Little Soul

Recently a random memory entered my consciousness, unbidden and unannounced, trying to assert significance. It was the dismal depths of the 1970s, and I inhabited a furnished room in a big ugly house near the university in Syracuse, one of those neglected dwellings that slumlords rented to students who would endure it for a semester or two and move on. I was not a student at the time, but it was a place to land for a little while. Two guys lived there also, and a woman named Ann, and I had very little interaction with any of them even though we shared a kitchen and common space. I mostly worked at temporary jobs, waited for my so-called boyfriend to call, and hid in my room. The boyfriend was an abusive alcoholic professor a decade older than me. Somehow in the clamor and spectacle he generated, I found a yearned-for distraction, which gives you an idea how depressed I was. Maybe I thought he could rescue me by absorbing me into his magnetic orbit, and I wouldn’t have to figure out anything on my own, for in chemical terms, I was a free radical, reactive and unstable. That of course ended badly, but it hadn’t quite ended yet.

And here is the memory: One day, while lying on my bed in the middle of the afternoon, I heard my flat mates on the other side of the wall talking about me, not knowing I was there. "What does she even DO?" one of them asked. “What does she even DO?” That was the question, asked at least twice, followed by a murmur and laughter. I guess they saw comedy in my pathetic situation, but I could feel their bafflement and disdain, and it upset me on a visceral level, mostly because it mirrored my own shame and self-contempt. I had disappointed everyone who mattered, had no idea what I was going to do with my life, and was staring at an existential emptiness that frightened me. There wasn’t anything funny about it.

That sad, scared girl in the furnished room in Syracuse survived and traveled far, but I could not have imagined then the life that awaited me, the forces that would shape me, and the transformations yet to come. (This is why I always beseech young people not to lose perspective in dark times; I am living proof that one can wobble through into unanticipated outcomes, some of which will be wondrous and magnificent.)

But this memory reminds me why, several lifetimes later, even in my post-retirement years, I try so hard to stay engaged with the world, inventing purpose and acting it out. There are still unsettling moments in the middle of the night when nothing makes sense and the scaffolding I have constructed to give my life meaning seems shaky and unstable. Then comes the affable light of morning, and I am reassured by the line-up of plans on my calendar, like a row of windows with a wink or a beckon at each, and there is sometimes an unpleasant duty scowling, but overall, the busy-ness bolsters. And here at the ranch, there is always work to do, if one is craving work. The work far outlasts our potential to complete it.

A few days ago, however, coinciding with an oddly blank box on the calendar, my friend Kelley invited me to go with her to scout out a new area she had in mind as a walk for the ladies in our hiking group. I said yes, and it turned out to be a feast of a hike, a hike with trails through woods, and easy creek crossings, just enough challenge, and rewarding views. I saw the bluest dragonfly I have ever seen––a tiny indigo helicopter, as thin as a needle. Kelley glimpsed a bobcat. I saw a frog. We talked about things that matter, and we are in full agreement about gratitude and love. There were sandstone rock walls, and wildflowers, and places where small bursts of white butterflies fluttered, and I thought of these lines from William Stafford:

Come down Canyon Creek trail on a summer afternoon
that one place where the valley floor opens out. You will see
the white butterflies. Because of the way shadows
come off those vertical rocks in the west, there are
shafts of sunlight hitting the river and a deep
long purple gorge straight ahead. Put down your pack.

And we did put down our packs. We lingered and listened to the voice of the lively creek, while Kelley unpeeled her hard-boiled egg and I ate a bruised banana, and all the way back, it was exactly as Stafford predicts in the poem:

The white butterflies dance
by the thousands in the still sunshine. Suddenly, anything
could happen to you. Your soul pulls toward the canyon
and then shines back through the white wings to be you
again.

The magic worked, my soul was regained, and I was me again, at home in the church of outdoors.

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I love these poignant, haunting lines ascribed to the Emperor Hadrian (76–138 AD) and translated in 2006 by the poet W.S. Merwin:

Little soul little stray

little drifter

now where will you stay

all pale and all alone

after the way

you used to make fun of things

“I am not certain whose soul the poem addresses,” wrote Merwin, “and as far as I know, no one else can be sure of that either…”

When I first read it, I felt the poet was addressing his own soul––and it spoke to mine as well. Yes, chastened by life, pale and alone, not so quick to make fun of things anymore, and still adrift…I could relate to these feelings. But I hear an affectionate, parental note in it also. Whether doing or being, where will you stay? There’s curiosity and concern. Tenderness, even.

And by soul I now mean self, for my current perspective aligns with what C.S. Lewis said on the subject: “You don’t have a soul. You ARE a soul. You have a body.”

It’s clear that the past will never cease its tugging, and the troubled prior versions of myself still bang on the walls of my mind sometimes, but I had not realized when I hid in my room all those years ago that many doors were open, and I was a worthy soul. I’ve put down my pack and I’m here.