As I Travel, I Am Free
GiaB prompt #17: the soul
I get to travel quite often.
The Body and I spend a lot of time burdened by rationality, practicality, and impossibility. But there are also moments we snatch at where we can seek new horizons, devise new worlds, and escape invisible boundaries.
Sometimes, our journeys only last minutes. Sometimes, they last hours.
Although The Body is the cage in which I’m housed, I know I’m lucky to have this one. It transports me here, and there. Over there too. If it weren’t for The Body, I would never be able to travel into the mountains and breathe in the life around me.
I would never be able to look out to sea and ride on the crests of waves, and move with the undulating blue.
I would never be able to put pen to paper, and let words flow out of me, natural and true. In those moments, I don’t have to water down their potency. I can be scathing. I can be devious. Selfish. Obnoxious. Angry.
I can tell the truth and make you weep.
But there are also times when I don’t need The Body to be free. Or, at least, I don’t need it to be the vehicle by which I take flight out into the open.
Memories. I can make them ring true, or I can make them twist and contort. They can be terrifying. They can also be beautiful. But this kind of conjuring is all me. It is my bidding. I am The Soul.
Nighttime. The Body must rest but not me. In the unconscious, there is no limit to what I can do, what I can be, and who I can meet there.
The people invited to join me play to my tune. Some are kin, some are not, and some are those I’ve never met. Each relationship is a thing of splendour, in its own way. Even betrayal, the kind that doesn’t originate with me, but from somebody who is an echo of real life. They may only be a ghost, but there is aching artistry all the same.
I am in control, and yet there are times when I am not, like when leering shadows materialise to gorge themselves on my fear. Like when there is the overpowering urge to run, to get there, to that nameless place. I am always close, and yet I am thwarted again and again.
Things happen in the unconscious which leave me aghast when The Body wakes, and the bitter scent of guilt hangs thick in the air. But I am not bad. There is no good or bad. There is comfort in my journeys there, though: warmth, illumination, and connection.
Regardless of the conscious and unconscious, every moment of freedom throws open its arms to the colours of creativity — vibrant purples, glittering turquoises, yellows and reds that fizz and pop.
Ideas spark and catch, alight with imagination and gaining powerful momentum as they grow. There is vision, and there is wonder.
Anything can happen on these journeys. But I must always return. We must always return.
They allow me to be reborn. Renewed. Restored. When The Body and I retake our place in the world, in society, it means I am able to cling to a glimmer of my true self.
As I wait to travel again.
