The simple things in life

I don't know if this is true for everyone, but there are certain moments in life when I experience pure happiness.  Not apropos of anything, it just is suddenly upon me.  There are not that many instances of it occurring.  Of course, everyone experiences happiness at certain occasions or while spending time with people they love, but usually even then at the back of your mind your to-do list is still there, your worries and anxieties are not that far behind.  When pure happiness hits, you know it because it's all you feel.  It's just plain joy at being alive.

I can remember one time when I was in college bringing back some lunch to my dorm.  I was carrying my drink and a sandwich and I was walking across the grass to the back door of the building.  I went to fish my keys out of my bag and it hit me.  I don't know why.  Nothing around me triggered it.  Just for a minute, everything seemed well and good in the world and I was happy.  It makes me think of that Florence + the Machine lyric:  "Happiness hit her like a bullet in the head/Struck from a great height by someone who should have known better."

Well, it's been many years since that incident, but the same thing happened to me today.  I was in the kitchen this morning.  I was standing there barefoot and in a pair of shorts I sleep in.  The window was cracked open so that a breeze was entering with the sunlight and hitting my bare legs.  It was somewhere around 75 degrees.  I was eating an apple I'd cut into slices.  I spread peanut butter on them.  It was quiet except for the cawing of a lone crow somewhere outside.  The strangest thing was that the linoleum of the kitchen floor felt so good against my feet.  It made no sense, but I was happy.

Eating Poetry

-Mark Strand

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

Pale Blue Dot

I was cleaning out my hard drive and came across this picture, which blows my mind every time I look at it:

That is called the Pale Blue Dot.  It was taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 spacecraft.  The "dot" is Earth, depicted against the vastness of space.  It looks so lonely; it's hard to imagine how teeming with life the planet is.  The best part of the picture, for me, is that it looks like Earth is caught in a shaft of light.  Really it's not a beam of light shining on it directly but a refraction of sunlight in the Voyager's camera optics.  But look at how tiny we are!  Earth is taking up less than a pixel of this photograph. 

Carl Sagan wrote a book called Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space.  In it, he references the photograph, saying,

"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds . . . It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."


Sir, Say no More

Sir, say no more.
Within me ’t is as if
The green and climbing eyesight of a cat
Crawled near my mind’s poor birds.

-Trumbull Stickney

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Christmas Bells

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."

I love this poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  It reminds me of one of my favorite Christmas memories, when my family was traveling in Florence.  We ate dinner on Christmas Eve at a place called Buca Mario that consisted of bread, olive oil, wine, and several courses in between.  Then we walked back to our hotel full and sleepy and later awoke to hear bells ringing all across the city for Christmas. 

Hearing church bells is one of my most favorite things.  And while we're on the subject of favorite things, I suspect it comes from a scene in The Sound of Music (the first movie I ever saw).  There's one part where they show a boy ringing a church bell just before Maria marries Capt. Von Trapp.  That sound is just so joyful, but I think I like it because it also evokes something "old world" to me. 

Well, if James Lipton ever asks me his list of questions, I guess I've got one down!

Happy Christmas.

Dear Norman Rockwell, I'm sorry I compared you to that other guy.

At the Smithsonian American Art Museum there is currently an exhibition from George Lucas' and Steven Spielberg's personal collections of Norman Rockwell paintings.  The exhibit is titled "Telling Stories," and upon visiting it I finally understood the "big deal" about Rockwell's work. 

I always took his art for granted, I guess because it seemed so ubiquitous and accessible, like Thomas Kinkade's stuff which is on every card, calendar and cross stitch.  But Rockwell's paintings are certainly more than just fairy houses.  What I finally appreciated today was not only the fact that he tells a story with each one, but that he brings the audience into the story halfway through the telling of it.  Take, for example, this picture:

Just that look on the teacher's face conveys her love for each and every one of her students. She is so touched by their birthday wishes to her--even from the class clown with the eraser on his head.  Clearly her class adores her, too.

And then there's this one:

Rockwell was a master of giving you all the information you need in just one frame.  You can tell immediately by looking at this what is going on.  And he was so good at giving us images of everyday American life.  Even though these kids' clothes are old-fashioned, this scene has played out time and again in school gyms for decades.

So with my new found respect for Norman Rockwell, I will leave you with one of my favorites:

What do you think of the story?


Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School

by Jane Kenyon 

The others bent their heads and started in.
Confused, I asked my neighbor
to explain—a sturdy, bright-cheeked girl
who brought raw milk to school from her family’s
herd of Holsteins. Ann had a blue bookmark,
and on it Christ revealed his beating heart,
holding the flesh back with His wounded hand.
Ann understood division. . . .

Miss Moran sprang from her monumental desk
and led me roughly through the class
without a word. My shame was radical
as she propelled me past the cloakroom
to the furnace closet, where only the boys
were put, only the older ones at that.
The door swung briskly shut.

The warmth, the gloom, the smell
of sweeping compound clinging to the broom
soothed me. I found a bucket, turned it
upside down, and sat, hugging my knees.
I hummed a theme from Haydn that I knew
from my piano lessons. . . .
and hardened my heart against authority.
And then I heard her steps, her fingers
on the latch. She led me, blinking
and changed, back to the class.

Glaring is caring?

The other day when I was waiting for the airport shuttle to pick me up, I was getting angry because it was a half an hour late.  I called the company twice and was assured the driver was "almost there," "almost there" but cars came and went and my blood pressure continued to rise.  When the van finally pulled up I rushed down the driveway and loaded my stuff inside.  I was already in a bad mood, exhausted from moving right up until the hour I had to leave, and I really wasn't planning to tip this driver.  Then he struck up a conversation.  I was surprised that I was the only person in the shuttle.  The driver asked if the company had called to tell me that he was running late.  I said, no, but I called them.  He told me they gave him this assignment at the last minute and he had to hurry down from Burbank.  They told him he had to be here by 10:30 and he said, there's no way with traffic, but I'll be there as soon as I can.  We proceeded to have a really nice conversation the entire way to the airport.  The company let him give all his other passengers to someone else so he could rush me to my plane once he picked me up.  I was ashamed by my bad attitude.  Here I was ready to unleash my stress and frustrations out on someone who was only doing their best to help me.

Over and over this year, I have been struck by the good nature and simple human kindness displayed by strangers.  Another example:  On my flight, the overhead bins were completely full by the time my section was boarded.  I had a laptop bag and a large purse, but they couldn't both fit under the seat in front of me.  I was debating whether I was really going to have to check my laptop when the woman beside me offered to let me put my purse with hers under the seat in front of her.  Who does that?  Nice people, apparently! 

I know I have a terrible tendency to myopically view things when life gets too crazy or times are tough, but meanwhile all around the city doors are being held open and even postal workers have been greeting people with a smile.  Then I watched this video a friend posted on facebook, and boy did I feel sheepish.  Yes, I'll try to be better in the new year.

The God of Loneliness

It’s a cold Sunday February morning
and I’m one of eight men waiting
for the doors of Toys R Us to open
in a mall on the eastern tip of Long Island.
We’ve come for the Japanese electronic game
that’s so hard to find. Last week, I waited
three hours for a store in Manhattan
to disappoint me. The first today, bundled
in six layers, I stood shivering in the dawn light
reading the new Aeneid translation, which I hid
when the others came, stamping boots
and rubbing gloveless hands, joking about
sacrificing sleep for ungrateful sons. “My boy broke
two front teeth playing hockey,” a man wearing
shorts laughs. “This is his reward.” My sons
will leap into my arms, remember this morning
all their lives. “The game is for my oldest boy,
just back from Iraq,” a man in overalls says
from the back of the line. “He plays these games
in his room all day. I’m not worried, he’ll snap out of it,
he’s earned his rest.” These men fix leaks, lay
foundations for other men’s dreams without complaint.
They’ve been waiting in the cold since Aeneas
founded Rome on rivers of blood. Virgil understood that
death begins and never ends, that it’s the god of loneliness.
Through the window, a clerk shouts, “We’ve only five.”
The others seem not to know what to do with their hands,
tuck them under their arms, or let them hang,
naked and useless. Is it because our hands remember
what they held, the promises they made? I know
exactly when my boys will be old enough for war.
Soon three of us will wait across the street at Target,
because it’s what men do for their sons.

-Philip Schultz

Does anyone ever say "no" when asked if they like music?

I am a sucker for strangers suddenly becoming united through a shared experience, especially when it involves music.  Stopping to witness a busker outside a subway station playing classical pieces on a set of crystal water glasses or getting a karaoke serenade by an undercover Jewel, these equally thrill me.  In this case (yes, it is a T-Mobile commercial), it's the welcoming of new arrivals at Heathrow airport with spontaneous singing.  



It's just something that makes people pause in their everyday lives and connect with each other.  It often results in the quick draw of a camera phone, but it also makes you glad to be alive.

In honor of the upcoming holiday season, here is a "Random Act of Culture" brought to you by the Opera Company of Philadelphia.  (Did you know that their Macy's has the largest pipe organ in the world? )





The Guitar

The weeping of the guitar
begins.
The goblets of dawn
are smashed.
The weeping of the guitar
begins.
Useless
to silence it.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps monotonously
as water weeps
as the wind weeps
over snowfields.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps for distant
things.
Hot southern sands
yearning for white camellias.
Weeps arrow without target
evening without morning
and the first dead bird
on the branch.
Oh, guitar!
Heart mortally wounded
by five swords.

-Federico García Lorca

And beauty said, "boo!"

Sometimes beauty creeps up on you in the most unexpected places.  For me, it often comes in the form of food.  It could be seeing a gorgeous piece of meat in the window of a butcher's case at Whole Foods.  I don't know why, but I fall in love with the deep red color of raw beef or tuna.  Where does that come from?  Is it some primal part of me that rears up to roar every so often?  I don't even particularly want to eat the raw meat-- it's just so pretty.  Or sometimes, I take a bite of something completely commonplace like bread, and it's so good it makes my mouth water as I chew it.  It's the most unexpected, wonderful thing.  It's exactly what I wanted at that moment and I didn't even know it.

Yesterday, I experienced a non-food related version of this phenomenon.  I was holed up in my apartment (not even hiding from gangs!), and I was feeling kind of restless.  I knew there were these very general "things" I should be doing, but I couldn't focus and I couldn't even decide whether to sit down or take a shower, eat or make a phone call.  I was just sort of standing in front of my bookshelf, staring at the way the books were grouped.  I was completely ignoring the basket of clean laundry that had been waiting to be put away for about 5 days.  All of a sudden this clear, beautiful voice cut in through the haze.  My neighbor was singing opera and it was like a scene in a movie where a prisoner somehow gains access to a record player and is able to broadcast the music over the entire prison.  The music changes the entire mood.  It calms anger, it gives hope.  I was listening to a friend the other day talk about her job working with autistic children and how music actually enhances learning for them.

For me, I couldn't get enough of it.  This wasn't even the first time I had heard that neighbor practice her singing, but for some reason it was more beautiful to me now than in the other times.  How unexpected and yet, exactly what I needed.

Happiness

So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren't saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take
each other's arm.
It's early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.

-Raymond Carver