Scribbles

It occurred to me while contemplating these scribbles that most of them are attempts at capturing the moment when two or more souls recognise each other, and thereby recognise themselves, in the street.

Other ones try to reflect the pain of when that moment is lost.

This has nothing to do with corporeal attraction or recognition – with physicality or sex. It's spiritual recognition and bonding – seeing in the spirit of another human being the totality of existence and its fragility. Sharing that moment. It can be overpowering - love bursts forth in great emotional waves.

From this, recognition that each individual soul is a unique fragment of a whole stands like a great monument. Yet, most of the time, we don’t see it.

Instead we see physical bodies – bodies that stimulate carnal desire and bodies that stimulate disgust. Bodies that pass alone in the street or become lost among a crowd. Images of bodies transmitted to TV screens and played with such speed and intensity that they entirely lose their meaning to become lost among the debris of the spectator. Like trash left in the empty field of a festival.

Last Christmas, my daughter and I saw something pass through my mother's house. Just a shadow. A soul walking upon the earth, visible because it lacked the distraction of corporeal familiarity – lacked its hiding-place. I confirmed with her again last week that it wasn’t just my (admittedly fertile) imagination. It wasn’t. We both recognised the shadow. Fleeting as it was. We knew him well.

That story's just an aside. Sharing what we saw clears up a doubt for me. The rest is a coming together of years of grappling – an attempt to understand for myself what I am trying to capture in words.

Among other things, I see writing as an attempt to describe and release the spirit, soul, or whatever word works best for you – the being inside.  Just one medium among many.

For me, the supreme moment is when these beings find each other outside the encumbrance of their physical bodies within the great totality.  That acquaintance in the street, the shared recognition that within our flesh and blood we exist for a precious short time.  Sometimes it’s revealed in nothing more than a smile, sometimes a brief holding of hands. Sometimes just a glance in the crowd.

That moment is what I hope, one day, to capture in these scribbles – but I don’t hold my breath.