"Cathedral" by S. Auberle"
SOUL TALK
So as my birth day approaches, I am thinking about
Soul. I am a Pisces. Supposedly, we Pisceans are the old souls of
the Zodiac. I could not possibly feel
less like an old soul. Rather a baby
soul, or toddler at best. And the older
I get, the less wise I feel. Not that I
ever did feel wise, but in some youthful time I felt a small understanding, or
so it seemed, about who we are, why we're here, where we're going. No more.
For some time I've been curious as to whether this
mystical part of us ages as we do. Does
it get tattered, rusty, torn and stained?
Does it start out tiny and then grow as we do, put on weight, grow tall,
encompass canyons, as Edward Abbey believed?
I find it a great mystery that as a child, when I supposedly knew
nothing of the soul, I would only fall asleep at night if I lay on my side and
covered the above eye with my hand, because somehow I believed an important
part of me would escape, through my eye, as I slept, and wing its way out into
vast darkness. Where did I get that
idea? And I pictured this part, oddly
enough, as a sort of crest or coat-of-arms.
Now I have two thoughts about the image of my soul--as that of a very
tall and light filled young replica of me, in a long flowing white dress, or a
beautiful white mare. These images come
from two different dreams I once had.
In the first, I saw the tall woman at the end of a hall, walking toward
me, with great love and acceptance in her eyes.
We met in the darkness and began to dance, and I have never felt so
loved. The other dream I remember
vividly as well-- I am standing on the narrow ledge of a mountain, holding the
bridle of a white horse. The odd part of
this dream is that the horse and I seem to be floating through space on this ledge, for out
beyond is only darkness and stars and planets.
Yet I am not afraid in the least.
I don't know what
the soul is for sure, and certainly don't expect to know in this
lifetime. And that's okay. What I am
certain of is that we all have one.
And I suspect that we are not alone, that the crooked old apple tree out
in my yard and the small brown rabbit under it have one too. And the ancient sequoia and
clear winding rivers and muddy ones too and a salty gray and yellow rock I
picked up on the ocean's edge might have one as well. In the end, of course, it doesn't
matter. I may not see my soul, but she
lets me know now and then that she is there…and I am grateful.
there is a small postscript to this entry. In typing the above words, I of course did it all in one font, size, color, etc. I saved it, and went into another room to print a different piece, which I opened on top of this one. When I had finished with the printing, I closed that piece and re-opened this one, only to find that the last paragraph had changed color, font, size, changed to BOLD and was centered--the paragraph which ends with "I may not see my soul, but she lets me know now and then that she is there...and I am grateful." I had NOT touched the keyboard, and it was in a font I never use, and in blue...
