My life has changed, wow, a lot indeed.
This time last year I was somewhere in the mountains, trying to figure out what I was most excited about in life. Caught in an endless, emotionally exhausting to and fro. Trying to find a path in a storm.
And now I am sitting in my monk-room with no windows. Someone else’s baby is sleeping strapped to my chest, outside it’s raining and I am calmly excited about autumn arriving. A pomegranate and a beeswax candle on my desk. The wall is starting to fill up with pictures.
“How did I get here?” I wonder with amazement. Not just about the place around me, no what mesmerizes me most is my mental state.
For the past two hours I have been cleaning the house of my Aikido teacher and I am nowhere near finished. I hoover, clean the bathrooms, the basement, the kitchen… My taste in music hasn’t changed, it is still as random as ever. And so I listen to Swiss-German gangster rap while I am mopping the floor. I haven’t even touched the upper levels of the house yet. Amused I am watching myself, actually wiping down this floor all the way into the corners. Cleaning even the parts that we can’t see. My mind is calm, sometimes I am quietly singing along, sometimes lost in my thoughts.
“Why is all of this cleaning not bothering me anymore?” Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I suddenly miraculously started to like cleaning. I don’t and surely know many other things I would rather be doing in any given moment of my life. But something switched. I didn’t fight it. I just accepted where I was. I am here cleaning, the whole house, that’s the deal and so I am going to follow through with it.
A story my grandmother used to read to me comes up in my mind. Unfortunately I can not recall the detailed version, and indeed I might mix it up with other stories she told me, of which there are lots. The essence goes something like this: At some stage in his early life, a rather lost main character, not seldom after losing both his parents comes across a strange old magician who takes him into his care. Since he has nothing to lose the youth accepts the offer to serve the old master and in exchange learn his mysterious skills. His initial excitement gets humbled as soon as he discovers that he just has to do all the shitty work for his master. Cleaning never-ending piles of dirt, separating the corn from the dust or building sandcastles in the rain. At the end of his apprentice he expects some payment for his work. But to his surprise his master gives him nothing but a bag of dirt. Frustrated he leaves, throws away the dirt and keeps the bag. Just to notice a few days later, that the remaining crumbs have turned into gold overnight.
That’s exactly what I am here for.
Turning dirt into gold.
Four hours later we are sitting around the living room table, a cut-down tree trunk. The balcony window wide open, a view on the surrounding mountains. We all hold cups of golden coffee in our hands a mix of sheep’s milk, curcuma and coffee. Patrick starts talking, wasting no time on the surface of things. He just talks to rearrange his thoughts and bring clarity into them. I am not sure why the other two are listening or what they are hearing. As for me I am sitting there cross-legged in the chair admiring the beauty of my life. I could keep on listening forever.
It’s like listening to the fairy tales of my grandmother. But this time I have proof that they are real.
And before my own eyes the dust I have been wiping up in piles transforms into gold.
Letting go of the story, what stays is the fundamental intent.
I collect the crumbs. Let them seep through my mind into my body. And write some of them down in my journal: “…they start to clear out, the clouds in my mind, I can think clearly, as the autumn fog covers the land and turns Lac Léman into an ocean.”
PS: All words and photos are as usual made and written by myself.