In the Pines: The Rollercoaster of Joy, part two

In which the writer continues to contemplate and blather upon the subject of joy, inspired by a writing prompt in musician and writer Nick Cave’s column “The Red Hand Files.” Mr. Cave seemed to advocate seeking out joy, treating joy as a decision that one makes. Here’s where we left off last column (Click here to see previous column.):

We can court joy and look for it. We can imagine it is within our control. Or we can turn our back and wait for it to tap us on the shoulder.

We can experience long, arduous times of stress and grief and caregiving, misery and depression and illness, suicidal ideation and the bleak muffling of our senses. Forcing ourselves into joy may not be the remedy. Crawling through the darkness on our hands and knees, blindfolded, our mouths gagged, may be the only way through. Only after we satisfy the needs of Ereshkigal and Hades and Persephone in the underworld may our joy rise again.

How do I find joy? By relishing my one short life here in Earth School. By going deep underground when necessary and refusing to slap a smiley face on trauma, grief, and shadow. By not demanding constant joy of myself, but often placing myself in situations where I can engage with the world’s ever-cycling magics: wandering the woods, lying on my back watching stars, sitting in the totality of a solar eclipse for over two minutes, marveling and laughing.

I find joy drinking tea with my close friends, playing music, singing, writing poetry. I find joy visiting a holy spring where ice-melt water burbles out of the ground. Taking walks, solo or with loved ones, silent or recording a podcast, stopping to wrap my body around giant ponderosa pines with crackling orange and black bark, breathing in their deep smells of vanilla and sunlight.

I find joy camping and playing Yahtzee with my hilarious, wild, cackling mom and her sisters. Allowing myself to write, even when the poem or song that comes out is intense and dark and kinda freaks me out. Writing for my community in the local newspaper. Yeah, this one.

Every so often, I find joy in visiting the city where I used to live, experiencing my friend Soriah perform his beautiful shamanic throat singing. I take joy in how he has learned and practiced his art for decades, becoming a master. Now he’s opening for musicians we’ve admired since we were young, back when we played in bands together, bands no one has ever heard of.

And then I dance with unpremeditated exuberance as Bauhaus or Love and Rockets takes the stage. It is like church, to sing these songs along with my fellow fans, who are also brimming with joy. The bubbling sensation follows me to the after-party, where I see friends whose equally joyful faces I haven’t seen in years.

The most significant way in which I have courted joy, though, is raising children. Dropping into the strange version of time they inhabit, sitting with the giggles and the learning and imagination, and also the boredom. The grit and the splendour, the poop and the milk.

Spending hour after hour on the floor with my seven-year-old stepdaughter playing our homemade game, Harry Potter Puppets. Curling up together for Movie Night every Tuesday, watching The Princess Bride and eating mac and cheese. Inventing story after story for her, and later for her little brother.

In the parking garage at the hospital where his dad lay intubated and incoherent after his brain injury, showing our 19-month-old son how to sing into the concrete staircase, sing into the nighttime expanse of the garage’s first floor, teaching him words like “reverb” and “delay.” Sharing his joy as he punched the elevator button, lighting it up, so we could rise on up to the brain injury ward.

To the child, joy comes naturally — as naturally and immediately as hunger, pain, delight, and howling dissatisfaction when their needs aren’t met. The child enacts all these intense, mammalian desires and states of being without premeditation or filters. The child does not ask for joy.

For us grownups, perhaps it’s not about seeking out joy but rather responding to our woes and desires with directness and honesty. The child is observant, embodied, flowing with awareness through their body. They are honest enough to cry when the red ball bounces out of view, possibly never to be seen again. They are bright enough to sense the joy waiting to burst forth from a dandelion, a funny-shaped cloud, a speck of green sprout poking up through miles of dead ash.

A little child shall lead them. Perhaps we should follow.

PS: Within a few years later my husband recovered, becoming a man more interested in spiritual and philosophical matters than he’d ever been before. I take joy in his existence, a joy sharpened by knowing how close I came to losing him.