My mouth now sometimes thoughtfully considers the tastes it discovers, the tastes it anticipates, the breakfast the lunch the mostly boring suppers; the mouth likes boring things, likes the sameness of the days, the sameness of the hours counting down each day; the mouth is more aware, more greedy, more forgiving, more obnoxious, more me and myself and all things bread & butter, brown sugar, steaming oats, lentils & rice, watery things with tiny bubbles all working toward the good–this is my mouth.
This is my body and it is strong, it is 60 years old. It is a good body. It wakes me in the morning and it tells me when to go to sleep at night. It keeps my eyes open all day and at night it ferries dreams over the impossible distances of space. My body reaches out for my lover and gives itself over to pleasures both gross and minute–the langerous sweaty movements of the afternoon bed, the sudden slender line of light on the pillows; my body is the splendor, is the sweet, the sour, the incomprehensible softness and give. My body lifts me up from the bed, propels me across the floor, sends me to the coffee maker to flip the switch again again again, day after day, this is a good body. I will make it stronger, I will love it harder, I will gentle it like a new goose, snowy white, flying upward toward heaven, and all the yellow there is will settle upon my body as it moves across the days.
Now my brain spends time in the vast space between my eyes. There’s a mountain, there’s a rolling green plain, there’s a pool of warm water; it’s cold, there’s no sound but the wind, no living thing except me. I float in the pool; I am utterly alone. Sometimes I see myself sitting in the center of everything, the universe a net of jewels holding me up–the focal point, the nexus; sometimes I stand in an enormous warehouse of empty office space–dull light dull ceilings dull carpet–and watch my brain watching me watching myself. We hand the spyglass back and forth, a gentle ocean spreads itself over and around us and sometimes the thunderhead of time breaks free of itself and rushes down my body into my feet and out into the great beyond. My brain is at play. I am at play. And we are gathered together to ask the great blessings of the overseer in whom we may sometimes momentarily believe.
It is well with my soul. Having moved completely beyond the need for a soul, beyond the notion of permanence, beyond the assurance, the comfort, of forever, I have somehow ended up with a well soul. I cannot claim it entirely as my own for I did not seek it and do not believe that it is real, nonetheless it is there. It is a trick of light, it is a shadow inside a grey box inside a grey room inside a grey warehouse inside a grey city inside a grey country inside a grey planet inside a grey star system inside a grey universe and my soul is just alright, it is A OK. It may be hubris to say that it is well, but there’s nothing else to do, no other way to be, and though there may come a dark night when my soul decides to turn itself inside out with grief or terror or pain or shame, for today, for this most excellent Sunday at the beginning of my 60th year, my soul is well.
And all the yellow that settles upon the body will also settle upon the brain and soul, it will inhabit the mouth, it will encase the heart inside the sun; all that great yellow will feed the body live coals twice each year, will settle it atop mountains with air so thin it must restructure its breathing. And a host of wild things will attend it. And wherever it turns there will be fresh bread. And also butter. And whenever it opens its mouth a choir will sing unto us a new song, unto us this day in the heavens we are suspended by ropes of jewels, our souls are fat as fresh raspberries, our feet, having been forever restless, forever eager, have calmed down enough, to finally dance.
