The Southern Incarnate

Here I am, a dirty little girl, sitting in the sunny dusty South, completely detached from the entire world, seeing my entire life, or lives, rather, from a perfectly objective outsider's view that would make an Indian ascetic envious. Sunlight enters the dreary living room of our gray old house, sweating in the sweltering heat of a Georgian summer. My mother serves me slices of orange and lemonade, but I just go on sitting there, staring at the old knick knacks on the shelves of our living room.
A small, dusty China doll stands, looking out across at me with beautifully painted eyes and brilliant red lips on a faded porcelain face. Her elegant robes are richly embroidered with lacquered threads on faux silk, in gaudy colors that aren't even phased by the layer of dust that coats them. She has a kind of faded glory, reminiscent of the distant foreign empire she came from, once bright and wonderful, but now only a far away memory trapped inside a cheap souvenir in a dilapidated dirty Southern home. I wonder how this China doll, no doubt a cheap gift designed especially for tourists, came from such a faraway land to my little Southern living room. She feels so out of place, and yet so representative of the slow, decaying decadent glory of the Southern empire.
The image fades, and I'm no longer in the childhood of my future life but an ambivalent adolescent. My heart pounds when I think of You. I'm sure You were in my past life. Or perhaps in my current life is a more appropriate way to put it. Maybe we've known each other for our entire series of lives. Only now do I realize it though. Because I see my future life ahead of me, by the time I am actually incarnated, my life already seems old to me, like I am following a familiar path. Only when I see You do I go blank. It feels strange. I am like a bodhisattva who has attained enlightenment, transcending worlds within her mind, understanding and being one with all of the souls in the universe, all while in the body of a young girl in a small town in Georgia. I wish I could understand it all. I see my mother, a completely different soul, perhaps one I may have known in past lives, buying the China doll as a novelty, and placing it in our home. I am born, and she is my mother, but at the same time she is simply a friend, a fellow soul on its journey to Paradise, seeing me as her little daughter, though I am really just another soul, like her, whom she cares for and fosters for the time being. I don't mean to suggest that she or I don't have any love for each other, but it is the love of kindred souls who seek to help each other, going well beyond the ephemeral and superficial relationship boundaries of “mother” and “daughter.”
I run out the front door in a flurry around noon to meet You at the record store in town that you work at. Sometimes I ride my father's bicycle, but it is so old and rickety that I only take it on the hottest of days, when seconds out in the sun can make a huge difference in your hydration levels. I prefer to walk though, and take in the air, which is hardly fresh, but at least less stifling than the air inside my old house. I meet You outside the store, where You have an armful of golden old records whose scratchy old tunes are sure to have me straining my ears to pierce the static mottling their ancient melodies. You smile as I nervously smooth my hair and wipe the sweat from the back of my neck. We drive in Your dad's old Chevy to a friends' house, where You have band practice in the garage. Your old second-hand guitars and amps impress everyone despite their ancient crude models.
The sound of your music rings out clear in the Southern afternoon. Sitting so close, on a stack of old cardboard boxes near one of the amps, I prop my elbows on my knees and my chin in my hands and gaze dreamily into the sunny yard, my eyes temporarily blinded by the contrast of the burning sunlight and the darkness of the garage. The echoing ring of noise permeates through every cell of my brain. I wonder if the millions of neurons are all vibrating with the harmonies emanating from your guitar. I close my eyes, and everything seems gray, as if I am floating in space. Again I detach myself, and I float about, supported by the density of my own thoughts, as a bead of sweat slowly rolls down my temple.