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 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
What's wrong? i asked him
nothing, he said, grinning, quite pleased with himself, and with me --
it’s just that, well, he said, i built these …
he was a carpenter by trade, and i adored that his hands built what we lived in -
and he loved that unknowingly i'd fallen in love with his work –
just a couple weeks earlier, amidst our birthdays, we moved in
that day, that april second, barely a month later,
walking into town for supplies, i watched dark clouds gather,
and willed 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 -
i was willing to chance it ...
throughout the day i continued to scan the sky’s dark ash clouds for signs of rain,
but none came - 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*** -
all responded on a primal level to what i was doing,
instinctively and subconsciously opening to its inherent sacred geometry …
even the word, mandala, no-one had ever heard before …
i found myself explaining the concept 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 -
briefly i wondered why it wasn't with him,
but then remembered his recently increased collection.
i looked out to see sunset brewing, my attention caught by horizon laying clouds
against plays of light that made the sky look as if it were slashed along the horizon,
smeared muted corals and pale reds disappeared into overhead gunmetal gloominess...
a few minutes was all it took for the odd colour play to darken into dusk -
for me a sign to break for the night ...
i had not yet met the teachers of different cultures walking different paths
who would all speak of sunrise and sunset in ways i hadn't before considered,
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 …
i didn't know any of that then though ...
instead, that night, that april second so very long ago,
i was learning that sunset is also a very good time to die --
for in that very moment on that very night,
when a small private aircraft slammed into the icy April Atlantic,
eternity reached right through that sky gash
and stole my heart's light ...
and y’know what? even after over half a century,
april 2nd still remains one of those tougher days to get through
***The word mandala means 'circle' in Sanskrit, the ancient language of Hinduism, - 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.
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related reading: "Stranger on a Greyhound"
"the birthday"
"Faces"