I spend a great deal of time trying to fill out my soul, iron it from the inside, eliminate the creases where the demons lie, where old injuries are nursed and the scar tissue calcifies, where the love is balked.
Most of this work is done in solitude, reading and re-reading important books and poems or gazing at the landscapes indoors and out, but sometimes it simply must be done in company. I have to learn to be more compassionate, and sooner in the human exchange, and to love harder and clearer and deeper (though those last two adverbs often contradict each other, rudely and noisily, like kids fighting in the back seat). I hope to learn to catch my errors and omissions in time to repair them, and it's really really hard work.
I know early on when I've missed a crease, or ironed in a new one, and there are days when it would take more courage than I have to go back and fix it, though I know perfectly well that courage is enhanced and glorified by the degree of the risk. I'm never sorry to have been brave enough to amend a wrong, but cranking up the nerve is in itself exhausting, leaving me with, I think, not enough energy to take on the deed after all.
If I could ever convince myself that the possibility isn't laughable, I swear I'd move to a monastery and, I don't know, tend an onion patch and contemplate God. It just seems to be easier than this eternal ironing and starching, buffing and polishing of the all-too-close-at-hand, muddled ME.
Must be time for another nap.
