Archipelago of Joy

explodingdog:

Crazy Monster asks the tough questions.

O. Henry was here.

experiments in phodography

sometimes you find little halcyon days tucked in surprisingly among clouds and vague worries. you run barefoot in May and plant tiny vegetable gardens in pots. in sunny mid-mornings, you share a deck lounge with your beautiful puppy, while a perfect spring mix floats out through the open kitchen door and your skin gets that sunny smell. the afternoon sun gives you a gorgeous tan while you read Northanger Abbey and the Etymologicon and sip hot or iced tea. you grill hamburgers, teriyake chicken, asparagus, steaks, garlic toast, and somehow they all turn out wonderful. you enjoy mint juleps and pomegranate margaritas. you run your heart out after your puppy, irrepressibly laughing as she barks excitedly for you to run faster. when you’re worn out but she’s not, you blow bubbles for her to chase and watch them float up overhead against a blue sky. you take evening drives to the beach and see your puppy bound through the beach grass out over the dunes and play in the foam at high tide.

Like, one of my favorite things.

I’ve often wondered exactly who it is I wish for when I find a happy moment. The late evening sun makes the blackberry leaves glow, and I’m sitting next to a warm puppy as the cold air rushes in off the ocean. Ah, I think, this would be a beautiful moment. But for some reason, it can’t be for me, by myself. I wonder who I wish was beside me.

I don’t think it’s that one person anymore. I used to think I wanted just one person to share everything with, my soul mate who would see everything as I did only more so. Now I’m sure that’s not it. I realized tonight, as I ticked through my mental rollidex of who would make that moment be beautiful to me. It would be someone who would enjoy it. Someone who would see it and for a brief time be happy.

People often comment on how cheerful I am. Certainly I’ve gone through my mopey periods, my angry, selfish days, weeks, months, years. And I get frustrated, and scared, and lonely. I snap at people, and I give up hope. Occasionally, I’ll wallow in the negativity du jour. But I only rarely and briefly stop wanting to be happy.

And now, at 25, I find that I just want to find other people who do, too.

***

Lots of artists today are on a quest for a serene happiness. They get together and are serenely happy together. Like so: http://www.kinfolkmag.com/manifesto/

Perhaps my lack of art history knowledge has me wrong on this, but it seems that artists have often in the past joined together to quest for humanity’s darkness to prove to a happy society that people are mad. And I suppose it’s painting with too broad a brush (see what I did there?) to make that sort of sweeping statement about previous artist communities (lost generation? France? beauty, yes, but happiness, not so much, yeah?) so, just, is happiness now countercultural?

We’ll hate what we’ve lost but we’ll love what we find

• H, 510 pm: so damn tired
• J, 612 pm: Im sorry baby, you need to go to sleep
• H, 752 pm: no I'm good now. bourbon.