Grief and Healing: a collection of short stories and parables

The Perfect Bowl (an art therapy project on Kintsugi)

Oh perfect black bowl, with your smooth spotless exterior and your splendid inside. Brown, speckled, concentric circles reminisce of the rings of an old oak tree. I stare into the bowl, into the abyss of my own dendrochronology and all the history of the
in-betweens.

Break the Bowl? WHAT? Fracture this pottery of perfection? Demolish its smooth perfectness?

Deep Breath! "I can do this" I think to myself, as I wrap it in a shroud.

I pause....

First hit with the hammer... nothing.

Second hit.... Still, it remains in its perfect form.

Another deep breath and I strike this time with forceful determination. Please bowl, crack in some perfect pattern.

I hear it break; I can feel the division of pieces. Gently I unwrap my perfect vessel hoping to find perfect cracks, perfect pieces to mend with perfect rivers of gold.

In disbelief I stare at my imperfect bottomless bowl. No cracks along the path to the smooth lip. No tributary rivers in beautiful meandering paths. No! Just bottomless, unsupported fragments of glazed clay. Nothing more than a reminder of the bottomless pit of quicksand my life has been. Tantamount to my broken childhood, my broken marriage, a broken pile of never knowing, a collective of collapses' that are the ruins of my life. Why has this running theme of the bottom falling out, haunted my whole life? Why is this bowl mocking me? Taunting my very existence?

I continue to reflect on my history as I piece my bowl back together. I enjoy the feeling of figuring out how the pieces go together. Like a puzzle, I am pleased with myself when I make the edges connect. Such sublime satisfaction when the pieces fit so perfectly together. WAIT! A thought hits me like a hammer striking me, cracking me open and exposing all the under-belly rawness that I so perfectly protect and hide. Has this lifelong feeling of the bottom falling out, created the entire rationale for my insufferable perfectionism? Is THIS the driving force to becoming a maladaptive perfectionist?

Bewildered at this revelation, I carry on with the task at hand. Three large bottom pieces glued back together; almost perfect. But I'm left with a handful of granular fragments and a hole in the bottom of my bowl. Sigh. What on earth do I do with this hole?

Although this project was an exploration of "kintsugi" I feel a quiet pull to the Japanese philosophy of Wabi Sabi, the idea of finding beauty and celebration in the imperfections. With a sense of serene melancholy, I undertake the final task; highlighting the cracks in gold. I choose the shiniest gold and commence the process. In all my somatic uncomfortableness, I resist the urge to make perfect gold rivers. Letting go the frustration I feel when the paint brush won't move the paint in the manner I had envisioned. Letting dissipate the need to control and manipulate the paint rather just allowing it to be, while alleviating the notion that that my own metaphorical broken bottom is somehow emblematic of my entire existence.

When all the cracks are filled with gold, I resolve the most poignant way to finish this project, is to daringly paint the hole in gold. To focalize on what some might see as a colossal blemish; let's be honest that "some" is me. To my surprise, the hole gave way to a second revelation; a representation of a portal for pent up negative energy to leak out, a valve for ridiculous high expectations. All these years wandering through life with this persistent nagging feeling of the bottom falling out, all the destruction it caused to my nervous system. Maybe now I can let it go. Maybe now I can go quietly about feeling my own cracks adorned, a gilded base that supports all of life's tribulations. In the words of one of my most cherished poets "There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."