Can You Fall in Love with a Barn?
Yes, you can...because I did yesterday. Actually, I fell in love with a couple. There is something inside me so longing for a life with a barn. I would set up an area for coffee and coziness with the horses and goats and chickens...I would curl up there in the morning with the animals and listen to their voices and read, write and sip my coffee.
Barns have become representative for a life that I want. A life that is slower, organized by routines of animals. Those dependent upon me to provide for them. A daily dedication of merit and service. They so giving in their praise, in each chewed morsel and each begging for a scratch. I would idle the morning with them, combining my routine with theirs, each activity following the next until all beings are sated.
This is the life I wish for, not because mine is hollow or lacking. I love the life I have today but I long for a time where my routine is about living the minutia of life, not rushing off to divide and conquer. A life occurring in the sanctuary of my home, working, living, writing, reading, cooking and caring for the beasts that provide me comfort and joy. Each day a new beginning with solace that only the comfort a full barn can provide.
I would spend each morning enamored with the greyed wood, the musty smell of hay and dirt, animals adding a perfume of their own. I would take it in like I do the aroma of a newly cracked spine of a novel longing to be devoured. I would sit in the splendor of it all, taking it in, the mechanics of daily life, serving furry buddhas and then relaxing into the confines of my mind. Spending hours, writing in the nearby loft, carving out my interior onto the page. Lost in the hours and the comfort of animals and barn life.
I have a lot of things that I don’t need today. More clothes and shoes than one person can ever possibly wear. More than enough of everything. I lack for nothing but a space like the barn I fell in love with yesterday. The deep longing within me to be present in a life that contains a barn and its inhabitants. Life, drilled down to a simpler one. Where the day is consumed not by the acquiring of things, but moments of being, one moment after another...time for reflection, composition and repose. Life in service to the Divinity that can only be found in the lips of a horse, a bleat of a goat or the feathers of a chicken. Bucolic life where my life is not my own anymore but abides in service to the prostrations of a life, lived, loved and enjoyed moment after moment.
Falling in love with a barn seems the proper use of love. Anchoring me to a life where I am present in the sights and smells and hallmarks of daily living, routine providing me structure and support to access the interiority of myself. The sight of aged wood and rusty hinges indicative of my temporal place in time. Wishing to leave behind a structure of myself that wears so well with age so that I may comfort those I leave behind.
