A room without books is like a body without soul.     Cicero

I have books everywhere, mostly because I ran out of shelf space. I also have no more room for knick knacks, Both curb my spending. The knick knacks I have were given to me by thoughtful friends. I remember being ten and having my nine-year-old sister give me something she made in ceramics class. I didn’t like what she had made, so I hid it behind a doll with wide skirts. She entered my room and couldn’t see her ceramic thing. She got so upset. I felt so bad that I elevated her thing to the best place to rest an item. I awoke every morning and would hold it in my hands, imagining it gave off heat. I haven’t described it yet because I never knew that it was. It simply looked like a lump of crimson, four inches in width and about six inches tall.

Is it possible to live without soul? It is possible to live without books. I have met people devoid of soul, or rather I should say that their soul was so deeply buried I couldn’t recognize it in their eyes. The soul is like white lined butted up against green cotton shirts in the laundry basket, freshly out of the dryer and still warm. The soul encapsulates the mind/heart connection. The mind’s eyes notices a woman trying to put groceries in the car while holding onto a toddler. One of the bags breaks and hotdogs, danish, milk and apples fall out of the bag onto the pavement. The heart acts in accordance to the mind and approaches the woman, offering to help. The soul glows when the woman accepts.

The soul is magic, the soul is cosmic imagination that appears real when associated with God’s grace. I wish I lived from my soul all the time. I have moments when I trip over bricks. The bricks remind me that I don’t always know which way to walk, which fence to climb, or whose trampoline to jump on. I continue to make the effort to live in love and compassion. My life is really rich because of this. Book in hand, I retire to my couch. It’s peaceful. I’m as content as a cat with a clean litter box.