"Outside"

        The other day, when I was four, I accidentally went outside.  
You'd figure the human soul is about the size of the human body.  A 
ghost is going to be at least four feet tall, whether it has feet on 
the ground or barely has form, right?  A simple living soul should be 
at least as distinctly human.  Well, it's not.  It's really very very 
small. See, the human soul has to be tiny enough to fit inside the 
human body even in the beginning, and it'd be awfully cramped to 
have a full-size soul in a baby-size body.  No, the human soul is 
really an awfully compact thing.  The other day when I was four I 
thought I knew a lot about being small, but still it scared me.
        I didn't realize it yet.  I floated out through the keyhole 
in my bedroom door like passing fingers absently through hair.  I 
don't remember wondering how or why; I was simply thankful that 
there was no key in the lock and that my mother had cleaned out the 
gum I had stuffed it with when I was three.  And so I was down the 
stairs and out under the crack between the front door and the brittle 
front-hall tile.
        It was very big outside.  Very very big.  You wouldn't believe 
how big it can be when you're so terribly small.  It was also dark.  
Very, very dark, and then I was scared.  I knew that it got dark at 
night; it had been doing so with inexorable regularity for over 
four years so there was no reason for it to be stopping now, yet I 
couldn't help but feel that there should be no reason for anything to 
get quite as dark as it was.  The stars glared down at the sidewalk 
like pure white neon advertising the end of the world.
        I couldn't feel the wind against my face, but I could feel 
wind.  And I knew it was cold, even though I was perfectly calm.  I 
felt naked, and though perhaps it's just in the afterglow of sexually 
aware retrospect, the sensation sent electric shivers through every 
memory and every impression I ever had before or since.  And I knew 
that my mother was crying.
        My soul was drawn, wavering, far down along the sidewalk.  I 
saw dogs that didn't bark at my presence.  I saw old men and old 
women on front stoops; smoking, talking, playing cards, plainly 
unaffected by my passing by.  Then I could see her.  My father was 
there, too; saying something angry and waving his arms around as if 
to brush away some small, annoying insect that was coming too close 
to him, only he was also afraid it might swallow him up.  I couldn't 
really hear what was being said, but I could see the lines on my 
mother's face like lines on a spent dollar bill.  The car was idling, 
door open, radio whispering static, its right front wheel perched 
squarely on the cracked pavement's edge.  I could only hear each 
perfect echo of this argument resounding from every window and every 
wall and every parked car and the street and the fumbling heart of 
the city itself.
        He didn't hit her, but I understood.  Something, something 
very bad.  She had been wrong and it was time for her to get 
punished.  Often I think about punishment, and I realize that for 
every time I was ever shouted at or threatened with all the force of 
the personal vindiction that only an outraged parent, burning with the 
fire of true justice, can muster without regret, another fold in my 
unfolding self was re-creased.  Every time I was forced into myself, 
to consider my sins and repent with the realization that I was lucky 
to be allowed continued life, I had to conclude that no matter how 
much sense my actions appeared to me to make, they were often evil 
wrongdoings by nature.  I could never seem to predict which of my 
actions would be the evil ones and which would not, so I began picking 
carefully through existence, investigating every step with an iron-
toothed comb.  I became such a well-thought-out individual that I'm 
surprised I could remember how to speak, but from this was born 
whatever greatness I shall ever be blessed with, so really I owe 
only thanks to whatever brought me here.  This sort of force which 
crumples the self into the fascinating contortions that books, 
poetry, and beautiful music spring from -- that was the force that 
my devoted father was now skillfully applying to my mother.  
        I stood silently as only disembodied spirits can, and 
witnessed.  In a few minutes, when the time allotted for the 
character improvement session had expired, my parents broke from 
their frozen positions, stepped wordlessly into the car and drove 
home.  The next thing I knew, I awoke not crying.