The Weight of the World

Abstract

The Weight of the World John Kinsella (bio) Red Shed 1 Who built our red barns so admired as emblems . . . —Hayden Carruth, "Marshall Washer" People hereabouts distinguish our placeby the massive red shed that pronouncesa ledge hacked into the hillside. Erectedby the previous owner, it yells culturalanomaly across the valley: I know howmuch she loved horses and dedicatedit as a stable, but I am not sure if she evervisited America and drew inspirationfrom the red barns of folklore and utility.After years living in red-barn mid-Ohio,we knew what red barns said to localsand visitors alike. Here and now, they say:sticks out like a sore thumb! Or: hey,you know the place, the one with the dirtygreat red shed! The air force uses it to sightfor bombing runs. Pure terror. In truthit's a placid red, though the horrorof hunkering down in bush, of wantingnot to be noticed, makes it anathema.Each day it holds sunlight betweenitself and an imaginary horizonthat curves with the hills overlookingthe greater Tooday valley. Imaginethe structure of what would have grownthere if the red shed hadn't stakeda claim? The runoff from its gentlypitched roof, the red music it makes [End Page 362] in high winds, bleeding arteriesthat feed reservoirs we drink from.This memory of America won't depart,and the red Colorbond steel that holdsa postcard portrait, the folklore that makes workand horses and a shelter for all weatherspeaks resistance: in the worst firesit will buckle and melt, but the sumof history, its loud declaration, remains. Red Shed 2 But let me tell you how it is inside those barns. —Hayden Carruth, "Marshall Washer" Steel red shed that inside looks like wooden stablesbecause of the amount of wood that is useful and willful, wooden framework masking metal with high eavesthat could have been turned into a loft but holds electrics, hay pitched and packed in a corner, and stalls,wooden and symmetrical and just communal enough, where mares are favored, the equipmentof horse-keeping a metaphor for being kept by horses. This is no longer a horse property, the whispersare of rodents and snakes, and to open the grand doors of the red shed is to wonder what to make of it, spiritsso imbued, no matter how skeptical you might be. Conjure no horses and no horse activities and nohusbandry of horses, washed and rubbed down [End Page 363] fresh from their workouts. Strange how you hearBeethoven's Ghost Trio at work on the senses, its hidden and never spoken air of horses, undertones and palpitationsof ghostly hormones. Last year I reviewed a performance of Equus. Last year one of my students did a pieceof creative autobiography on horses by horses. She knew how much she couldn't say. The Greek letters of horseshoesare still imprinted in the soft floor of the shed's theater, text colorless. What went on in there still goes on;deny it if possible. I wish this red shed were gone, hillside restored to its pristine apparitions of priornative vegetation holding and hiding animals that refuse to be shod, that refuse to envisagethe properties of a shed-stable, its cares and investments. Red Shed: "Psychological Depth" Red shed sealed for weeks but the dry—the dry compels me in, takes me by the noseand draws me to the pump, the compressor(more accurately) that will slug a two-strokepiston in its oily cage, its vacuum-makerand oxygenator, to spark and push airalong hoses far across the block, hundredsof meters to the boreheads, down pipes,down layers of Van Eyck oils, as if exhalationis a first-timer here, to puff into the aquiferand drive water up the contrary pipe,forcefeed the great tank, which is downto muddy leftovers. So turn to groundwater?All farms around us suck up any way they can, [End Page 364] draining and dragging the aquifer that will "neverempty," though we sense its cavity...