dangling off a bridge
Two wake-up calls, small, specific, almost missed:
Someone in our town has been reading the Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude. They special-ordered it at our public library. I know, because this slim poetry volume by Ross Gay had just been returned when I wandered in. It lay on the ship-to-home-library cart. To catch me, wake me. Moment of hesitation, tossed out. I want to say, Thank you, to this someone living amid a few thousand others in our community, us with fears and dreams, with worries, families, alone, yearnings, with jobs or not, drunk at times perhaps on the beauty of this earth. I want to say: Ah, you too. I get it.
I had heard about Gay, this man who delights in delight and once said, when asked, How can we be joyful in a moment like this? “How can we not be joyful, especially in a moment like this?” This booklet perfect timing as I was deeply confused about an issue in my life, with now a sudden opening within reach.
The next morning, on a steep gravel road, sunlight sprawling like a celestial fan through dark clouds catches a shimmering light sprung from farther up the hill. Blinding illumination, trying to reach my heart. So I pull onward, not losing sight, yet not seeing, stumbling, my focus ahead and not on my feet. Here: A piece of mica-studded tile, crushed at some point in the maws of a machine. To find me, fill me. I want to ask, Who lived in this tiled space, now demolished, your dreams and sorrows, What is it that this stone gave to you, transmitted somehow? I want to say, Yes, you too. Thank you. (The issue now light and lightly.)
Moments for the daily, the ordinary, ugly, the juxtaposition of violence, fear, possibility of joy, always love, my body an instrument that can receive this. Or as Gay says: "Terror immediately beside . . . let’s call it delight—different from pleasure, connected to joy—terror and delight sitting next to each other, their feet dangling off the side of a bridge very high up."
Moments of shocking, iridescent insight. Available. Kindness and impact through ripples we'll never know. Connected. Ridiculously so. I think we can trust this. Understanding something below the surface.
What small moment delighted you this week, in any which way, sitting next to terror, insight?
And for background:
The other side of impact is, of course, trusting our capacity to receive such moments. Franz Kafka comes to mind: “You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.” And yes, maybe it is not surprising that this is the same Kafka who wrote The Metamorphosis (German: Die Verwandlung) a novella in which Gregor Samda wakes up one morning finding himself transformed into an insect. Delight and terror.
For more about Ross Gay, here his website.
Click here for the full title poem of Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude. (which I think is amazing, breathless in its power, and how it can really affect the way we think about our work, our lives. Here is a paragraph by Gay from that title poem:
"I want so badly to rub the sponge of gratitude
over every last thing, including you (...)"
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