A Beautiful Soul
Some of you might remember my ghost walking tour through Fell’s Point from a few weeks ago. One of our last stops in the two plus hours of walking tour was a tiny house like this, on a hidden backroad. By the time we reached this place, dusk was settling in steadily over the wind swept roofs of quaint houses by the harbor, adding to the spookiness that’s been building up throughout the tour. Unlike our other destinations, the tour guide said almost nothing, and simply lined us up in front of the house and asked us to stare at it for about five minutes. We all felt like school children put on probation, staring into something we didn’t quite understand. At least that’s how I felt.
When the silence was broken, the tour guide revealed that we were supposed to focus on parts of the house that grabbed our attention, and try to connect with its energy. It was the only place on that ghost walking tour that was not only haunted, but was also commonly considered a “portal” to another dimension. The frequency at which strange things happened in this house - often caused by a number of regular, as well as new, “visitors” - led to the conclusion that the house had to be an open door to another world. Whatever happened in it was an equal contribution from the human beings who brought their energy to the place, as well as that of anything/one walked through the portal from within.
When I heard this, the first thing that crossed my mind, of course, was Harry Potter.
All port key jokes aside, if houses can be portals to another world…can people?
I’ve got a specific person in mind when I ask this question. She and I met just a little over six months ago, but we’ve gone through a lot of things together in that short amount of time. I am lucky to have people in my life whom I can call intelligent, funny, kind, etc. but when I see/talk to this friend, I almost feel a presence. An aura. She makes it so easy and natural to talk about one’s feelings, the type of things most people would be embarrassed to say out loud or admit to. I love how she can go from cracking a snarky joke to gathering the girls together to wrap up an evening with a kind word for each other and a hopeful wish for self. Unprompted, I don’t know if I would have volunteered the type of nearly tear-inducing words for my dear, dear friends at a random Monday happy hour. The kind of thoughts that I put on hold at the back of my heart, for fear of sounding cheesy, or even getting hurt.
Yet, somehow, she showed me the way.
I imagine this person used to be a child who was never afraid to kiss and hug her mamma goodbye in front of her friends when she got dropped off at school, and never stopped since. I’m thankful this person never lost her sense of humor and innocence, allowing the rest of us to purify ourselves everytime she touches our lives. I’m thankful this person exists in my life as a portal to another world, a place not entirely unfamiliar, but has been left behind for too long.
Photo: From Seoul, South Korea (May 2006).
