Self, Soul, and Spirit

1. Self is the ego and ego is the devil

Nice to meet you, my name is (my name). I have brown hair and brown eyes, I am from Brooklyn, my birthday is in February. I listen to rock music. I read books. I always have chipped nail polish and I like it that way. My lashes are curled and I am hungry.

I speak with excitement and when I’m extra excited I’m loud. Like when I say, We’re so disconnected from our bodies, especially women since the nine to five workday was adapted for the male’s hormone cycle rather than the woman’s, and so many of our problems can be traced back to bodily chemical imbalances and so I’ve become a bit obsessed with eating in accordance to my hormone cycle and so I’ve got olives and artichokes for the follicular phase and I eat salmon when I’m ovulating and I have brown rice for the luteal phase and wild rice for mensturation because there’s a difference with how they interact with your body and at what time, like, green olives are high in polyphenols says my research, I say. Okay. you say.

Looking for this week’s grocery list in the notes app, I find a relic dating from the May of my seventeenth year. I left instructions for myself, meticulous notes kept immortal as I studied a fad diet.

Day three, breakfast: 5 saltine crackers, 1 slice of cheddar cheese, 1 small apple.

I’m tickled, I grin, it’s astonishing, I say, and I shake my head and commiserate. How insidious is it that they make we young girls so hell bent on making ourselves smaller to make ourselves better, you know they make us force us to be underfed to keep us docile to keep us oppressed because an uprising won’t happen if we’re so damn hungry all the time, doesn’t that make so much sense? I search your eyes for agreement.

It is the December of my twenty-third year.

Everything in moderation, including moderation. In fact it’s all about discipline. It’s a muscle you have to exercise; you just have to exercise. You have to refrain. Temperance is a virtue. Cut out carbs, dairy, and sugar. Meals ought to be high protein, low carb. Eat a frozen date for dessert. You’re doing it for you, you know, for your health, for your attempt to embody the perfect me that I can be, because the best way to improve your self esteem is to improve your self, and don’t you know YOU HAVE THE POWER, GIRL! to change it, and, and when you look good you feel good so you’ll be even better, and doesn’t that make so much sense. It’s easy, you know. Just walk 10,000 steps a day. And if you fail you face logical consequences. It’s that easy.

On my walks I go through my to-do list. I should cultivate a curly hair regimen for myself, instead of letting it just do whatever it wants, and I need to get around to that rounded shoulder correction routine, it seems about time I’ve worked on my posture, and I need to document my

skin to see it’s progression, and you’ve gotta figure out how to get rid of that double chin and maybe you can wake up early so you can run, and I heard castor oil in your belly button makes you skinny. You can always be a better girl, girl. Starving yourself feeds your ego. It’s all relative anyways.

2. Self is the psyche and psyche is the cerebrum

I’m thinking, and I think, how did I come to arrive at these thoughts. I’m wondering, and I’m guilting, and I ask, is that normal? I repeat to myself. I am normal, I am normal, I am normal.

You’ve gotta snap out of it.

Yes, you’ve gotta recognize. The first step is admitting it to yourself. Something’s wrong, something’s wrong. Something has to be wrong.

Do you think they know I’m not normal? Do you think they can tell that I am wrong? Can they see? Just tell me, is everyone looking at me?

You’ve gotta figure it out. You’ve gotta introspect. You’ve gotta place the blame I mean you’ve gotta find the cause. There has to be a reason.

Nature? Nurture? Patriarchy? Mom’s trauma and her mom’s trauma and her mom’s trauma? Mary? Kate?

You’ve gotta think. Do some thinking. You’ve gotta journal and you’ve gotta speak out loud to yourself. You’ve gotta be careful because remember your tongue is magic and thoughts become words become feelings become facts. Think about something else. Think with intention. Don’t think about that. Relax. Do something. The devil makes work for idle hands. Listen to your affirmations. Repeat your affirmations in the mirror. Don’t get scared of yourself in the mirror.

Cut off everything. Isolate from everyone. Turn off your phone. Cover your reflection. Wear turtlenecks and long skirts and don’t wear makeup except make sure you wear sunscreen so you don't age prematurely. Do not dare engage with any man or woman who may show you interest. Drink only water and coffee black. Vodka sodas don’t count if you walk the way home.

Buy a skateboard because you always date skaters, and decide with pride and self gratification in your endless gumption to just become the skater yourself. Have it lead you to yet another pro-skater non-boyfriend.

Find yourself dumbfounded and pause.

3. Self is what you make it, and so you’ve made yourself

You’ve gotta realize. Introspection is important until it becomes obsession. Insecurity is just narcissism for narcissists who aren’t ballsy enough to consider themselves so.

How does it feel to be present? How much work do I put into making myself presentable?

Write about it. Find something real. Descend into madness with the realization that everything is fake.

Inhale, exhale, look around the room and be present.

So here. I type on a computer while I sit on my sofa. And I describe ideas in shapes that become sounds that form the idea itself and then relinquish understanding to the reader.

I search for meaning in my rock music and my reading books. I have cool clothes and I write good stories and I am thin and none of it means anything, really. Not anything real, at least.

You’ve gotta realize. Everyone is looking at themselves.

4. Soul is unphysical and reality isn’t real.

So I turn to look inward and what do I find? A self that is not myself. Rather. A self with my self stripped away. A self that doesn’t belong to Brooklyn and can’t wear nail polish. A self that is not limited by a body. What do I find but a soul.

Nice to meet you, I don’t have a name. Nor a face nor a preference nor a tendency to get strep throat, but in fact I have a feeling.

I have a feeling that this is who I’m meant to be, even if it’s hard to find her sometimes. It’s hard to find it.

Do you know me? No, the real me. As if we could pretend that anything is real at all. As if anything meant anything other than what we believed it to be.

5. Soul is feeling and feeling is felt

Truth exists whether there is someone to believe in it or not. Perception exists only as long as there is someone to perceive.

How much can one become overwhelmed with their power to create themselves, tied up in the physical, i.e. the falsus.

We talk about the grand scheme of things and yet never define the scheme nor the things. These things that are fleeting, or otherwise subject to change, and otherwise untethered to whichever reality a person creates for themselves by accident. For which I’m still creating myself.

What can I say I think is true, not based in feeling nor made from men, but what is real, natural order?

What is feeling if not understanding. If living, breathing. What could I say is true, but love? But hate? But the two disguised as one another; but feeling who feigns as fact. But an understanding who relates itself to visceral interpretation.

I can’t grasp love with two hands and I can’t hold my soul. But say I loved something and I hated another. Then I would feel it, whether I wanted to or not.

6. Soul is mutable, inextinguishable

I spend time conforming as best as I can to the inauthenticity of self, the least offensive version of me to please the powers that be.

Is my body even real? Does my vigilance affect more than the container of my being? Does it affect the purity of my soul?

If anything created by man could not be considered real, if what I do to my body, my self, is only taken in effect with things created by man in falsehood, then nothing signifies anything about who I am, really.

Presentation and presence are almost antithetical. If I’m constantly wrapped up in presentation then I’d have no time to be present, of course. Or to feel my self. Or to feel like my self.

I describe ideas in sounds that become shapes which form the idea itself and it could be a manzana to you and an apple to me and we’d never know we were thinking differently. I could use the most boring blandest words and yet still I’ll be interpreting the picture as how my head wishes to see it and still you might see it differently. What’s to say anything means anything about me.

Lives past, future, and present could preserve my soul and yet in relation to my self it changes. I could revel in a part of me, in a piece unphysical, and then I could not recognize it at all. Who am I, with none of the identifiers that I’m worth? Who am I, with no identity at all? Who is left behind, if what makes sense to me is gone?

Who appears in lives past and future might be closer or further from truth, depending. Intimacy distills but does it also expand? Can it change, by experience, or by physical fakeness? Does it mean anything to me if it has blonde hair and blue eyes? If its adjectives make sense to me, or comes from alien lands?

They tell you to set your soul on fire, but I prefer the water. Could it be that, at one time, I took to the earth or the air?

What is your soul when no one is watching? When there isn’t anyone to tell you? When there isn’t anyone you can tell it to?

Soul is intangible, unphysical, yet pervasive through every part of being. Soul is purity, without chipped nail polish nor curled eyelashes. My soul is me who was never taught how to read. My soul is me when I was born a world away from Brooklyn.

My soul is my life and yet it exists outside of my breath. It is the untouched and unaltered and unconscious existence of one, being. Simply, nature, and yet now I wonder. Am I soulless?

7. Soul is everything, everywhere

Isn’t it funny now, that being in nature is an event unto itself?

There’s just something about the trees that allow my natural nature to occur, including everything as it naturally occurs, if it is anything.

If there’s anything that means anything, it is soul. Everything and everywhere. In the trees or the rocks. In the heart, in the mind. In the grand scheme of things that flows freely.

My soul feels how it feels to close my eyes and feels how it feels to sit and to stare out the window on a long train ride and feels how it feels to feel.

8. Spirit is essence and essence is truth

Nice to meet you, I have a jester’s spirit and the sound of your laugh makes me lift.

You’re looking at me, right? Good, you’re looking at me. Now let me speak. Now let me joke. Now let my joke land and feel me soar.

Now let me release all things and everything but for one, which is, to be. To be.