No one ever thinks of souls as biodegradable. I'm not speaking in religious terms, but more quintessentially in "life" terms. The soul that keeps life vibrant and gives voice and breath to our passions. It's the soul that needs water and love every morning right after breakfast. It especially requires care during dry spells of heartbreak.
And it's degradable. It can, atom by atom, submerge into muck and grime and wasteland where its old form is slowly erased by natural, ambient processes. We enter certain doors on a daily basis by sheer habit. We sit at tables and do work in mechanical ways. And we reach other dead ends when our minds wander down those certain corridors. But we go down them anyways because at some point, the end of that corridor used to have a special person living there whose light filtered into every aspect of life. Or where halcyon days of youth played happy and resonate melodies. Souls get lost in nostalgia because it becomes a comfort place. But nothing grows there, I've found.
The biggest grime of all, however, is dust. Dust accrues over time in fragmentary ways. Their size marks their inscrutability. We never see it coming. They collect, mustering their forces, covering surfaces until even the largest grand piano begins to look like bygone days. Procrastination is a dust which whittles down our time in fragmentary patterns, seeping into our days a drop at a time. Taking that trip to see friends can wait. Let's start that blog tomorrow. Before you know it, dust has collected on the surfaces of those days. Your "tomorrows" begin to look like a bygone era. Dusty souls are the saddest ones of all, and are yet the most common.
Breathing life into a soul is not easy. You need some hefty, hearty lungs to do it. Like trick candles, it takes a few tries. And likely a few friends to help you.
You also need to be willing participants who can decide that your future is your own. We can very easily decide that our routines are enough. Life can win one easy decision at a time. Those daily doors are not going anywhere, and there is comfort in stability.
Or we can decide to be present to the intensities and luminosities that surround us daily. We can decide to live by risk. It does not take a wild train trip across the country to do this, though it is a method which works for some of us. Sometimes we can decide that intelligent conversations with dear friends are worth pursuing, even if that means turning our selfish internal monologues off to just listen. Or sometimes we will eat that fig pizza we've been eyeing on the menu for some time now because we should live to eat. It's deciding to wash ourselves clean of incipient procrastination and walking through a new door. Or at least, strutting through that door instead. Strolling, leaping, skipping, singing through that door.
Heavy stuff, right? I guess it's just how I think. Life's too big and great and built in so many weird shapes to miss out on. And nothing makes me sadder than seeing people unhappy with their lives, even if they seem perfectly "fine" by all socially acceptable standards. I always see this as proof that we have to break those socially acceptable rules. They don't contribute to much else except obedience, in itself a problematic notion.
I say we live a little. It's good for the soul.
After this semester, I am taking another grand trip across the country by train. Luminescence is a promise like a siren call, and this semester has shed quite a lot of dust already.
I'm re-launching my blog with all the old posts saved to drafts. I need to wipe certain windows clean and it starts with a new take on an old adventure. I hope you can come along for the ride.
