Märchen und so
Märchen und so
It had hit them suddenly. Two sailing boats, each maybe 40 feet long, manned by just one life form each, had for weeks and months and indeed years and centuries been sailing next to each other, not even a lightyear away from each other, racing through the vast oceans of the universe. There had been others, millions of these boats, and along the eons each found a harbor to rest at, a life of their pleasing. Like many others they had had their fair share of physical experiences, being rocks for a few hundred years, then entering the bodies of animals and other living things. Then, after a while, they moved on, to find their next exciting adventure, floating through the universes.
Not normal boats they were skippering in, their boats were made up of their desires, their questions, their fears, their lusts, their laughs, their wishes, their thoughts and their secret thoughts, their happiness, their caves of dark secrets, the shining brightness of their hearts, and after all their compassion. Compassion for the other soul.
They had passed the andromeda nebula and had entered the milky way, some magnetic force seeming to pull them to a planet at the far rim of this rather small galaxy.
Light souls as they were, the baggage of having lived so many times in so many different bodily forms of two legged and four legged creatures, sometimes with six, eight or more tentacles, as plants and as trees, this baggage started to weigh on the shoulders of their serene external beingness.
At one time, one of them thought across to the other “Is there an end to life? I have heard, that there seems to be a phenomenon called death?”
“Oh,” replied the other, ” I have heard the same. but I have been given to understand, that it is more like after you have taken up a life form you decide you are the life form, and therefor, when it dies, as it has to because of the natural laws of the universe, then the soul falls into sort of an eternal sleep until the life form has completely decayed and is one with the soil or the water it was born on. Then, so I was told, another 500 or 1000 years later, so really after a short period of self-induced unconsciousness, the soul wakes up again, realises how boring it is, to lie underground or float in the water on some planet, leaves the place and sails on, just as you and i now do.”
“Ah,” came a sigh of relief, “for a moment I was becoming nervous, that one day I might no longer be in control of my destiny.”
And so they sailed on.
One night however, the questioning soul woke up from a terrible dream, a nightmare of disproportionate dimension: He had dreamt, that his companion was about to die, and that she would never regain consciousness again ever. A truly dead soul.
And as he dreamt this, he felt that she had read his dream, as she would so often do, as their were true companions. And she came over, really close to him and comforted him and then, as souls sometimes do, they made compassionate love, like exploding stars, like millions of rainbows glowing, like hundreds of suns dancing in space, and incomparable to any love a man and a woman would ever be able to even conceive of.
It was after this exhausting and so fulfilling experience, that somehow they drifted off through space, each one following his and her own course, driven by their most inner dynamic.
Once they attach themselves to bodies in the physical universe too often, souls seem to have a tendency to forget who they are. Then they play by the rules, which this slightly dubious life form of body plus soul develops and constantly changes. Unbeknownst to each other however, the two had landed on the same planet, and because it had looked so beautiful from outer space, lots of light blue, stemming from vast oceans, they had decided to give life to some of those funny body forms: Two long legs, standing upright with two tentacles at the side of the body, each tentacle having five small tactile extensions they called ‘fingers’. There existed two distinct forms of this body, one whose upper part was a bit bigger, or sometimes a lot, sort of two fleshy bubbles. Almost like a camel from planet Bactria, but not at the back but on the front. And the other form, who between the legs had this peculiarl and strange fleshy thing hanging out. Not pretty at all. They really they did not look nice, not having a lot of hair really, slightly pale orange coloured skin, although some were also creamy brown or dark brown — certainly no comparison to the beauty of some of the creatures they had seen and been on other planets. But then, sometimes ones urges drive one to be and do things, which only much later you realise had better been left alone and undone.
A few centuries passed, and slowly, because somehow they could not detach themselves completely from their bodily existence, they became less and less aware of themselves. It was less than 200 years and she had forgotten about her soul mate and he had forgotten, that he was not a body but a free spirit. And so, when one body died, be it of war, of famine, of old age, of a car crash or too much alcohol, he just hopped into the next best small body he could find, gave it the breath of life and became another human being.
She did not fare a lot better. For a while, maybe the first six or seven lives, the remembered her origin and who she was. However, as she lost track of her soul mate for hundreds of years, she started to immerse herself into becoming a woman and a woman and a woman and a woman. One body died, and she did not even realise, that she already inhabited the next one.
One day, as Aisha walked along the streets of Rome, a young Italian man on a white scooter almost ran her over, as she crossed the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II. At the last moment he pulled the breaks, but seeing it would not be enough, abruptly slammed the scooter to the ground, slid and slid … and came to a stop just inches away from the most beautiful feet, framed by exquisitely and delicately fabricated strips of bright red coloured leather, a creation of Fausto Santini, which underlined the gracefulness of her ankles.
“What on earth do you think you are doing!” yelled an angry Paolo at Aisha, who had been busy on the phone with her husband, who was at the hotel with a nanny and three kids, all waiting for their mother to come back, so they could go out for dinner.
“Oh, don’t blame me, if you don’t know how to drive a scooter!” Aisha snippily replied and started to walk away moving her shoulder and the rest of her perfectly shaped body in supremacy.
“Hold it right there, young lady! You are not going to get away like this! You ignorant woman crossed the road without looking, and I saved your life by ruining my scooter. The cost will be yours!” yelled Paolo, having gotten up, limping a bit, dusting off the ruined jeans and his severely scratched leather jacket, scurrying after her.
Aisha abruptly turned around and intensely and furiously stared at him with an aura of power: “You obviously don’t know, whom you are talking to. Mind your words.”
His arms went off in wild gesticulation. “I don’t care who you are.” And as he stood in front of her in grim anger, something struck him, something which made him even more angry. “You woman should all rot in hell. Just because you are beautiful, does not give you the right, to trample on us men! Now I demand you stay here until we have called the police! You foreigners can not be trusted!” And turning around to the crowd of onlookers and bystanders, who enjoyed a good dramatic scene on the hot streets of Rome, he called for any witnesses to the event. Promptly several hands, armed with mobile phones, went up.
Paolo smiled. “And now we get the police and then we shall sort you out!” he hissed.
Aisha was on the phone to her husband, a superior smile touching her lips, her most beautiful lips, as Paolo noted.
“You don’t worry, the police is already on its way. My husband just called the police commissioner. You will be surprised any moment. Have a nice time in prison.” The crowd cheered. This was a spectacle to their liking. A drama played live, no entrance fee asked.
Paolo angrily stepped towards Aisha, who, stepping back a little, was almost as tall as he was, raised his right arm as if to slap her in the face, the crowd already going ‘oooohhhhh’ and ‘aaaahhh’. But when looking straight into each others eyes, they both stopped in mid movement. Sparkles of anger, of disbelief, of disorientation, immediate love hit them. Hit them so profoundly, that for a moment they forgot they were in the middle of busy Rome. It felt, as if they had in an instant been engulfed in a bubble, in a translucent shell, which only let light through but no motion from the outside. It was accompanied by an eery silence.
And in an instant they realised, who each other was. And they smiled and unbeknownst to the world around them, their souls embraced each other. Held each other. What is physical love compared to the love of old souls meeting again after centuries.
Aisha and Paolo over the years became good friends, she and her family visiting him and his family just outside of Rome at his vacation house close the Lago di Bracchiano, their children joining each other for vacation: And sometimes Paolo and family visiting them in Marocco.
Hundreds of years later, as the two souls were drifting through the universe again, they smiled in serenity and decided, that for the next several thousand years they would just drift along as the cosmic winds would drive them. — No more bodies for a while.