Summary

In “Early Beginnings or Ars Poetica,” the story is narrated in the first-person present by the main character, an adult woman who lives in the top story of a tall building in Argentina. The narrator tells that in the beginning, “a horse is going up in the lift” (45). The narrator tells us that the horse is brown, but she does not know what his plans are or how he got into the lift. Then she compares the horse to the lion, whom she says climbs the stairs in a “reasonable” (45) manner, rather than taking the lift like the horse. She says that it makes sense that a lion might accidentally walk from Africa to Argentina, since they never have a particular destination in mind and instead simply walk in random directions. She suspects that the lion would silently break the...