This Tiny Little World Just Dotted With Souls

And so we pass another soul. A face along the way. We do not know the meaning that will someday come to pass. And how unlikely, how strange that we pass a thousand times and once again, the same face but not know, not recognize, the souls that will make us who we are some someday.

We talked about this today. My friend Sheryl and I. For we grew up not far from one another, but never met. We probably passed one another in the mall. Ate across from one another in a restaurant. Skated on the same Friday night at thirteen or danced on the same Saturday at twenty.  But it took a life time to meet in a new city. A new place. And a far away time.

Is it all planned out? We wonder. Or is it chance? What are the factors, the little pieces of air and soil and road and choice that take us to those who will shape us, who we will shape? I don’t know.

Now I look around me and see that the souls, the friends I cannot live without, the souls that love me true, are assembled in seeming happenstance. The kind eyes, the funny stories, the amazingly talented and brilliant, she who can use the same word in a thousand different ways, she who can capture a heart in a moment, he who can recognize, identify a truth inside a look, inside a song. They are all assembled now from far away places—and selfishly it seems to me–just for me, just perfectly for me.

How impossible to predict where we will be in time. How impossible to see the places we will inhabit and the faces we will know. Where will we find one another? Where will we be? We will change one another. And we will become new and different and grown and free. We will become something new.

Life is strange. And wonderful. And I am surprised over and over again by it. Someone try to tell me where I will be. I will not believe you. Though sometimes I claim clairvoyance, it is indeterminate and intuitive only. The outcomes are impossibly creative. Crazy and incomprehensible. I am so grateful to be alive in such a world where anything, truly anything is possible.

These faces I know and love, these faces I begot, these faces I am learning. They are everything. Everything of beauty and love and life and sacrifice and attachment and understanding. I think now of every soul I pass. Every soul I pass. Who are you? Who are you in the world? Can I know of you today? Or will you be another day? Another time? Or will you be of the thousands I pass by and never know?

This Tiny Little World Just Dotted With Souls

I’ll listen to sad songs if I want to
I’ll hear them and they’ll cluster and bind
I’ll listen to sad songs if I want to
I’ll feel them and they’ll match my mind

For this tiny little world
Just dotted with souls

We’ll walk on strung cords of wire
We’ll walk and be sure of our place
Our web of workings self-sound and safe
But the net below is taken away

For this tiny little world
Just dotted with souls

I’ll go first and stare at the sky and
One by one you’ll all stand beside
The light will illumine
Truly see our size and
Love and joy for one another
Love and joy for one another
Love and joy
Love and joy

For this tiny little world
This tiny little world
This tiny little world
Just dotted with souls