A soul that leaks

It is raining softly in Spain, and the sound of it calls for the warmest of cigarettes, for the songs of Bon Iver, for in every one of them something is falling; be it rain, or snow, or spirits. I looked out at the gloom and the puddles that glowed in the night, and thought about how people have souls that leak. How it is inevitable, in our skin and in our bones, that we are unable to be satisfied for long. How we can all find something that will fill us for a while, but we soon realize that the feeling of it drips away until we need something more. A new rush, a new touch, a new sense of life. Maybe that´s what evolution meant for us, what our society is built on. Because I often get the sense that, to be happy, we need the sense of going forward. Need more knowledge, to feel more, to be more.

A week ago I had one of those days when I just feel sad, those kind of days that everybody gets, when it´s suddenly apparent that all the fresh air and the pretty trees where fine a moment ago, but you´ve just realized you´re lost, lost in the forest and you don´t know how you´re going to get out. And suddenly you´re scared because you realize that it´s not that you want to escape the jungle, it´s just that you want a patch that you like (at least for a little while) and that´s just…so much harder to find. I stopped and looked and all I saw was that my soul had finished leaking, and there just wasn´t enough pouring in anymore. And I guess I learnt a lot from what was left inside me, because all I felt was alone.

And doesn´t that tell you so much of how we work?

But Sara was there, she is always there these days, and it was perfect because when I started crying, harder, harder than I have in a long while (“Because, God, why can´t I stop my soul from leaking so quickly, I´m scared because if this doesn´t make me happy, and that doesn´t make me happy, then what, where, is it me, is it everything else) she didn´t really say anything to fix anything, she didn´t give me a solution, didn´t even really try and point me in the right direction. She just understood. She just hugged me and got it and I went to my room and just…felt better. And I can´t quite find a word to describe how that felt like. It was amazing, but not in the way that fireworks and concerts and loud laughter is amazing. It was amazing like a kiss at the corner of your lips can be amazing, how a look, or one squeeze of your fingers, or a soft, soft summer breeze can be amazing.

That whole kind of mood seeped into the day after that when we went to see Matt Elliot live. He is a man made of ghosts. The sounds he makes are haunted, are ragged and raw and as animalistic as pain and lust and hunger. The very force of him is overwhelming. Sara and I stepped out of the concert so subdued we didn´t say a word to each other the rest of the night except for good night. No other sound could be made after him.

It was just that beautiful.

Quietly, I have to admit that there is a little awkwardness in my fingers as I type this, because I´ve never really written a real-life sad moment in the blog before. But I think sometimes it´s nice to peek into the softer, the bluer side of people. It makes them seem more human, somehow. More touchable. More here.

Regardless, the truth is that I´m really quite happy at the moment. This week in El Campo has been quite, quite perfect. Perfect because nothing BIG has happened. The weather has been dull and our eyes sleepy, and we have fallen into our most natural routine. Fur and walks and siestas during the day time, and long, long nights all crumpled and stretched out on my bed, listening to music on my silky speakers, having those long conversations that I feed my leaking soul like desert water. It was exactly what I needed. Those moments that you sometimes see in movies that make you feel warm and soft inside, only that they´re now, right here; all of us outside under the stars, laughing and counting comets, the music around us, always.

Those are the kinds of things that make me find myself in the jungle.

I am happy. But, still, there is a line in Song to a Siren that always, always makes the air stutter inside my lungs. That always makes my eyes narrow slightly with the shadow of some soft pain. The strange, awkward phrase always hits that inch too close to home.

I am as puzzled as the oyster,

I am as troubled as the tide.