Cracks in the Universe
...or, what to do when the world ends
most everyone has a personal day of infamy – mine is april 2nd -
april second. nineteen hundred seventy four, to be exact –
around sunset, if you need a time -
eight days prior, i had just turned 21
grey Cape Cod clouds had enshrouded the sky that day – all day -
we had just moved into our new apartment nestled in the peninsula’s elbow –
when i'd been house-hunting and first told him about what i'd found,
i couldn’t contain my excitement about the apartment complex
designed to look like a neighbourhood of single mansions -
it was brand new and utterly gorgeous, i told him -
later when we went to see the apartment together,
as we rounded the corner into the complex,
i remember he'd laughed. looking at me funny
so i'd asked him, what was wrong?
nothing, he said, grinning, quite pleased with himself, and with me --
it’s just that, well, i built these …
he was a carpenter by trade, and i adored that his hands had built what we lived in -
he loved that unknowingly i'd fallen in love with his work –
just a couple weeks earlier, amidst our birthdays, we'd moved in
this day, that april second, walking into town for supplies, i watched the sky,
willing it not to rain until after i'd returned home –
i needed beets to make his favourite dish, garlic beets,
and while he wasn’t due home until Friday,
with this dish, longer marination meant better-taste to his discerning palate
heading back with the beets and miscellaneous,
i continued to scan the sky’s dark ash clouds for signs of rain, but none came -
the clouds just hung heavy with threat ...
after chores, i turned my attention to my latest creative foray,
weaving thread (not 'string') on nails into a 3D colour dance i called simply, mandala*** -
at that time most westerners had neither heard of nor seen a mandala…
regardless all responded on a primal level to what i was doing,
instinctively and subconsciously responding to its inherent sacred geometry …
even the word, mandala, no-one had ever heard before …
i found myself explaining it to everyone who saw what i was doing
i tapped a final nail into place and put the hammer down. his hammer,
with its splotch of white paint on the black handle -
i looked out at the sky my attention caught by the light of a slash wound along the horizon
which smeared muted corals and pale reds into the overhead gunmetal gloominess...
a few minutes is all it took for the odd colour play to darken and disappear altogether into dusk -
i took it as a sign to break for the night.
i had not yet met the teachers of different cultures walking different paths
who would speak to me of sunrise and sunset in ways i hadn't before considered them,
most notably as the day’s two marked breaks, or ‘cracks in the Universe’ –
cracks recognized by medicine walkers as the best times
to travel in journey for healing, for knowledge, for manifestation …
but i didn't know any of that then ...
instead, that night, that april second so very long ago,
i was learning that sunset can also be a good time to die --
for in that very moment on that very night, eternity reached right through that sky gash
and stole my heart's light when a small private aircraft slammed into an icy April Atlantic.
after all these years, april 2nd still remains one of those tougher days to get through
***The word mandala means 'circle' in Sanskrit, the ancient language of Hinduism, and a mandala is a symbolic representation of the Universe in art form ... mandalas appear in sacred art in both Hinduism and Tibetan Buddhism as well as in American Indian cultures -- for example, with Navajo mandala sand paintings and the medicine wheel in general ... the ancient idea behind mandalas is driven by a primal belief that sees geometry as the purest expression of the created.
----------------------------------------------
related reading: "Stranger on a Greyhound"
"the birthday"
"Faces"