Today seems a good day to take stock and give thanks.
Ten years ago this week I had a very specific experience which led to an intense and acute spiritual awakening. The apartment I was renting shifted on its foundation in the rain, so my kitchen window was jammed in its frame. I unconsciously tried to force it open, hitting it once, twice, three times with the heel of my hand. On the third try the glass pane shattered and the tiniest sliver of glass stuck into my chest at the sternum, while another piece lightly cut open my left wrist.
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
My mind, and time, stopped. I stared at my left wrist as four perfect circles of blood welled up like beads on a chain from the cut. I walked myself into the bathroom, rinsed my wrist off, and found, in the mirror, the tiny sliver of glass in my sternum. I pulled the shard out and marveled at the little cut chiseled in my skin. Everything I saw was bright, especially the little shard. I held it up close, saw my blood on it, twirled it in my fingers and felt its edges, was amazed by how perfectly sharp and pointed it was.
I took the shard back to the kitchen and held it up in front of the broken window. I could see the sky and land refracted upside down in it as they are in a simple lens. I realized that the shard, a perfect little missile formed in the mathematically perfect chaos of a window breaking, encapsulated the world. As I looked more carefully, my mind still blessedly quiet, I saw in its shape a cat's eye, a wolf, a woman reclining, a crystal, a dagger, a lens, a sculpture and a diamond.
The glass shard become a talisman for me; in the days that followed I would reopen the little cut in my chest with it to enhance my new sharpness of feeling. Eventually, the scalpel-sharp tip broke off, and I swallowed the shard, to metabolize its meaning in a sense, and as a gesture of cleansing.
The story that followed, of my tumultuous process of awakening and of years spent metabolizing the experience, would be book-length so I won't tell it here. Suffice it to say, my closed heart was opened and my unconscious, destructive mind stopped by a beautiful explosion.
~
So, today I give thanks for my awakening of ten years ago, and for countless smaller ones since. I'm also grateful for:
The brilliant girl sitting to my right.
My beautiful studio and all the success of my painting career.
The Nutella and strawberry crepe I had for breakfast.
The hard rainstorms that occasionally disperse the drunk Stampeders in the temporary bar outside my studio window.
Great health and very slow aging.
Our new Bratsa Bonifacho painting!
The chance to live (part-time to start) in Vancouver!
Making new friends, like S_Eldorado, Malloreigh, Cherry, and Glitch in Vancouver.
Selling a painting 10 minutes ago.
The tea I'm going to get in an hour.