An Old Soul, you said. What does that mean? My Soul's not old, it's gently used, like that song that was a hit a couple years ago, you heard it on the radio and you can't remember the title but you can hum the tune. That's me, a hummable tune with no title cruising the electric air for a million miles right to your ears.
An Old Soul, you said, like it was a compliment that my Soul has yet to succumb to the withering humbleness of that great equalizer, The End.
How do you know? You don't know my Soul. Souls have shapes, and shapes don't get old. Mine's shaped like a ******, kind of like an open flower, like that last hour before bedtime when you sneak that sliced orange even though your dad told you NO, but your mama gently scolds, "just one more" as she (soft as the comforter she tucks in around you all
singing that song that drips like molasses in the gathering dew), and she winks at Dad, who's pretending to be mad like the rain that's pouring and flooding the gutter.
It's a kid who stutters who has mastered Bach and has moved straight onto Brahms, while across town it's beer and people singing along.
No one these days to wants to sing to Brahms, but that's okay; she loses herself alone in its sparkling and prefers it that way.
My Soul (well not just mine, it's in heart of the hum, the mirror firmly reflecting our collective soap ****), is a kind of Boo Radley in his broke down joint and his sad soap dolls in the tree, in the knoll. Shut in an old house uncertain of who he was or where he belonged or what he might even one day become, he built a world for those kids the only way he knew how.
Drowning in a lonesome sea, where the only moments of freedom behind the pecan tree were a broken stopwatch full of frozen moments and some hand whittled soap and some gum. Boo Radley, no he was the shut-in son. Better than that inside-out drainage ditch who still walks the streets with the air of a rabid ***** who was shot at and missed by The One and Only One-Shot Finch. In the dusty 30s, in that vast, hot expanse, Poor Old Tom never even had a chance.
Now Scout, that kid is my kind of gal, all smart within and smart without. THOSE are the ones with the curious minds who stay young forever and laugh at time, who find gum in a tree and call it sublime, who worry about freedom and all it implies. Yeah, man. Jean Louise. And she'll never get old.
So don't you dare talk about what you don't know.
I've spent my short life knowing that god isn't the goal.
It's the dead dog in the street, and the man walking free, and a dying old lady who can't help but be mean. It's the girl with her ears and the kid with his orange and his mom singing softly as she closes the door.
It's the song that you heard, you don't know the words, but you sing in the car to the telephone poles.
There are so many roads to the idea of "whole." I have so far to travel, such long way to go, there isn't any certain number for the rest of my days. My Soul is eternity.
I'm still making my way.
If I had an old soul, this world would be more like a fishing hole: lazy and long and peaceful and calm with a beer and a friend and miles of comfortable silence to spend.
