“Am I a slave?” I asked
“Why are you labelled as divinity, and me, everything that is wrong?” I asked.
“Because I am the cosmos” my soul replied.
It angered me, I hoped for more humility.
“If you are the cosmos, why are we here? If you are so perfect, why go to all the trouble of creating this, all this pain I endure for your cleansing, if you are divine, why do you need to learn if you know everything? why do you need cleaning?”
The soul, sitting on the table, sat in silence as the waiter served me a beer. I opened it, thinking of his judgment, then as a rebellion to my mortality, drank with intent.
“Why are you so angry?” my soul asked,
“I am not angry. I guess I am frustrated”
“Why?”
“Because you get all the credit. You get everything. The soul is always so perfect. When I feel pain, when I am broken, people say, you are far from you soul. Well, I am feeling the pain because of my soul. Because it sits there in silence. You, sit there in silence, when I have questions, when I need someone, you just leave me.”
My soul got eye contact from the staff and ordered two beers, one for me and another for him. He sat as an outline of space, on the edge of his presence I could see the same light from the same sun you know, and his body was not a body, it was a void within material, it was the stars, the galaxy, the gentle breeze of horrific silence.
“I am sorry” the soul said, as his shape shrunk, causing compassion to find me.
“Its okay,” I said, “I don’t mean to get angry at you, its just my curiosity, and then desperation, which I can only express as frustration, because I don’t know anything.”
“What do you want to know?” my soul asked.
The beers were put in front of us, I watched his drink fall into space, I felt the drink fall into me, tasting like the day will possess a laugh.
“I want to know why I have to feel all the pain, for lessons you cant seem to learn, and then you get all the praise whilst I get nothing but guilt and sorrow, judgment and constant fear?”
“I do not know, I can only guess.”
“Please.”
“It is because we are scared of the truth. We need to believe. You need to believe that you are inferior, that there is something so pure and light within you that you are going to be okay. That it is going to be okay”
“What is the truth?” I asked,
“It is, that I do not know either.”
“But, you are the soul, you are the immortal soul, above the three dimensions restricted by time and space. You are waves, you are frequency, you are the ever-knowing omnipotent saviour.”
“No. I am not,” said my Soul.
Now, I realised my frustration was shared, that the stories I created were my own saviour, my own illusion to get by, stuck in the thought I was stuck. I could see the soul now, a little more human.
“Am I a slave?” I asked, “If I am just a body, for you to correct karma, if you need to snap my leg because you forgot something minor. If my dog needs to die in my arms of cancer because you hurt someone’s feelings. If every girl I ever loved left me, its because of something small that you forgot.”
My soul begun to cry,
“Am I a slave?” I asked again,
“Was Ralph?” he answered with a question.
Ralph was my dog, who died not long ago. A French bulldog birthed for the adoration of humans, fed and bathed, loved and suffered, a brief caress of earth before slipping back into the ground.
“I guess” I replied, my soul still crying.
I stood from my seat and I held him. I could feel his loneliness.
“Did you create me, just so you could have someone to talk to?” I asked.
I could feel rivers flow through my shoulder as I held the outline of the universe that wept. I could hear the monsoons of India, the sprinkler on your neighbours garden, I could see the light within a rain drop on a peach rose petal, shining and showing me the colours of the rainbow.
“I am sorry,” I said, “I am sorry.”
He looked at me and asked why without words.
“I know you must get lonely. I know the label of divinity must petrify you when you still feel nature. I know it must be hard to create worlds just to chase feeling. But I want to just ask you, why do you keep coming back to all this pain?”
“It is not the pain I come back for,” said my soul.
I felt the rings of Saturn cut through my aggression and the blood of my liver leak compassion onto the small rocks my feet rested on. I cried now. Just normal tears. I cried them and then I had a drink of beer, I could taste the salt in my moustache, the surrender in my shoulders.
I thought to myself, in between a second and eternity, that I create stories to express myself, to not feel alone, and if a character I wrote turned to me and asked why, why would you pluck me from from nowhere, vandalise a beautiful white page and take me through a fake world, that you fill with sorrow and apocalyptic realities?
Do you do it, just to get by, or do you feel me beautiful enough to create that it is worth the energy?
Am I your torture or your solace?
And I would answer my character, the same why my soul answered me, “I don’t know.”
But I am trying to create a good story. A story to make people feel better. To help us not feel alone, and when we are lonely, that it is okay, it is okay.
“I understand” I said to my soul, “I understand that I never will, and I have faith in you, I trust you, and I respect you for telling me that you don’t know, but I know you know more than me. I know that I cant see where my story goes, or where it has been, but I love you, and I am glad you took the energy to create me.” |“We both just want the same thing Riley” Said my soul.
“We both just want the same thing Riley” Said my soul.
And I didn’t have to ask what, everyone already knows.
