Monday, July 9, 2007

Late Afternoon Tea In The Courtyard of Your Soul

Monday. The traffic on the distant road is not as brisk as usual. Somewhere children lounge in bed or sit on carpeted floors, heads resting against an old lab's lazy, overextended ribs while they screech with delight at every hurdle they conquer in their morning videogame. Blackie shifts positions and moans, his grey muzzle crinkles a bit and he falls back to the deep dreams of dog.

Everything, everyone moves on the surface. The echoing of tires on grey asphalt slides through the air and gets lost in the sharpness of a small bird’s announcement. A windchime shifts delicately in the breeze and somewhere across the city an elderly man shuffles to the washroom, wracking coughs filling his small apartment as he walks.

He thinks to his recent loss. A partner he loved for 41 odd years. The place is empty now without her. He knows one day he must begin again. Begin to remake his life. Design a new one and move into it. Move into it carefully as one would when entering a skin that shifts and stretches as it is pulled over the bulges and bones of the being within. He will do this. He will remake his life. Just not today.
Today is for sitting in his old plum coloured, easy chair and pretending to be engrossed in the morning news. His mind is a million thoughts away. If time could be accessed by the trajectory it’s imprint had traced and left in the ‘now’, he would surely take it.
Back to that first ‘hello’, back to that first smile, back to that first light feeling he felt as love settled into the places of himself that no one knew were there, not even himself. His soul draws him from his silent revery as it gives him a song to help him understand. The sharpness of his pain eases as one small tear finds it’s way along an invisible path and tumbles down the slope of his weathered face.

Your soul is a child. It is the first to wander off and trust. The first to fall in love with an idea, a view or a person. The last to forget.  It is the part of you that tags behind and pulls with a steadiness as it cries to you ‘no, wait, wait, I am not ready to say goodbye . Can’t we just stay a bit longer?’

Your soul is innocent. It lives in a different world than you. A different dimension. It will never understand the harsh events of your life nor the negative character traits of the people you come across. This is not a part of your soul’s vocabulary. Your soul is blind. Your soul is only love. It is the dancing child within you. The one who calls to you to look up and see that last mauve cloud move briskly across the clearing sky after a downpour. It is the one that understands what an old dog is saying as his eyes gently and humbly meet yours and something within you softly moves.

Your soul will feed itself. It only asks that you prepare a small corner table in a quiet courtyard where flower petals fall softly to  the stones below and your face can be caressed by the shifting whimsy of a gentle breeze. Then it asks that you take a seat in the remaining old wrought iron chair and listen to what it has to say.