Back to the Barn

Nathan looks closely at the miniature car in the palm of his hand. A strange, very old feeling shakes his entire body. He stares out through the broken window. His gaze lingers on a gray-green rock in the shape of an unfinished, makeshift altar.

The flat dirt surface is joined by small clumps of yellowing vegetation in front of the old barn. A mixed feeling of unease and melancholy intensifies within him.

The gentle breeze moves the broken shutters of the small window softly, creating a subtle music. A spider web flickers on an old, unused digging machine. Everything in the old barn seems frozen in a forgotten past. The only living things in the room are the traces of decay that slowly and insidiously work to drive all the objects and memories they carry into eternal oblivion.

Nathan takes a few steps into the granary and smells that familiar odor of confinement and decay that fills the closed, abandoned rooms filled with old objects, covered boxes, cobwebs, and torn pages of old books.

But what bothers him about this unexpected visit is not the decay of the materials and old things. That's not what worries him.

A memory, or rather the fragments of some images, sometimes clear, sometimes faded and distant, try to enter his mind. But they drift away quickly. Nothing is clear.

The formations of objects and people in his imagination are fluid, dissolving as they approach reality, then returning, however hesitantly.

The intensity he feels in his body is unstoppable; it is this tension that constantly brings back into his mind these fragments of images; the body is the source from which the fragments of dissolved images are incessantly flung out, disturbing and uncontrolled.

Suddenly, the old, worn granary dissolves and disappears from the present. His body tingles and a subtle inner stimulation warms his blood. He is already in the past. The day is sunny. A proud bird with open wings attempts a vertical dive from the blue sky into the flowering meadow.

The hum of nature, a sweet buzz of chirping insects, singing birds and gusts of wind, takes over the landscape and himself.

His fingers join with a pair of other hands. The memory is vivid, almost as real as it was then. He feels the touch on the soft spot of his fingers, the pounding of his heart, his gaze lowered to the floor in shame, confusion, the burst of emotion. He is back, on the sunny day of his youth.

The window of the old granary is no longer broken. It is clear, bringing a sliver of blue sky inside as they lie naked on the wooden floor of the barn. The feeling of the pulsating skin on their fidgeting hands, the sweat, the breaths in the silence of the small house in the country.

Time to go. As he leaves the barn, memories of youth dissolve. Outside, the wind has picked up. The yellowing vegetation moves back and forth, left to the whims of the wind. Nathan walks briskly, gets into his car, starts the engine, and drives off.

The excitement has died down. From the car's speakers comes the lively sound of a guitar. Many times he has tried to feel the same sensation that had awakened his body a few minutes ago. Only a few times in his life had he managed to feel the same quality of sensation.

After all, miracles don't repeat endlessly. Otherwise they wouldn't be miracles, they'd be everyday life, habit. As he drove away on the open country road, the music grew louder. A feeling of fullness came over him.