Barned In

Barned In

A dull cold biting my ears and nose awoke me this morning. I feel a great pressure on my abdomen and I feel absent. In last night’s snow storm I took refuge in a barn; now the doors seem locked, the windows boarded up, and light only comes from a hole in the roof directly above me. Maybe I could climb through the hole, but no. The only path is up a ladder to the loft, a daring jump to rafter one, and then three slightly less daring jumps to subsequent rafters. Even if I made it to the hole, the answer of how to safely drop thirty feet down haunts me. Looks like I am stuck for now.

I have a notebook and ink, a wool cloak, and a bed of hay. The light filtering down illuminates dancing particles of dust, spider webs, and where animals laid. All this keeps my imagination and eyes busy while my stomach grumbles. I have not moved since waking up, aside from my arms to write this. It feels like I cannot move, either. The only thing to do is figure out why I feel odd.

I cannot help but feel this predicament exceptionally unusual. Yesterday I was walking, looking for nighttime refuge and found this inviting barn which stands alone and vacant looking in a 100 square meters clearing from a dense forest. I entered through a wide open door, and closed it behind me only because of cold and wolves. Sometimes I like nighttime breezes because cold can be reversed by morning sun; but wolves will dismember a man and no morning sun fixes such a problem. So I closed it last night.

Now I wish I stayed in the woods in a dug out of snow beneath a pine and avoided this suffocating feeling. At least then I would be free instead of suffering. But entrapment in a structure is the price I pay for banishing wolves and frost. All I have now are thoughts and one ray of light. Ironic how refuge turns into prison!

I heard of caged men who went mad gazing at freedom. I recall a story from one southern vagrant about his cousin, who was incarcerated for crime and kept somewhere near water. His cell was carved out of a coastal cliff side, but had no bars—only a sheer drop onto saltwater rocks. Guards sat pointing spears up the exclusive, wooden path at every moment. The vagrant said that his cousin desperately yearned for freedom and jumped in an effort to escape, and that he disappeared. His body was never found, nor had any family members seen or heard from him. I do not usually heed vagrant stories.

I have sought refuge many times in a barn. I do not know how or why this happened. I was simply being, trying to survive barren winter. I have stayed in barns during all sorts of weather for many years. I have braved monsoons, blizzards, and heat waves in sanctuaries of hay, but this odd feeling is a first.

So is lying in one spot for so long. At first I felt lazy, believing fibers of hay and wool from my cloak wove then fused together in a high-pressure conspiracy to keep me here. But I am sort of comfortable, and soon the sun will position itself above the barn and hit me, and like a reptile I will stir then figure how to slither from this predicament. Until then, I remain firmly cemented here by mystic powers gripping my will.

Maybe these mystic powers will show me how I got here. All I remember is my beating heart, the setting sun, and panic. The last town I passed through people were not welcoming, maybe they boarded me up in here. But so many towns do not welcome people like me because they are frightened of the unknown, they are frightened by scars and rags. I only wish that like Diogenes the cynic, my truth was an inspiration, if not a misunderstood awe.

I was not always like this, one time I was beautiful and young. I left home as a leaf leaves the highest reach of a towering tree, floating a great distance before landing gently on the ground and browning in autumn. Time, experience, and destitution ensnare me now and people no longer welcome me as a supple leaf cradled by wind. I know things change, and maybe this barn could be nice. Maybe I can live here. A nice, warm life could be made if I figure safely to the light-hole in the roof. And the untamed forest is more bounteous than anyone realizes; I might find a wild potato or two and make a farm after thaw, with an herb garden and peas. I was a farmer once, but the locals grew mistrusting of me.

In so many places I wore out welcome. I used to think a reason existed, but now I see that people naturally repel what does not fit their image of the world, and that is me. Every time I settled somewhere like a farm, commune, or city, I tried to fix things. By nature I, and I believe all people, are opposed to inefficiency. Most people operate with efficiency as their primary principle. Hunger is best cured by food, and so people farm; love is best developed by communities, and so people make towns; thought is best developed by following others who developed thought, so people create places for thought. But I am critical of things by nature and always point this out: society and the other, the consensus, create most of a person’s perspectives. A person usually just absorbs the how of a system they’re told exists—or should exist. Your ideas are shadows on a wall and you are a prisoner to obedience and delusion.

Wherever I saw inefficiency and squeaky wheels, I tried to fix them. I believe my welcome always wears thin because of that; I see things, people, and systems for what they are… unthinking, broken, or an illusion. And now I sleep mostly in old barns.

My vision makes people uncomfortable; novelty becomes cumbersome when they realize I am not easily fooled or ordered around. But there is little a man like me who values truth above all else can do. I ventured out of the cave as a young boy when I realized my parents could never take care of me. A few years later I belonged only to the countryside.

What I also realize, however, is that I am not what actually makes people uncomfortable; truth makes people uncomfortable. Most people scrap truth to the heap like dust bunnies, they feel allergic. But in doing so a person perpetuates entrapment in the game of pointless recurrence, where nothing will change except day and season. The real problem is getting people to see the shadows. Truth actually sets a person free.

I realized long ago that when I do not expose truth in a situation, I become uncomfortable. A choice emerges, and I always choose to be comfortable—comfortable insofar as my soul is not tarnished by abetting other’s delusion. Rarely does the truth ever allow me to stay somewhere long enough to be physically comfortable.

If it were up to me, I would stay in one spot and marry. That sounds like true comfort to me. But every daughter I get close to has a father with a pitchfork muttering something like “not by the likes of you…” Almost every time before I leave a place, they call me deplorable. I try not to care but I know they are wrong.

I have been to every corner of the empire and seen actual deplorability. I am the least deplorable person I know. Most everyone else feeds a machine of rage, arrogance, or ignorance. By virtue of birth and upbringing people contribute to a system they do not understand. I do not understand either, but at least I know it. People blindly accept an identity found in an outside world depending on whatever situation they were born in, and lose themselves in a game with rules created around them. I have seen people grow obsessed, greedy, and narcissistic when they realize their choices were made for them; I prefer indifference. I am not deplorable, I just refuse to live like them.

I do not look down upon anyone for their lives. I too was once a fool. But no longer. Now I have renounced everything and now I only survive; this is my wish. The modern person wants, does, and never is. I simply am, and I refuse to be anything else.

One time a farmer whom I had made nice with asked me why I am. He had a beautiful daughter whom I dreamed of marrying, and so I told him: “I am because the alternative is ghastly, I am because to exist as doing or wanting or having is to be possessed by something else and I utterly refuse to allow anything but myself to occupy me.”

The farmer was silent and watchful. Soon the town grew quiet and watchful. Then I heard accusatory whispers that I was heathen. I fled and never looked back, and do not care because that is to be possessed by worry. I am me, and I will never be anything else. My existence is all I know, and will not be tainted by games of blindness.

Yet currently my speculation saps me of energy, and the sun will reach my body by sentence’s end, and I am feeling particularly in need of heat right now… if only I could move more than this hand writing.

The sun on my feet feels glorious; it must be close to noon judging by this hole’s positioning. But I fear something is wrong. My wooly cloak does not feel warm, and the sun gradually exposes something far too horrible for me to bare. I fear this may be the end.

I know that houses made of cards crumble with ease. But who would guess that a barn roof could mimic this attribute. If anyone reads this, my message in a bottle, if anyone finds my corpse and this note, please do one thing for me. Please deliver this message, I do not know to whom, but please deliver it:

I am sorry. I never meant to alter your world, to remind you that things are not okay. Please know I am frightened; I am frightened of the ignorance upon which existence rests, and the existential danger of not knowing. I never knew the bliss of belief in grand plans, and I only journeyed because death and air pushed me to. Deep down, secretly, I love each person whose world I exposed as phony and useless. I expose flaws out of love. The futility with which I address you ensures I will not die uncomfortable, but also placates me in relation to the faceless society I could never embrace. I do not blame you for distrusting me, I only wish you and I left each other at an understanding. My final wish is forgiveness, from society which is a fancy, faceless word for many people. I wish forgiveness from whoever finds me, because a grotesque sight might haunt you. And I wish forgiveness from God, because I never fully loved your creation.

Feel free to Reach out, and make sure to tune in for more content in the Summer Fiction Series.

Philoso-Wanderer