Smell a Soul and other Delights

Delight Essay #3

I was listening to an epic fantasy audiobook the other day and the main character Shallon leaned into a kiss with her husband in a kind of thirsty, questing manner, until suddenly she felt his soul, inside the moment of kissing.

Whatever happened in the book after that, who knows. Like in times of hypothermia when your body shuts off blood flow to outer extremities to protect vital organs, my mind closed my ears and directed everything to my perpetually-trying-to-be-less-grinchy little heart. That felt called out. That felt … thirsty.

I want to smell people’s souls.

This awareness, this thirst to access an innate and life giving connection, but one I’d been missing all along, reminded me of when I realized that the stars in a constellation were no more related to or innately connected to each other than any other star in the galaxy is to any other star. And while I had been trying to learn the constellations, and spend my gazing skyward at night time trying to see what others had seen, I wasn’t just. Fucking. Seeing.

The international Astronomical Union says it best, “all constellations are a matter of perspective.” I have no relationship to Orion’s silly little three star skinny waist belt. What would it be like to interface with the stars and let them reveal whatever story is appropriate to my now, feet on this earth, eyes in this head?

The other day I found myself resting on the floor of a large, unfinished room in my daughter’s house. We were there for a work day to help bring drywall & git ‘er dun energy. Above my head I spied a beam she’d labeled to indicate whatever boxes were resting on the beam that couldn’t be seen from below. A few years ago she made the goal to only wear clothes she’d made her self and her and her partner are Very close to that goal, so her dragon’s hoard of beautiful fabrics glimmered, importantly above me. I Suddenly glimpsed the true nature of this golden thread of her deep care, woven through out her entire life - I smelled her soul.

View from the floor

Later I slip into the warm bed on the chilly RV outside our house that I’ve recently taken to sleeping in. My past self had left the electric sheet on so my bed let me be as snug as a bug in a rug, as they say, and my inner self, that goes crazy for small tender gestures from anyone, especially me, just squealed in delight. In this season of deconditioning and reconnecting with my creative essence, space with more stars, space with more quiet and more listening is very helpful to staying balanced while giant hunks of my false self crash to the threshing floor. My ability to embrace making space for this instead of rejecting these urges towards more quiet more stars, is because I have caught the scent of my own soul and like a bloodhound I have no choice but to follow it where it wends, where it leads me. Like the urge to write this little late night delight “essay”, which in French means “to try.”

And trying is often when best I sniff a soul. When a precious babe is trying, is earnest, is leaning in, with vulnerability and no armor. A baby with tiny legs trying to get to that thing one foot away, or me, with many cracks on my ankle, trying to get up icy stairs and not cry, or my teary lover trying to explain something to me he has never yet given himself permission to gift the wings of language to and so it stutters and flails in the birth canal.

When I was upstairs that day, drywalling and laying on the floor a lot too, my other adult child Frankie was downstairs cooking several different shepard’s pies for the workers, with such care and tenderness regarding mashed potato moisture levels or the juiciness of the beef, fatty and luscious, wearing an entire head of garlic and twice as much rosemary. Walking around the house that day all you could smell was the giantness of the love that kid has for their family, how hard they try. I nearly died a few times from both hunger and from their soul smelling so durn good.

In our fam we often ask each other what our favorite moment of the day was. I thot I’d already had mine until Frank told me theirs, upon receipt I immediately stole and crowned it my favorite moment of the day also. I share it here for your stealing, soul-sniffing pleasure.

While Frankie was cooking many foods for many mouths they were also caring for a recently paralyzed, now recovering puppy and my grandson, Tuck, on the couch. Frankie needed to get back to pots a boilin’ and told Tuckamore that Bonnie couldn’t safely get down on her own and that she felt nervous being alone - “she also just needs to feel seen” Frank told him. After they left the couch Frankie saw Tuck scoot a little closer to Bonnie, then a little closer until finally the four year gently began patting Bonnie’s still trembling little head saying, “I see you. I see you Bonnie. I see you.”