Sometimes, you try hard to see something else in something else.
Yes, you say. Look at that bird.
You push against padded walls, shout into a pile of blankets, hit the shining surface of a trampoline.
Things move, but they don’t change.
Still, onward you go, still, you discern black in the wings of the jackdaw. And you get into that, you hold on to that. You use it as a magic fishhook. With it, you want to attract the faraway echo of that thing you are looking for, which is something other than the jackdaw. The realness of what you are looking for hurts. It’s hard to even think of the word (crow). You prefer thinking of the black in the wings of the jackdaw.
And even if your soul stirs the tiniest bit, that fills you with hope. So, on you go with the shouting: look at those black wings, look at the curve of that beak. It resembles a crow. It resembles a crow.
You keep shouting, and you become tired. Making something else into something else is demanding.
Your soul, a powerful being stretched out like a drunkard after a night in the town, sleeping in the space between your throat and your stomach, opens one eye because of all your shouting. With that eye, it takes a look at your evidence and becomes bored so fast and so hard it immediately falls into a deep sleep again. Can’t fool a soul.
Still, you are elated. Because you saw the spark in its iris. And nothing equals the spark of a soul.
I am doing this right, is what you think. I just need to try harder.
Then you encounter the real thing. Crow! Crow! A real crow. You don’t have to make anything out of that. It is already there, exactly how you want it. Better than you could imagine. Different, too. Different from what you could imagine. Only, different in the right direction. I can teach you stuff, it whispers. And that is what you need.
You are not ahead of the game anymore. There is no concept in your mind of where you want to go. Because your soul is awake now. It is awake, and it presses its black, leathery cheek against yours, looking at what can only be a crow. Looking at it, together with you. Watch it, it says. Watch it, it sings.
How beautiful it is, it sings.
But that sound.
Of a soul, singing.