I had a heart-opening, delightful and perfect moment this morning, one that I’m sure I will relish for a long time. I found the missing candle holder.
On some level we all live amidst chaos, and I often feel like I have an extra dose of it because I am sorting through boxes and boxes of stuff that belonged to Nancy, my mother, my stepfathers, and some from grandparents as well. As these people have fallen away from my life, I’ve ended up with all the material goods, some treasures, a lot of junk. I tackle it a little at a time, perhaps a box each weekend, and little by little my garages are emptying. It is such a long process, it’s taken a lot of fortitude to keep going. This morning, I dove into a box of Nancy’s that came from under her father’s house last spring, a box that she threw down there more than twenty years ago, with books and junk from her life in LA long before I met her. There is a Kodak camera with film in it, and I wonder about the five ancient photos locked inside on a partial roll of film. There is a dead telephone, more architecture and design books, and a copy of “The Bridges of Madison County” with a photo of her dad from WW II, and a photo of her somewhere in Asia, sometime in the ’90’s, with a Buddha. And Holy Grail of Grails, tucked in a corner of the box next to the phone, coated in a layer of grime and cardboard dust, there is The Candle Holder. The Candle Holder I Knew I Would Find One Day.
The back story is that I encountered one of these, a lovely 2-inch cube of rough glass, almost two years ago. I remember looking at it, holding it, loving it’s beauty and heft and utility and symmetry, and knowing in my heart that it had a mate somewhere in the universe. Nancy had a habit of tossing stuff into random corners – she was a walking embodiment of the Second Law of Thermodynamics in her personal life – so I carefully tucked it away in a cabinet with other candle and incense holders, with the strange certainty that I would find it’s partner. (Nancy would never have bought just one, unless it was a unique item.)
So the thrill of discovery was long-anticipated, completely surprising, and has dropped me into this reverie that you have joined. What is that moment, that thrill, that joy and satisfaction when I pulled this thing out of a small morass of dusty junk?
My first cut comes from my ego, who cheerfully gloats “I knew I would find it!” But there is feeling underneath, something about holding an intention for years, and feeling it come to fruition. I have a deep desire to create perfection in my own ways, making things neat and aligned and symmetrical, so some primordial part of me is gratified by the joining of long separated mates. Ah, there they sit, together again, just as they were always intended to be. There. Now I’m getting closer to the fountain of joy inside.
I’m feeling our separation again. In fact, I’m feeling how life is full of splitting apart and coming together. I kiss Jen goodbye as we go off to work, and kiss her hello as we greet each other after hours or days apart. Divergence creates the possibility of joy and union in the future. My loss of Nancy creates the possibility of reunification. Incarnation into human form creates the possibility of divine union in the future. Perhaps I can feel how we are never really separated, just displaced in space and time.
Or perhaps I’m just happy to have a matched pair of beautiful, well designed candle holders. Whatever, it is, I love them.
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