Healing Trauma: Perceptions And Atitudes, 2

I have next to me the small peacock feather that I use now as a bookmark. It doesn't look like much in this dim light. It is kind of dark, dingy looking, like a feature in a four hundred year old painting where the varnish has been allowed to darken and thicken over the years. I have turned on the overhead light and now I can see the feather better. The green and aqua sheen of the iris of the eye of the feather has a luminous sheen now as do the areas of iridescent gold. Now I am holding it up to the light, and it is a shining marvel! The iris of the eye glows with intense shades of glowing aquamarine, emerald and jade, all flushed with gold. There is indigo and violet in the black pupil of the eye. The bronzy-copper background is luminescent as are the subtle concentric rings of golden green and violet that surround it. The feather strands that radiate out to the edge are all shot with gold, bronze, copper and emerald green. When I put the feather under my kitchen stove light the change of angle transforms the colours and suddenly the feather is brilliant green and the iris of the eye is violet. This little feather has been with me for years. I first had its predecessor more than twenty years ago and displayed it in the band of a tweed porkpie hat I used to wear. One day at church, I was seated at the very back, surrounded by street aboriginals. This was St. James Anglican, High Anglican, and any man approaching the high altar to receive the sacrament was expected to do so bare-headed, and if you were a man wearing a hat, the sidesman would have strictly instructed you to remove it from your head. I already had tons of issues with people in that church, so I decided to leave my hat on my pew when I went forward to receive the body and blood of Christ. When I returned to my pew, my hat was still there. The peacock feather, and the street aboriginals, were gone. Of course I was upset, but tried to understand that regardless of what I think of stealing, regardless that I was likely almost as poor as those street aboriginals, if not poorer and on the verge of losing my apartment, I had provided one of them with a piece of beauty and perhaps I could allow him this. I quickly replaced the feather with the current one I am writing about today. The hat soon outlived its usefulness, and now the peacock feather is a bookmark that has travelled with me to Mexico, Costa Rica and Colombia. When I was in San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas State, Mexico, five years ago, I was enjoying quiet time with a book (a Spanish translation of CS Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia) to read and my peacock feather inside a small local café. There was a little boy there of maybe two or three years of age, I think the child of the owner. He approached my table, his dark eyes wide with friendly curiosity. I showed him the peacock feather and his eyes widened more, shone and glistened with the feather's reflected glory. I think this must have been the first time he had seen a peacock feather, and I believe that this encounter, this vision of beauty, will stay with him for the rest of his life, and will influence and inform him in a direction of beauty and appreciation. That is my hope, anyway, but I also know this from my own childhood experiences that those things we see for the first time, be they lovely or horrendous, stay with us and shape and model the direction of our growth, for the rest of our lives.