Cloven Hoof, and: Architecture without ornaments

122 JOHN KINSELLA CLOVEN HOOF The sandy arena is strewn with footprints—cloven hooves. There seems no point of entry and no point of departure. There are fresh droppings, some loose as if too much green stuff has been eaten too fast after the long dry spell. It makes no sense. Wild goats? Possibly . . . come out of the neighbouring reserve, but I can’t detect tracks or goat scats on that side of the line. The plethora the multiplication the exponential cloven hoof—with cloud-cover hugging the hills it gets so dark, even too dark for just smell and touch to find a way across. Which might account for the rush of steps, the frantic ring around, haunting leap from a distant space, that even bad press, propaganda, light the piercing eyes of goats, so hunted down, devils in every farmer’s almanac, even those who profit from them. 123 JOHN KINSELLA ARCHITECTURE WITHOUT ORNAMENTS In this simple house there are still dozens of picture-hooks on the walls, so close together we know the previous occupant needed crowded images of family and horses. This was a horse place, and we have pulled down all internal fences, removed strands and insulators of the electric fence; the evidence is everywhere. The great shed built on a cut in the hill above the house is still decked out as stables—stalls, false floor of hay where bales were stacked, room for grooming and medicating and hanging saddles, straps, and tote bags. Bit by bit we’ll undo, welcome owls and carpet snakes into high places, redo the floor. And though we add rooms to the house for children and books, we disconnect slowly from the outside world—an architecture without ornaments, designed by us, built by J.A. and tradesmen he calls on as need arises. Keep it simple. Let it blend into what’s here, work its way back to roots, rockface, deep streams that run beneath, but not as design to mask comfort and trappings pretending to be art, but just the necessary, basic necessities, without semantics and points of view adapting like interpretation, owl and python considering the short movement downhill one worth making, as the house, too, could almost belong. ...