The Happiest Day of Your Life
This might be a shortish post as August is flying by and I need to spend some time sitting in my backyard. I know you understand.
Well, I rarely like to give out advice because the internet is full of people telling everyone else how to behave. And really, my belief is that people need to delve inside themselves for the best advice. You already know what you need to do. But this by Werner Herzog is the good stuff.
And then this one, whew! Instead of going easy in your old age, go hard. Don’t take it easy; take it hard. And yes, heck yes.
Thanks to Devin Kelly’s Ordinary Plots, I have been reading The Inextinguishable, poems by Michael Lavers and it is exactly what I needed right now. There are in fact three poems in the book with the title “The Happiest Day of Your Life.” Right there, I’m delighted. Read Lavers for lines like “and since chaos so often wins / let’s demand what we can.” Another poem ends, “This is not an argument or an idea. / It’s just a feeling, and these days feelings / are all I have. Feelings are everything.” And they are, aren’t they?
I was reminded of a post from days gone by on the word “tenderness” and of Galway Kinnell’s line: “The secret title of every good poem might be ‘Tenderness.’”
And maybe the secret title behind “The Happiest Day of Your Life” is “Tenderness.” This book felt very human to me at a time when I think we crave the very human more than ever. I would honestly love a book where every single poem is titled “The Happiest Day of Your Life.” Please feel free to write it for me.
Another old post I was thinking about this morning, because I took John O’Donohue’s Four Elements off the shelf was this one. I feel like I’ve mainly left the black dog behind these days. For sure I will always know how quickly one can be overtaken, but for now, we’re at a proper distance. These were some hard years, honestly.
I don’t feel like I quite have my breathing back, you know, but getting there. When I first started thinking about breathing I very much loved O’Donohue’s description of this exercise where he instructs you to breathe in light and lightness, and breathe out darkness, “clods of heavy charcoal sadness” which he says can “leave your soul on the outward breath.” (So much so that you will likely find it in more than one post).
I would like to think more about and work more at cosmic breathing, as Rilke has called it. Poetry is a kind of breathing, too. “To breathe, o invisible poem!” says he.
Gaston Bachelard: “What a magnification of breath there is when the lungs speak, sing, make poems! Poetry helps one breathe well.” And so it does.
I’ve been thinking about how the people we don’t like and the people who don’t like us — how they are probably also tender right now. We don’t know that they’re not. They’re breathing, part of the cosmic breath. I don’t know how to heal the wounds between us all, so many, and more every day.
Take it easy, take it hard and harder, breathe in light and breathe in light and breathe out clods of darkness and heavy charcoal sadness. Read, sit, read more. May you breathe well. May you find some light today.
