Anyway, this came about because of my friend Zaven read The Day I Died: After Katrina and was horrified. He said, Jennifer, you should be writing cheerful poems. Not THIS! So I sat at a park bench in the middle of the university and felt sad as I always did that I was leaving so soon and that this was my final semester. Spring was finally here after months and months of rain. I was over my debilitating cold.
And I looked up the sky which was of a blue popularly associated with the South of France.
And words started trickling into my head. I would write a happy poem. The only happy one (or at least happier one) that I would hand up to Marcella for our poetry class. (We were supposed to hand up 10 or 12, I can't remember which). Most of them I had written while drunk and this side of suicidal. When Marcella first read them she wondered whether I required an intervention.
No, I didn't. Just another glass of wine.
A friend recently asked me why I was qualified to write a happiness blog. Was I a happiness expert?
No, I said, quite the reverse. But I'm going to write one anyway. And update it everyday even if no one reads it. With a little joy plucked from the jaws of death. I had committed, to myself at least, to updating it every day for a year.
So here I am, updating it. Feel free to stop by. Feel free to not.
I'll be here, regardless.
No, it was not the Lake District,
and God knows, I’m no Wordsworth
But there they were
on the fringes
of a manicured lawn
waving their gaudy heads.
Yellow flowers, I called them,
Until Christa told me they’re daffodils
her favourite flower and she
leaned down to smell one.
Daffodils? They curl their scented lips,
Daffodils? They sing like mynahs.
Truly love it was the nightingale and not the lark!
I huddled on a bench
under a sky of blue concentrate
and the wispy heat of an
almost summer day
and smelled my memories.
And thought
why be sad?
There is hope yet,
There are yellow flowers,
There are daffodils.
I rather like this other facet of you, it's a nice contrast. And besides, it never hurts to have a reminder that good things do occasionally happen, often times when we least expect it...
ReplyDeleteHello. It's so nice to see you here. You have no idea how it warms the cockles of my little heart when I click on my mail and see...comment from Perl Hacker. Yes, good things do occasionally happen. So I start off the morning counting my blessings. That is, when I don't start off the morning shooting out of bed late, and getting irritated with everyone and everything because I'm late and there is the dog to be walked and it's going to be a busy day and I'm so frigging tired and I wish I hadn't stayed at the pub till one this morning...you know how it is. (Or maybe you don't)
ReplyDeleteI'm glad I can brighten someone's day. :o)
ReplyDeleteI do, though I tend to go through spells where I run myself completely ragged, followed by weeks of somnolescence (work-read-sleep, work-read-sleep, work-read-sleep). Somewhere in the middle of all this lies a region of comfortable balance, but where O' where I'll never quite know.
Rest easy, if you can. You don't have to make it through the whole month--just the next day, and the one after that. I am a bonafide expert at making it to the next day, haha...
Hello Perl. I'm back from an interview. I was dreading it but it went OK. In fact, good. I have much to do but trying to take it a minute at a time...sighing a lot helps. :-)
ReplyDelete