, blending with the creak of the beams of the stilts. The barn teetered over us. And upwards we flew.

(2005)