conversations with a spirit
I’m sitting here in front of a blank screen being egged on by an insistent voice that I write. I keep telling it that I don’t know what to write. Just do it, it says. “I can’t!” I yell back. I hear Sarah in that voice: pouty, not yet aware of her abilities.
Okay, I’ll write, but this decision is my own! Even though this spirit is insistent.
The old masters weren’t crazy after all; God does speak out of the blue, and a host of other spirits as well. We humans need to distinguish ourselves from all other life forms. It is our trademark, to distinguish, to make distinct, to seperate this from that, and then relate it back again. In doing so we make something out of nothing (or, more presicely, out of everything). We create ourselves in this way too.
Does this spirit have good intentions for me? The greeks knew to ask this question . . . On which side does the majestic Athena rest her glance now? In those days human wit, that comes from knowing the odds yet stepping forward anyway (otherwise known as, ego, courage, and foolishness), was hailed in all the stories. And today? The wit we have honed through the ages has grown like pigs for the chop house, feeding upon our mastery over the world, leaving us bored with the spirits which we bat away like flies while we sleep.
She says I don’t have to eat, as I stir the spaghetti into the pot. I know, I reply, but it is my choice. Not eating leads me down a scary path. What? do I never eat again? What about this body? Sure I know it can survive several weeks, but what about after that? “I can’t just not eat.” She doesn’t have an answer, and I leave her alone.
I have always been able to rationalize myself out of this. Talking with spirits, phu! “Don’t let them get the better of you!” I warn myself.
A bite or two and I put down the pot. She is too insistent. Do you want a change? she asks. Yes, I do. Well, stop eating. So, I put down the pot and cry like a child “But I want to eat!” The mountain lion comes back and gives me strength. I see myself taking resolve, like the child in Spirited Away that I just saw. Then she’s back: you can have tomatoes, she says. I perk up right away: “I can?” And apples too. Anything given as a gift from the land. “What about my spaghetti?” I implore. No answer. Spirits don’t know everything, I decide.
Then I wonder if she’s the adult and I’m the child.