Maybe we are each born with a certain kind of soul.
A friend shared with me a confession: her mind never stops singing. From the moment she wakes in the morning, a jazz track plays in her head. “Like a broken record,” she said.
“Do you sing?” I asked her.
“Not anymore… I wish the songs would just stop.”
It hadn’t occurred to me that not everyone’s mind is filled with an unceasing flow of sentences, as mine is. Words float around in my head; long words, short words, words smooth and sharp. I spend my day plucking words from the sky. Some mornings I wake with a word like fecund or protuberant nudging me insistently. The word will repeat itself until I write it in my journal or look it up in the dictionary to find out if it really means what I think it means.
Other mornings I wake with complete stories in my head: setting, characters, themes…even the title. The story won’t leave me alone until I write it down. Even if the story turns out to be mediocre (and most do), it always leaves me with at least one good sentence or one word that’s just right.
Like my friend who was born with a soul that sings, I suppose others are born with souls that think in pictures or in dance movements or, for some, mathematical equations. Maybe our purpose in life is to discover what type of soul we have and then surrender to it.
Do you have the soul of a writer? Are you working on a creative project or hungry to start? Join me, poet and publisher, Kate Gale, and literary agent Elise Capron at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico this August 2019. Writers at all stages welcome.
What will the land inspire in you? Come and discover.
Be resplendent,
Florencia
Florencia Ramirez 