A random collection of things
Newly sprouting beans
joys big and small:
In no particular order—some of these are my joys, some of these may be yours, and others still might be from humans who are just a few degrees of separation from you.
Want to contribute? Throw a joy into the mix and I’ll add it to the list.
Postcards from near and far
Using things as bookmarks that aren’t usually bookmarks. (Example - a tiny flat wrench that came in a furniture-assembly kit.)
Gathering with strangers and making noise
Winning $1 from a $1 scratcher lotto ticket
Going through the pile of old receipts in your wallet and fondly remembering time spent with loved ones
When its sticky hot outside and you can smell magnolia blossoms from the neighbor’s yard
Friends who don’t care that your flight is at 6:45AM and take you to the airport anyway
Friends who aren’t mad when you miss your 6:45AM flight and come back to pick your sad ass up. And then spend the day doing fun things with you to cheer you up.
Disproportionate nativity figurines
A note signed with a number
Constantly finding trash in my pockets
A well-segmented grapefruit
Discovering googly eyes on random objects
Deceptively long walks
The smell of freshly blown out birthday candles
Accidentally mistyping a word that turns out to sound really funny in your head - ex. “tomators”
Channeling my inner squirrel: filling a bag with pecans from the ground outside my apartment and cracking them for hours
Putting really specific numbers of seconds for microwave times
Candles that are definitely outside of my budget and smell too delicious
Chopping celery
Fireflies
Hitting the guacamole jackpot in a burrito
Winning a hand of poker by bluffing
Blowing bubbles
Leftovers
Reading books at a snail’s pace
The smell of freshly mown grass
Dipping delicious things into other delicious things
Messages in bottles and other unexpected places
The sound of cracking an egg and nesting the empty shells inside each other
Hosting impromptu dinner parties
Tiny freezer creatures
Pecan brittle
The ocean
Finding constellations in the sky
Playing tennis with my dad
Decorating cookies with tiny humans (and not so tiny ones too)
Hot dogs and cheese fries
Making a new friend
The featheriest dusting of snow
Meditation when I actually take time to do it
Watching Chicago whiz by from a seat on the train
Shrimp
Leaves flying off their branches into the wind
Old ladies talking about my bundle of bagels
Orange leaves on the trees
Epsom salt baths
New blinds
Scrabble
Trivia with friends and strangers
Learning about humans and our need for connection
Grilling on my porch
Jeopardy
Beach days
Live music
The amazing strong women I am surrounded by daily
Good windshield wipers
Making silly playlists
A perfectly ripe nectarine (or peach, as long as we’re at it.)
Watching loved ones enjoy the food I cooked them
Gardenias
The word robust
Browsing coupons that come in the mail
Pumpkins
Being my own dance partner
The Seven of Pentacles
by Marge Piercy
Under a sky the color of pea soup
she is looking at her work growing away there
actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees,
then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.
Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.
Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.
Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after
the planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.
My grandma’s sugar cookie recipe in case you’re in need
if you make them, make sure you heed the note to chill the dough overnight and then roll the dough when it’s still cold and use plenty of cake flour to keep it from sticking to your rolling pin - work quickly or else you’re in for a sticky gooey situation - call me if you need more tips.
Perhaps the World Ends Here
BY JOY HARJO
The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.
"Perhaps the World Ends Here" from The Woman Who Fell From the Sky by Joy Harjo. Copyright © 1994 by Joy Harjo. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., www.wwnorton.com.
Source: The Woman Who Fell From the Sky (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1994)
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49622/perhaps-the-world-ends-here
