Posted in contemplative joy, embrace your inner kid, exuberance, joy with others, outdoors, self-care on July 27, 2010| 1 Comment »
anne and brittany
24 hour beach trip with April
April!
elefante! spontaneous trip to the zoo.
brownie cupcakes with reeses cups in the middle
AZ and AZ 🙂
a surprise party, a reunion, and a pre-wedding sighting. so much joy.
intimate moments
mustaches.
bertie goes for a ride
M and Duckles! What a fantastic combination.
happy? tipsy? excited? all of the above?
wooooooooo!!!!! we celebrate love unification.
Posted in Uncategorized on July 19, 2010| 2 Comments »
I walk the line in this blog of acknowledging and trying not to allude to what this writing really comes out of–my experience with a very serious illness. Yes, the idea was spurred by a magazine article outlining ways to add joy to your life, but it also came out of a desire to bring joy to others and document and seek it for myself at a time when I had little work and wanted a project to attend to, something finite to spend my time on and connect me with others.
I am not one of those people who suddenly realized that she needed to stop taking life for granted, not someone who had trouble finding joy in life until it was threatened. I have always loved life and held joy with both hands and let it flow through me. I am a deeply grateful person.
I posted the Metric song a few days ago without the back story. I found it on someone else’s blog or website (can’t remember whose) and immediately started playing it on repeat. It spoke to my fear, my insecurities, my worries about fitting in and “rejoining” the world… my heart beating like a hammer when I’m anxious, my pulse racing because my hematocrit is low… the difficulty in being in touch with my most raw, most vulnerable feelings. But then the break in the refrain dawns: if I am still alive then what shouldn’t I do? I will get wherever I’m going and get what I need. I just have to live and be grateful for the heartbeat. I listen to this song and tap my chest with my fist.
My friend Matt forwarded me a link to a blog called “One Good Thing.” It is written by a woman named Mandy whose 1 1/2 year old daughter died suddenly 10 weeks ago. She writes daily, trying to make sense of it, trying to find good things. I do not know her, but reading her posts makes me a part of the community grieving for her child. It also brings me back to my own grief as her words make lucid thoughts that I too have had. She writes about the incomprehensibility of death. What does it mean? That a person who once walked across the floorboards will never do so again, that her sweet one will not be in her crib in the morning or the morning after that. And it will always be that way… it is a fact that will remain a fact for the rest of her days. How can a person understand that? How does it ever compute?
This made me think about the people in my life I have lost, but also about illness and my experience living with a very acute awareness of death and how easy, how quickly, how really it can happen. And how do I put this fact into my intellectual or spiritual understanding of myself and my life? How do I integrate this story into my life narrative? How can it be that I went through everything I went through and yet I am to the point that people meet me and never know? And how can it be true that I am still living in this same body, and that this body is still not entirely well, and that I have to live with a very ambiguous definition of wellness and no timeline or real certainty about how long effects will last?
I listened to this Metrics song on my stereo and threw something at the wall and stomped and cried and sat on the floor and stood and paced and tried to breathe. How can it be that some daughters die and some daughters live? That the lives we imagined for ourselves and our loved ones, which did not seem like too much to hope for, are not the lives we live? And that when we think there cannot be another thing there is another thing to wrench us. Help! I’m alive! And sometimes it’s so. damn. hard.
Why do I write about this in my joy blog you ask? I started this post earlier today and thought about deleting it, but as I went about my day I realized that I’m not off-target here, and this is really important to me. There is joy in expression. Whether it is an expression of anger or an expression of the deepest grief a person can stand, the words and actions of expression are how I make myself real to myself. Some small bit of release or satisfaction to say there are the tissues from my crying, there is the pillow where I threw it, there is the notebook where I wrote furiously, here is the song I stomped to and the woman’s words which triggered it all. And it’s not just in me anymore. Perhaps joy is not the most precise word to describe this, or perhaps I mean a deeper shade of joy–all I know is that the world is a better place and life is more bearable because I can type these words and read Mandy’s, because I can listen to the Metrics and move about as if possessed. And if that is not joy, then at least–like Mandy says–it is one good thing.
Posted in contemplative joy on July 14, 2010| 1 Comment »
Can you hear my heart beating like a hammer, beating like a hammer
Help, I’m alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer
Hard to be soft, tough to be tender
Come take my pulse, the pace is on a runaway train
Help, I’m alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer, beating like a hammer
If you’re still alive
My regrets are few.
If my life is mine,
what shouldn’t I do?
I get wherever I’m going,
I get whatever I need
while my blood’s still flowing
and my heart still beating like a hammer, beating like a hammer.
Help, I’m alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer
Hard to be soft, tough to be tender
Come take my pulse, the pace is on a runaway train
Help, I’m alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer, beating like a hammer
PS- Yesterday I forgot to write the another joy I had. Sunday I went to a restaurant where they were playing all this punk rock that reminded me of high school. When I went to the bathroom I could hear it even better, and I stood in the stall for a while and danced. That made me laugh. 🙂
Posted in Uncategorized on July 13, 2010| 1 Comment »
Miscellaneous joys:
I like getting gifts for people. I like buying artsy or poignant or silly cards and sending them, especially when unexpected. I like having friends over. I like when Lucky the dog bounds up on the couch and directly on my chest so he can lick my face. I like that I spent a day watching Harry Potter movies with my parents. I liked the image of my dad in the yard–a cigar in his mouth, noise-cancelling headphones on his ears with a trailing cord to the iPod tucked in his pocket, re-arranging the sprinkler on my mom’s flowers and checking on the homemade ice cream. I like that my mom can read my mind and that she got Biscuitville for us to eat for breakfast. I like speakerphone calls with my brother and my sister-in-law. I like resting when I need rest. I like staying up later than I should.
Joy in rekindled relationships:
I think this age can be rough on some people as far as friendship goes. Six years out of high school and two years out of college, it’s not surprising if one has lost touch with even the closest friends from high school and found that many college friends are only acquaintances. I’ve been relatively fortunate in this area, though I do find it difficult to relate to some people who once shared my worldviews or values or sense of humor, people who I had authentic friendships with.   But in the past week I got to spend time with a few people I was very close with in high school, and I found that though some are more distant from me than I realized, others are people I would love to have play a larger role in my life. I especially had fun at the beach with my friend April. We talked about everything from feminism to the high school musicals we were in to current crushes and future aspirations. I know that those 24 hours are going to be really special for me for years to come. Remember when we went to the beach and those women tried to help us with our umbrella but only made it worse? Remember when you had a giggling fit at the grocery store when we were trying to find quizzes like the ones we used to do in magazines? Remember how we ended up watching tv for 3 hours and you alternated speaking to me in 3 different languages?
Joy in a homecoming:
I was also overjoyed to welcome home my friend Patrick, who enlisted in the army for 6 years when we were seniors in high school. In his wallet he had a printout of an email I wrote him in 2004. I wrote that I thought the war was bullshit but that I would always love and support him and think of him and hope for his safety, and that I hoped we would stay friends because he was like a brother to me. We have stayed friends, and Friday night I felt a huge sense of relief and accomplishment that here we were in 2010–the year we could not imagine in 2004 when we were 18–drinking rum and Coke and celebrating that he was home and would never have to be deployed again. We have gone through our own separate hells and we are still good people. We not only want to hold on to our collective past but be at least a small part of each other’s present.
Joy in your own bones:
I am taking a bellydancing class that challenges me to look in the mirror for an hour and a half and not be shy, to love my body and focus on movement and muscles. I love dancing. I am surprised that my feet and arms automatically go to the ballet positions I learned when I was 5 and my hips go to the hippie-sways and salsa moves I started doing when I was 15. I am also surprised that I still confine my movement because that’s what I grew up doing in order to not take up more space than I already did as an uber-tall girl. There is joy in breaking out–with the empowerment from my teacher who yells “UMPH! BAM! HUP! HUP!”
And more miscellaneous joys:
There is joy in locally grown tomatoes, walking in the rain, being challenged by friends who believe that I should be more ambitious, celebrating anniversaries, mopping the kitchen floor, a sale on allergy medicine, and the person in my hometown church who told me it warms her heart to see me–and I know she means that she’s glad I am alive.
Posted in Uncategorized on July 2, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Joy is sitting at a picnic table in gorgeous summer evening weather, drinking beer out of a paper cup and sharing 2 desserts with 2 magnificent friends. It’s laughing at silly things like crushes on television actors and high-fiving over our victories. Not worrying about being judged or what time it is.
Joy is watching my big brother be ordained to his calling. Sniffling beside my sister-in-law when we are moved by the magnitude of the event. Feeling welcomed by a community as if I am family. Seeing the transformative details of how a new house becomes a home.
Joy is what friends do for you when you’re leaving a job you’re ready to leave. The taste of rainbow chip icing. Tiny paper cranes attached to french hooks so they dangle from my ears. Feeling that the future is open.
Joy is staying up reading, not realizing it is 4 a.m. Painting a gift for someone. Receiving happy out-of-the-blue texts from old friends. Laughing out loud even when alone. Singing and wondering if the neighbors can hear. Dancing dancing dancing.
Joy is seeing that small infants have grown into toddling playmates and talkers and dancers. The smiles on the parents’ faces. The accomplishment of fitting the correct shape into the matching hole so the star-shaped block click-clacks down onto the others.
Joy is wearing pajamas all day and not leaving the apartment because I’m gardening–not plants, but a book. I’m surfacing the past, digging a place for it, laying it out in an orderly fashion. I can walk through there and not stumble. Water with occasional tears. Make it more beautiful. Put this beside that so the overall picture is whole.
all-terrain segues, my friends. it's real and i'm not ashamed to say it's really really fun.
can one ever tire of photos of best friends or cute doggies?
or sweet one-year-olds with ladybug scooters?
it's good to remind oneself of what oneself is working for
and an equal sign goodbye cake (pictured here after being eaten) that honors the equity work I've done
and, of course, the friends who made the cake
let there be joy for every ending and beginning!
joy for being home
joy for love, support, a calling, an answering, an ordination
ADD JOY 