Old Soul

Old Soul

Above us, night is a black velvet drape littered with dirty stars, thin wisps of gunmetal clouds stretched along its length. No sliver of moonlight reveals itself; we are alone together in the dark. Swift, ravenous winds communicate the chill of the twilight desert, marked by the scent of death, of suffering. We are in a tormented place and I stare at my feet as we sit on the cold, cracked ground. Desert sand clings to our flesh in a fine earthen mist, a sandpaper grit I brush uselessly from my face every few minutes. Heavy, uncomfortable, the silence between us is an impassable divide that spans three worlds. I have tried to avoid looking at him; there are stories in his eyes.

Questions race within me, chasing after each other to be the first off my lips, yet all thoughts can be traced back to only one. I turn to him, his truth, and bite back tears.

"How?"

For long moments I fear he will disappear into the shadows leaving only the memory of his youth, of the hard curve of his jaw, of the dust of his life that covers his dark skin like bone powder. My dreamwalk companion merely sits, silent as sand, plucking at stray threads of a tattered shirt. I picture him in Brooklyn, in Harlem, in Boston. I try to see him in the fast food mass market on demand wireless instant gratification of my world and I can see only a lone, sleek panther stalking a concrete jungle of old fat hens.

"Have you ever tried to leave?"

"Geography does not alter emotion."

Again something in his eyes begs to be acknowledged while a violent breeze whips the desert sand around us. It is the look of suffering, of tragedy, of anger. He defies death, defies the desert. He stands against the mountains, the drought, and survives. Within his youthful frame his spirit is far too old for him, yet he wears it well. Long slender fingers snake up to his shoulder, scratching the sand fleas that nibble on his arm.

"I do not know cable television, or soda. You do not know the taste of dirt, and how to live with the sun. We do not know we are missing anything."

Discomfort wears me cheaply, as if my goosefleshed skin is an irregular suit on someone else, betraying my vulnerability. "You need a new shirt."

"In this place, we all need something."


Night stretches between us.

Nestled in this desert within the foothills of the Greater Himalayan Mountain range, thoughts are overrun by mythic legends and the distant gunplay from the borderlands. In stories of my youth, adventure novels I devoured in hiding from abuse and humiliation, I can recall tales of Yeti roaming the mountainsides of the Himalayas, feeding on weary and unlucky travelers. Nowhere had I ever found a pride so strong it burned like torches, guiding, beckoning. And yet I find it now, in the eyes of a boy whose homeland, this city-state of Ladakh, is touched by Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, and the Kashmir Valley. I see no Yeti in his eyes.


Stumbling toward conversation is difficult, if not impossible. For all the suffering in my life, it has been nothing compared to the hardships he has faced. He can harvest what little grain grows in this arid milkless soil, tend dozens of flocks of matted, dusty sheep he takes many miles to graze on the mountainside. Were I to remain here, would I survive half as well as he has? Or would I succumb to heat, frustration, the starving earth? I have never led a sheep anywhere.

"They smell, and they have no courage."

Laughter escapes in a quick, short burst, sudden as a rifle shot, and we catch each other's eyes a moment. His seem to shine, to glow, with that fire that sustains him.

There is a temple, he tells me in a hushed devotion, dedicated to the first manifestation of divine energy, a shrine to the Divine Mother. She is power, destruction, transformation; She sees all, knows all, forgives all. As the words of faith and beauty shimmer upon his lips and embrace my ear, the line of his body eases. He leans forward, wrapping his arms around the slender reeds of his legs, his chin resting upon his knees. For a time we are not watching the darkness but are simply embraced by the loving, encouraging arms of a great divinity and in Her arms the distance between us is lessened. I sit beside my brother, and we are united.

"Ekam Sat, Virpath Bahudha Vadanti."

With the stars twinkling against the deep midnight blue of the sky, I sigh relief, rendered still by the duskiness of his voice. Her grace fills his throat, Kali's beauty and love still dance in his eyes. I do not look away from the ridgeline.

"What is that?"

"'There is one truth, only men describe it different ways.' It means to the wise your faith and my faith and Christianity and Judaism, are only facets of truth."

This is a journey, a flight of the curious soul across the great divide of ignorance, that I may in dreams acquire some knowledge of a faith initially foreign to me. Astral, within a deeper consciousness, I am on a plane of thought, yet deep within I can feel the covers pulled up to my shoulders, the warmth of the body beside me. That I can not share with him at this moment the joy leaping in my heart is of no consequence; I am engulfed by the boy’s spirit and fire and veneration. His reverence touches in me my own devotion and resonates inside my heart. The feeling of separation, of severance from the general population of my homeland dissolves in the way my detachment from the boy had, with the embrace of the Divine. We are walking different paths along the same road.

I know that when I wake that fierce creature will be somewhere I am not, yet we will walk beneath the same sky. And the memory of this night, this dawn, will be my own. Beyond us, against the jagged line of the horizon, the dark has already begun to listen and the somber, nearly daring caste of his face softens. i do not see a warrior boy, a goat herder, a harvester, but a youthful child gazing upon the glory of the rising sun. I see the very first man watching the very first sunrise, filled with wonder, hope, inspiration. I see Renoir’s muse, Beethoven's nymph, and Picasso's passion. I see the faithful awed by the hand of the Goddess.

"Just before the sun clears the mountains, reds and purples hit the mists, and it is very much what Heaven looks like, I think."

I take this boys hand and watch as his words unfold before me. Slowly the sun steals upwards behind the mountain range, reflecting the lights of dawn against the thin silvery mist. Instantly the Himalayas are aflame, blazing with deep crimson, vibrant tangerine, and spiritual violets. The breath of life is trapped in my throat; only when my lungs burn do i realize I have been holding my breath.