Recycling of Souls

Recycling of Souls

It must have been the cool caress of the silk against the back of my head that brought me to my senses.  Soft and unfamiliar, I know this is not where I belong and the wheels in my mind lurch into motion, searching for a memory in which to anchor my confused soul.

I have a strange sense of self, yet not really aware of who I am; very much like the moment just as you begin to wake from a hard sleep, aware but not oriented.  I feel as though my eyes are open but I can only see what is in my mind – fleeting thoughts and images darting in and out like sparklers on the Fourth of July.  My limbs have movement but with no weight resisting and pulling them back.  I twirl in a comforting darkness, a womb of peace and security.  Am I dreaming - lost in an ethereal place where the soul continues but the body stays behind?  Or is it that I am yet to be, patiently waiting for the moment I will be brought back into the world.

I enjoy the peaceful calm lapping against me like waves, soothing and distracting.
The jerk of awareness suddenly pulls me under and my mind fights to right itself in the blackness. The urge to move forward forces my eyes to open against this smothering dream.  Vague shadows, light and dark, muffled sounds.  My mind wrestles against the gauzy swath around my thoughts and I do my best to focus on my senses, become aware of myself, find the reality lying just ahead.  The urge to return to the soothing darkness is overwhelming, and I allow myself to drift away in the wonderful coolness around me.

Just as I begin to lose myself in the nothingness, the cobwebs are violently swept away by an invisible hand and awareness gells around me.  The unfamiliar feel of silk is disturbing and the bed in which I see myself is strange as well.  Scrutinizing the edges of my vision and focusing hard on the surroundings that exist in the haze, I slowly bring the bigger picture into being.  The whispers of others are in the room and the sickly sweet smell of roses and lilies and carnations, a hint of . . .plastic, fill the air.  I feel as though all five of my senses are going in opposite directions, like moons bouncing off an invisible void in space.  I can hear but not see, see but not smell, feel but not taste.  My mind rages against the disarray and I do my best to gather the pieces of my wandering self into the united front needed to break through this dreamy barrier and with all the might I can muster, I focus on the scene before me.

The walls are darkly paneled, and the floor is covered with a thin layer of cheap carpet.  Padded folding chairs line the walls; some occupied, others not.  Arranged flowers and potted plants with big nylon bows clutter the corners and the glow of a brighter light flows in through the open door, casting a lonely pale shadow off each leaf and bloom.  Shoes filled with stocking feet shuffle quietly across the floor, cuffed pants hover over shiny black leather in clusters around the room.  Canned lights bring into focus areas around the room and my vision follows the fiery specks of dust as it leads to my resting body on the unfamiliar bed.

My senses suffer the shock you feel when you take a drink of water and it’s actually 7-Up, the sensory input doesn’t fit what your mind expects.  I had experienced this vividly one other time in my life, when I opened the refrigerator and found one of my children hiding inside.  They had been playing hide-and-seek and evidently, to a two-year-old, this was a great place to hide, but when the door closed it sealed shut and she couldn’t get it open. I just happened to open the door an hour later, and there she sat, holding a can of biscuits in her little hands, shivering and cold.  And just like then, my mind scrambles to make sense of the information, trying to fit pieces of a puzzle together that come from different boxes. Once assembled, you get a picture not intended by the maker, but the truth nonetheless.  I suddenly realize that my unfamiliar silk bed is not a bed at all, but a shiny wooden box lined with baby blue silk.  A coffin.  The pieces begin to assemble into an outrageous picture; I gaze upon my body, laid out in the center of a viewing room, deep inside a funeral parlor, surrounded by a smattering of proverbial and unfamiliar faces.

My mind wraps itself around the reality – I cannot fathom what I am seeing.  The sorry son-of-a-bitches are giving me a funeral.  A dress up, flower buying, hymn playing ceremony that I have clearly railed against for most of my adult life.  Ceremonies and customs are pointless in my opinion, just gates and fences powerfully concocted over the centuries for the sheep of humanity to follow blindly, unquestioning and unthinking.

Rituals are surely devised to keep the masses from questioning the hype, keep them distracted and buried in millennium of brain-washing ritual so as not to discover the validation of their innermost fears and suspicions. And now, in our currency driven society, the real meaning behind the ceremonies and customs are lost, but kept alive by marketers and media and profiteers to make the eternal buck.  I have long felt that spending thousands of dollars for a sealed, silk lined box to stick in the ground to contain my rotting corpse is just as absurd as spending thousands of dollars for flowers and dresses and food just to validate the bond of marriage, which in itself is another unneeded tradition on a long and ridiculous list. 

I thought I had been clear to everyone that mattered about my feelings.  I absolutely did not want to be dressed up, put in an expensive box in front of people I hadn’t seen in years, and buried in the ground for eternity.  A donation to science makes more sense, let them use my remains to teach what not to do.  And if the scientific community doesn’t want me, if there are no more lessons to be wrought from my humanly form, then burn me to ashes and set me on the coffee table. I would get a kick out of being passed from generation to generation, my great-great-great grandchildren talking in nervous whispers about the strange old lady in the jar.  Yet now, against all my wishes and desires, here I am, laying serenely in an expensive bed of silk, made up in a dress only the matrons of matrons would covet, surrounded by whispering, dreary faces trying to drown out the gospel hymns churning out above. 

Obviously, my family must have lost their minds in their grief, allowing society’s customs to guide the way through this difficult time.  After all, was I not the rock for all of them?  The wife that handled the household and kept life running somewhat smoothly, the understanding and unjudging daughter, the supportive problem-solving sister, the mom that opened the doors to opportunity and taught those all important life lessons.  They all knew I desired anything but a time-honored traditional burial, yet the pressure from outsider’s expectations was probably overwhelming; after all, in the tradition soaked Bible-belt South, pressure to do the good Christian thing is strong.  It’s how its always been done; you buck the system and eternal hell will  follow suit. Still, I am left staggered by the realization that I am being given an old fashioned funeral, the final betrayal in a long line of betrayals.

My overwhelming urge is to enter my body, make it rise up and scare the pants off everyone here.  The vision this conjures is appealing and a little comforting: overturned chairs and spilled flowers, old ladies clutching their hearts and their purses, my disbelieving family looking knowingly at one another.  Chaos in the face of stagnant stuffy tradition!  I had threatened repeatedly that I would come back and haunt them if they disregarded my wishes, and I make a mental note to work on that endeavor at a more convenient time.

My attention is drawn to the whispering people gathered around, politely speaking in hushed tones and nosily looking at my carcass in the coffin.  Standard issue comments like what a good job they did with the makeup and such a lovely outfit drift about, she looks so natural . . .precisely the reason I didn’t want a funeral.  The falsehoods that flood a time like this are unbearable to me, people that haven’t bothered to call in years surface to claim ownership of the deceased.  Where had they been when a shoulder to cry on was absent, advice was lacking, a partner in crime was needed.  These people don’t really know me and I adamantly do not want them there when I am powerless to ask them to leave, or ask where they have been.  I don’t recognize many of the faces peering down at me, occasionally a familiar glance of a co-worker or distant friend pass by.  My thoughts turn to my absent family, and I question if they are dealing with this situation as am I; confused, angry, wondering. Memories of my children stir a longing from deep within my soul, and in a calculated move to avoid the pain, I return to wandering over the mumbling crowd, distracting myself in their faces, knowing some and wishing to forget others.

I soon find myself hovering above a somewhat heavyset woman, blonde wavy hair and pretty blue eyes.  She is speaking in a possessing tone as someone whot feels entitled to speak for me.  I have not seen her in years, but my hearing erases any doubt as I move closer, that familiar twangy voice could only belong to my best friend from high school, maid of honor at my wedding, and the first to betray my trust and heart.  I gently glide around her; curious as to what she has to say and to whom she is so emphatically saying it. I turn my attention to her captive audience and my vision takes in the slight man. His unkempt appearance startles me - I am unprepared for his presence.  I really shouldn’t be surprised though, my first husband is always one for funerals and such, anything to bring attention upon him if even for a fleeting moment.  He looks gaunt and disheveled, bloodshot eyes peering out from a smoker’s complexion.  I wonder how anyone found him to give the news of my departure, we had not heard from him in years.  The last we knew he was a fry cook in some obscure little café, eking out enough of a living to bolster his supply of cigarettes and booze.  It is saddening to see such a wasted man, there had been promise of a bright future there so many years before.  The memories of our life together began tumbling toward me, and with a quick side step of repression I move on, wanting distance once again from his company.

I slowly make my way around the room, gently and silently easing in and out of conversations, a group here and couple there.  Not surprisingly, most of the talk isn’t even about me.  Gossip from the hometown, catching up on kids and career accomplishments.  Uninterested by the idle chatter, I settle in the dusty corners where the beauty and smell of the flower arrangements catch my attention. I become enthralled with the delicate brush of the flower petals as I move close by, the easy sway of the shadows in the wake of my passing.

The sudden hush of the clattering voices brings me back to the present, and I turn to see what could have possibly made the self-absorbed prattle around me grow quiet.  Everyone is staring, wide eyed and gape mouthed directly at my coffin, seemingly terrified into immobility.  I quickly move through the crowd and glide swiftly above my corpse, and the sight I behold is such an unearthly delight that my laughter surely makes the neighborhood dogs howl with my glee – my mouth has fallen open, much to the dismay of my audience. This in itself is gold, but in the grand finishing fashion of the always over dramatic, the icing on the cake is my missing pearly white veneers (which I had suffered for in a fit of vanity during a somewhat expensive mid life crisis).  The vanity veneers were evidently removed by the coroner and my lax mouth has revealed the pointy filed off nubs of teeth exposed underneath! My eternal need for a good laugh is obviously still present even in my shell of a body;  I can’t decide what is more amusing, my artistically crafted, silk wrapped vampirish corpse, or the stunned busy bodies staring at it.

Eventually, one of the horrified admirers comes to, stiffly walking backwards out of the room for help, obviously showing some discomfort at the idea of turning her back on me.  No sooner had she vanished around the corner when a stifled giggle rose from one of the darkened corners, reverberating against the paneled walls like a bullet, wobbling back and forth until it ascends into a hysterical grief ridden laugh.  Behind the unexpected sound a dark haired beauty steps forward, parting the dismayed crowd and laughing uncontrollably all the way to my side.  She laughs and cried simultaneously, her long silky hair masking her face.

After a considerable pause, she quietly shakes her head and gingerly reaches in to correct my faux pas as tears of sorrow and unbridled glee stream down her face. After all, she is peering into the unseeing face of her sister.  As irony would have it, she was the driving force behind my getting those uncomfortable pieces of porcelain fitted over my teeth, always the bar to reach for when it came to grace and beauty.  I have long admired my younger sister’s ability to do her own thing, be exotic and beautiful, even if it only seemed to be present on the outside at times.  She is strong if not truly happy, always fighting for whatever cause she was fervent about at the time.  I reveled in the knowledge that we have shared this one last joke together, laughing uncontrollably like we had as kids, peering upside down at each other, silly and free.

The wary crowd slowly returns to their chatter, although this time the talk doesn’t return to kid’s soccer awards or recent divorces, but uneasy jokes about my odd love of bad boys with eye liner and heavy metal music fill the air – and the loving sister that always seems to be there to rescue me from certain self-destruction.

I want to hover close to my sister for a while, taking in the small lines of individuality that mark her skin, noticing the different hues of light bouncing off her long hair.  Something seems different from the last time I saw her but exactly what eludes me.  A new look of inner contentment perhaps, a maturing of the features.  My unencumbered mind senses that we are not alone, there seems to be a stirring of life emanating from within her soul.  I find myself becoming engulfed in this new presence, and  slowly become aware that I am slipping back into the dark ocean of nothingness.  The clattering of voices gradually fades away and the roses and lilies quietly bring their shadows around, disappearing into the fading last glimpse of life. The peaceful calm wraps itself around me once again and my thoughts turn inward and began to fragment.

I cease to be, suspended in the cool nothingness, unaware of myself as a person now but saturated with the knowledge of the soul.  I am unaware of time as it passes, if it even does.  My essence silently works repairing the broken pieces left by my life, a soothing sculpting hand mending, kneading, smoothing; working the clay back to its original neutrality. 

A soul must need this time to heal and grow, floating weightlessly and unconsciously in an unearthly state absorbing the lessons the last life had learned. As in life, time heals most wounds and in this rejuvenating in-between place, the wounds inflicted by the encounters on earth are melted away and the knowledge left behind fuses with the knowledge built up from eons of the past.  I have lost my specific memories of the live’s past, just the wisdom gained from living remains.  I am not even aware of the knowledge specifically, but sense it instead, down in the innermost reaches of my soul.  My being has grown and is reveling in the unasking, unaware state of rejuvenation, free from the consequence and responsibility that comes with the physical trappings of the body.  There is no yearning to return or move forward, just the satisfaction of being, a timeless wealth of knowledge and experience in a suspended form.

I don’t know if there is a mandate set forth at the beginning of what is, a path drawn out for each of our souls by a higher guiding force.  I feel more inclined to believe that our souls move on, from life experience to life experience, growing with some, losing ground with others – but always working toward the distant goal of eternal perfection, the perfection needed to rejoin with our Maker.  Perhaps when the soul has been repaired by the sculpture’s hands and is in it’s purest form of smooth neutrality, it is summoned back to a mortal life ready for new understandings and scars.  Is it possible that some become so scarred that they lose their eternal way, bouncing from life to life unrepaired, responsible for the evil that lurks around the edges of humanity? 

Maybe that same recycling of souls occurs within all aspects of nature, resulting in “evolutionary” changes from the lessons learned in countless life cycles past?  Could it be that crickets and oak trees and giraffes bring the wisdom of past lives into the future and implement the necessary tweaks needed for survival?  It only makes sense for our ghostly beings to perpetuate the existence of life; after all, if living creatures cease to exist, where will all the unfinished souls go for the nourishment they need for their essential growth?  From this perspective, every element that makes up the universe, the human world and the inhuman world, can be seen as layer upon layer of knowledge gleaned from being.

My form is once again perfect and unmarked by lashing tongues and spiteful human limitations.  The urge to move forward surfaces again, and an uneasy awareness of self begins to rise up.  I have no thoughts per say, yet I am still filled with the wisdom gained throughout my ages.  A physical presence is becoming apparent but has no familiarity and is awkward and cumbersome even in the suspended milieu around me. The urge to move forward is forcing my consciousness to open up and prepare for the inevitable deluge of sensory information about to come.  Vague shadows, light and dark, muffled sounds.

My mind wrestles against the gauzy swath around my unmarked mind and I do my best to focus on my senses, become aware of myself, find the reality lying just ahead.  The urge to return to the soothing darkness is overwhelming, but by shear instinct I know not to allow myself to drift away in the wonderful warm darkness around me.

Pain is the first feeling to inhabit my new body - not the searing pain of life and physical harm, but a pain that is in a way enjoyable, like the pain radiated by newly stretching muscles and tendons and bones.  My senses are jarred into life, hearing and seeing, tasting and smelling, all jumbled up in an overwhelming saturation of my slated mind.  My being screams out, reaching for some unknown stability on which to anchor, grappling to make sense of this sensory overload.  I am thrust headlong into the brighter light ahead and my inexperienced body instinctually wants to draw in a breath, but the crushing presence around me does not provide the space.  The core of my being desperately fights for a soothing order and just as I began to drift into a comfortably numb unconsciousness, I slip from the security of the ethereal womb and into my new life of trials, tribulations, and lessons soon to come.

My new eyes blink and focus aimlessly in the glaring lights, my ears open up to unmuffled sounds for the first time.  My unstretched lungs burn deliciously with the first, searing virgin breath of life.  My wild limbs flail about, unaccustomed to the lack of resistance in the thin air.  The ultra clean air pumped in from above mixes with the earthy smell of blood and sweat, giving my olfactory senses their first imprint, a first aroma to return to many times in life.  My being knows to reach out and find a connection with another like me, and a soul-searching howl leaves my gaping mouth.  Flashes of latexed hands and looming faces float by and I feel my tiny body rise up in the glaring air.  Chaos affronts my senses and the wisdom that had recently permeating my being is nowhere to be found now. I can hear my tiny voice crying out, unable to make intelligent sounds; I feel my minuscule limbs kick violently about in an attempt to grab onto some source of security.

A comforting presence suddenly wraps around me, calming my rioting senses into a subtle, searching motion.  Like a beacon reaching through a suffocating fog, I am being drawn into a wonderfully comforting place.  The smell is gentle and sweet, the touch warm and soft, the rhythmic movement of life-giving lungs calming underneath my swaddled body.  The sounds of a thumping heart is familiar in my ear.  The breath showering down on me is easy to suck into my mouth, a familiar taste on an unfamiliar tongue.  Never again in this life will I be so close to my ethereal place and I want to drift easily in it, desiring with every inch of my being to stay here forever.

For the first time, the jerk of awareness pulls me back and my new little body shivers into being.  My eyes open and the soul behind them settles in for the journey ahead.  My gaze reaches out and searches for my counterpart, the necessary other that beckoned me back from the easy nothingness.  I lock onto the beautiful eyes gazing down on my face, and in an instant recognize the familiar soul behind them.  My sister in the previous life; mother, daughter, grandmother, brother, son, father in others, this is the closest piece of the shattered souls from the beginning of time, the nearest fit into my jagged edges.  With a magnetic attraction, the souls broken from the same pieces continue to hover around one another, mixing and matching throughout the ages.  Could it be that what humans call love is actually the bond, the invisible glue that keeps them traveling together throughout the eons of time?  Soul mates for the ages.

My physical abilities have not developed, but my soul still carries the knowledge of time, safely wrapped and tucked away, lessons learned over a millennium of lives.  My humanesque physical limitations will eventually cause me to lose conscious knowledge of most of the wisdom compiled through lives of happiness, sorrow, joy, and hate. Nevertheless, my psyche will still be aware of it and will be the guiding force for my new earthly body, sending me in new directions, searching for the experiences still lacking in the eternal quest for perfection.  The endless search for lessons to be learned, the essential recycling of souls.