SOUL SOUP
A big bowl of it
Back to feeling the reality of it all — aspiring to be so much more but really just trying to keep myself from doing anything — so the universe hands me down things in the due course of time. I am strangely faithful. I guess that is why I might need faith in my life. I wonder, why am I like this? And I think I know the answer to that — I was born many times before, and I will be born again. Unlike those who have been completely of their age or who came of age, like Buddha, I am somewhere in the middle. My soul still wants to explore everything, and perhaps that is alright. I like how life feels.
Although seeing myself like an eagle from above does help me keep my distance, I mean, as far as I know, I can remain distant — I can still delve into life, like a spear that punctures life, like a mango, so we may draw the juice out.
I wonder if that was the metaphor of it all — my life — in the summers, puncturing mangoes to get the juice and getting all drowsy and sticky so that I can contemplate the soul, which I assume must be sticky like all bodily things. What an icky, sticky way of thinking about the soul, I know, but it must be it. I mean, can anyone profess otherwise? I mean, what is the process of figuring out what the soul is, if not through the body? It must be heavy; it must sit somewhere. If it’s within, it must really be sticking to something, like an ectoplasm. It must also be connected to the universe. It must really be stretching out over the end of the universe and then reverting back, like the idea of infinity.
I know what you are thinking — what is he talking about? Well, whenever there is rain or the sound of rain, I can certainly feel the soul brushing against my skin. It’s like an echo, like a ripple, like goosebumps. And I guess the real issue is understanding what the whole of it looks like. Just as the blind man, touching different limbs of the elephant, feels a leg and imagines, “Well, this must be it.”
Maybe it’s multidimensional in all senses of the word. Perhaps one of its dimensions that we can sense brushing against us is the one that is sticky and ectoplasmic, and perhaps the other part is cosmic. I imagine it must be how outer space tastes — a bit metallic, a bit smoky. Perhaps that is the other side of it.
I guess I don’t believe in the otherworldly nature of it all, simply because my chakras are always aflame with sensations — through my five senses, a heaviness on my head, a chasm in my stomach, an urge in my groin. It must all be a real, mixed-up version of reality and the obscure colliding with the body. And through the realization of the body, or simply being aware of it, how it reacts to things, I guess I can sort of assume things are not as detached as they feel.
I also feel like I am talking like Steppenwolf — his constant brush with the intensity of reality and the stars pulling his hair. Between these two extremes, they must be existing somewhere, somehow, and taking a gulp of air, like swallowing the whole earth.
I guess this is the desire I must push down — to try to grasp at the universe as I would want it to react, as if the universe has no other purpose than to be my microscope. I guess when I want the universe to act, it has been me acting just as hard, if not harder, and that is why I must drop this act and hope for the best — to be completely surrounded by the world.
