"Her Hardest Hue to Hold"/The Pursuit of Happiness

This post was slated to begin several days ago as a litany of the sweet and funny and heart-swelling and purely fun and interesting and just plain awesome moments that wallpapered my two weeks on the east coast. I sat, last Friday morning, in my aunt's backyard on the outskirts of Boston, swimming back through those moments and thinking of Robert Frost and his leaves subsiding to leaves, thinking how reluctant I was to fold up the tail ends of my vacation and return to San Francisco.

But then, this evening, S. and I sit on my sofa, suddenly a little heavy and teary after a long and spectacular day, and it's another poet who comes to mind.

Earlier in the day, we drive around Marin, in awe of our unbelievable summery weather (finally, finally). At the Muir Beach Overlook, we stare for a long time out at the ocean, all blue and green and glittering madly. At Stinson, I wade into the water, cold and bracing and tugging at my feet like a sweet ache; we eat ice cream and drink cold caffeine and wander languidly through town. We drive and drive, stopping to snap photos of cows, to Point Reyes. Back south in Sausalito, we sit at the edge of the water and watch the city in the distance, the city to which S. is about to bid farewell, the city in which my life will carry on. Finally, then, back to Hayes Valley for our last supper at PaulK.

And then we're home, sitting on the sofa laughing until we're choked up with the reality of our impending goodbye. We talk and talk--about heading into the unknown and unseen, about having your slate wiped clean, about not promising but hoping, about how to go on when your life isn't what you thought it might be, about believing that, ultimately, people are wired to connect and care and love. (And S., they are, they are, they are.)

S. says something about the unlikelihood of leaving behind what you've done and starting over in the name of happiness and I immediately go über-American on him. You can always start over, I say. If you take nothing else away from your year in the U.S., take this: the belief that you can begin again, the belief in the pursuit of happiness.

And when, at length, I hug him goodbye one last time and watch him walk down my front steps, out into the night, it's Frost who comes to mind first: Nothing gold can stay. (How we both know that, and far too well.)

But then it's Whitman--unabashedly hopeful, slightly goofball, occasionally naïve Whitman, master of lightheartedly beginning again. Who better to wave the flag of optimism for whatever it is that's out there?

And so, S., it's with deep affection, no promises but hope (l'espoir, l'espoir), and some Walt Whitman that America and I bid you au revoir, bonne chance, et a bientôt.

From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.

The World Shines (for Krista)

I'm sorry, but this deserves a "Well, GODDAMMIT!": my friend and colleague Krista, who is smart, funny, sweet, creative, and sassy to beat the band, has been diagnosed with breast cancer--invasive ductal carcinoma, to be exact.

I know this because Krista has been Tweeting her heart out about her diagnosis this afternoon (brave, brave, BRAVE, mon amie!), and has also posted a message to her blog asking people to share some of their favorite things so she has pleasant stuff to think about as she deals with what can only be called some seriously crapwad news.

It so happens, my dear Krista, that I've recently gotten into the habit of adding to the daily summary I write each night a few notes on whatever made me happy throughout the day. This is generally a random, ragtag, not-exactly-puppies-and-balloons kind of list, but it shows me that sometimes glee pops up in totally unexpected forms, and sometimes from ridiculously simple things.

So Krista, here are a few bits and pieces from my lists. If I could bundle them up and send them to you by mail, I would, because I sort of think they'd pop out of the envelope in a huge, delightfully messy, pleasantly chaotic jumble, like a much cooler version of one of those fake cans of nuts with a spring-loaded Slinky snake inside. But I'll mail you some restorative San Francisco chocolate instead, and will give you these moments right here:

• The driver of a plumbing van playing a harmonica with his window rolled down while stuck in traffic on Gough Street the other day
• Listening to "Wait Wait--Don't Tell Me" on my iPod at the gym and laughing so hard I had to put down the weights I was trying to hoist
• Discovering the cheapest Bulleit Manhattan in SF at Bar ($6! For Bulleit!)
  
• Standing in the patch of bright afternoon sunlight spilling through my kitchen window and onto the floor
• Watching the wedding montage in "Up in the Air" for the second time
• Finding multi-colored popcorn at Rainbow Grocery (even though, alas, it all pops out to be the same color--which is probably some sort of "Kumbayah" lesson for us all from the food world)
• Getting a free box of Girl Scout cookies from a client who'd bought multiples
• Watching the band geek version of OK Go's "This Too Shall Pass" over and over (and over and...). I can't NOT be wildly, stupidly happy every time I see this.

Cheap top-shelf bourbon, harmonica-playing plumbers, and marching band-filled pop tunes can't keep the world and its sometimes-sucktastic realities at bay forever, but for a little while, damn, do they brighten things up.

We're with you, Krista, all the freaking way.

Suggestion

"I can only suggest you do your best to banish anxiety, possibly with a glass of Champagne, and lay yourself open to the moment when happiness becomes irresistible. I'm writing this at a good time of the year. The beech trees are covered with fresh, green leaves--we are going to have a birthday lunch in the garden. My grandchildren will play in the mysterious sunken copses, disused flint pits now filled with tall and ancient trees, where I also played as a child. The daffodils will be in flower, and the dogs will be jumping over them. There is every possible reason for happiness, but it's a moment of sadness too. How many more such birthdays will there be? It's sad my mother never saw my daughters grow up. Although the poet Shelley was right about our sincerest laughter being fraught with sadness, it's the sadness, in a way, which makes happiness complete."

--from Where There's a Will: Thoughts on the Good Life, by John Mortimer

Expansion

Moonrise in Sonoma

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

-from Li Young-Lee, "From Blossoms"

I had forgotten this: the feeling of so much concentrated bliss that it's almost hard to breathe, and nearly impossible to fathom, at least for a while, that anything could ever be wrong in the world. But now I remember.

We spent the day in Sonoma, S and I and his visiting friend, and for hours I was so happy I sometimes couldn't speak. Sitting overlooking the lake at Gundlach Bundschu in the bright sun of late afternoon with my eyes half-closed and S's arms around me; looking up from every sip of wine to see that beautiful and adoring face close to mine; watching out the window as we sped through the heartbreakingly pretty golden hour scenery along route 12, my hand on S's knee as he drove: I don't have adequate words to describe how these things made something in me lighten and expand so much that there was no room for anything other than untempered joy and amazement.

Those two can't last forever on their own, of course; back in the city, with night fallen, there were parking woes, an unexciting and overly expensive meal out, S reaching a saturation point after 5 straight days with his friend, and the annoying reappearance of the real world in the form of outstanding work tasks and bills to pay and planning to do for the week ahead. And, of course, there was our goodbye, utterly untenable despite being very temporary, which has left me listless and unmoored.

And yet, and yet: those hours of sunshine, brilliant skies, baisers volés, hands touching, free wine, effortless joy--they've left me feeling calmer and more whole than I have for much too long, and have reminded me that sometimes fate or good luck or good timing intervenes and kicks open the door that's kept you for months in a murky dimness, leaving you blinking, dazzled, and pleasantly dazed in the sudden onslaught of light.

The First

I will forget, sometime in December, say, that there was a night when I stood in my kitchen listening to the first rainfall of the season and almost got teary-eyed because it sounded so beautiful.

I will forget, when things get wet-to-the-point-of-never-really-drying a few months hence, that I went out for a run this evening, managed not to beat the rain, came home wet not so much from the exertion of my workout but from the water falling from the sky, and loved it.

I will forget, on those days when it's raining so hard that even leaving the house becomes a logistical challenge, how I reveled earlier in the smell of newly wet and still warm cement as I ran.

And I will forget, when it's dark at 5 p.m. and that darkness is only made heavier for being so sodden and cold, that something in me was ever ok with this sign that we're inexorably turning the corner towards fall.

But for the moment, I silence iTunes, and for a few minutes just sit and listen to the low hiss of cars on Laguna driving over wet pavement, listen to a steady drip-drip-drip on the back porch that suggests some re-caulking of the walls there lies ahead for me, listen to the tiny music of what must be individual drops hitting the leaves of the tree in the backyard. And for the moment I swear that nothing has ever sounded sweeter.