“The Corner of My Skylight”
Photograph by John Diamond, M.D.
Every morning I would lie in bed and look up at the skylight that we’d paid a lot to have installed. And every morning became obsessed by the one corner that was not square – not right, not perfect, like the others. Not normal, as it should have been.
Just recently, I’ve turned my thoughts around. That’s the corner I most like. I delight in its very apparent abnormality, its non-perfection by usual criteria. The blessing – and I felt that state looking at it this morning – the blessing of its difference, its unique existence. My exquisite awareness of it as itself. Of its spirit – of it as Spirit.
And, as it often does, my heart went back over fifty years to my so abnormal patients in the back wards of the mental hospital whose spirits I believe I sensed. And who I still so miss.
