Exercising Reason, Llama-Style.

My old friend, the llama, dropped in on me today. When I say ‘dropped in’, maybe I should be more specific. I was sitting at my computer savouring my new, grade 6, high roast coffee, when my peripheral vision was suddenly flooded by something which hadn’t been there a few seconds earlier. Being naturally intrigued, I turned to ascertain its identity.

‘Hello,’ said the llama.

‘Hello,’ I replied, striving to maintain an air of nonchalance as one does when confronted by llamas. ‘I haven’t seen you for ages. Where’ve you been?’

‘I haven’t been anywhere,’ replied the llama.

‘You must have been somewhere,’ I countered.

‘Why?’

‘Everybody has to be somewhere,’ I reasoned hopefully. (The application of reason is always accompanied by an unaccountable hint of uncertainty in such situations.) ‘You’re here now, aren’t you? Here is somewhere.’

‘Am I? Is it? On what basis do you hold to such a presumption?’

‘On the basis that I can see you and hear you and I’m talking back to you.’

‘And you trust the apparent evidence of your eyes, ears and brain, do you, in spite of your being aware that the organs to which you ascribe such unquestioned validity are far from infallible?’

‘Ah, I see; we’re back to that one. You’re suggesting, not for the first time, that you’re a figment of my imagination, a hallucination even.’

‘Well, shiver my Peruvian timbers all the way down to the tip of Tierra del Fuego,’ he said, feigning great surprise. ‘Am I really? That’s a lot of mountains you just covered.’

‘You know what?’ I offered, suddenly feeling emboldened. ‘Sometimes you don’t make sense.’

‘You may say that,’ he replied ruefully. ‘I wouldn’t care to comment.’

And then he cocked his head to one side and looked, apparently with some degree of purpose, into my eyes. I began to feel that I was once again sliding down that long, dark tunnel, the one down which I slithered after encountering the woman with amazingly dark eyes in Tesco. I shook myself and came back to the here and now, only to see him still staring at me but with an unmistakable look of smugness and mischief in his eyes.

‘On that note, I think I should leave,’ he said. ‘But before I go, there’s something I’m curious about.’

‘What’s that?’

‘That story you wrote, about the ghost called Mr Jonathon.’

‘You’ve read it?’

‘Of course. Would you rather I hadn’t?’

‘No. I just didn’t realise you paid me that much attention.’

‘You don’t realise very much most of the time, do you? I’ve noticed that about humans. Actually, I was going to ask you the question at the time, but that dark stuff hanging around you didn’t smell at all pleasant, so I changed my mind.’

‘I was depressed.’

‘I know. I sympathised.’

‘Did you?’

‘No, I decided to be facetious for a change. But anyway, the question I have is this: At the end of the story, the little girl – I don’t remember her name – says to her mother that Mr Jonathon instructs them to get a dog. Why?’

‘I don’t know really. It just came to me. I suppose I felt that it introduced a note of uncertainty – you know, left a question mark in the mind of the reader.’

‘I see, so one small part of your brain does work after all. That’s encouraging. I'll probably visit you again one fine day, or un-fine day, or whatever... Who can tell? Goodbye.’

And then he disappeared. What is one to make of it all?