My cousin wrote me today asking for an explaination of what I meant when I said Discussion of What Is Happy. I was referring to a cartoon I saw in the New Yorker many, many years ago. The cartoon showed two guys walking past a bar and on the sandwich board outside the bar it read, Happy Hour at 5, followed by a discussion of What is Happy. Well, my friends, what is happy?
To be truthful, there are so many things that make me happy. Greeting each new day with a dog on each side of the bed. My morning coffee, freshly ground and brewed. Riding in my convertible with the top down on a cold fall day with the heated seats on high, the windows up and the heater on full. Swimming in Long Lake in the late afternoon with friends and cocktails. Seeing the Lightening Bugs in my garden on a warm summer's evening. The smell of the Pine Trees on a chilly winter afternoon. The snow blowing past my french doors while a fire is burning in the wood stove near by. The fact that it is still light after 9 pm in the early summer. I could go on for ever.
To quote Krandall Kraus and Nicky Borja, "Once you have experienced dying, the experience of living is changed unalterably and forever. Nothing looks, sounds, or feels the same again. the world and all that is in it take on a translucent quality. One sees 'through the world' as it were, into the heart of things. the trivial falls away, essences come to the surface; nothing is merely what it appears to be. Blustery men, provocative women, weeping children, even automobiles, trees, oceans, Forth of July parades - all take on a kind of diaphanous quality."
After being diagnosed with a terminal illness, I am now discovering that so much makes me happy. I know it doesn't make sense but there you go, neither does life. Every afternoon at my house, a discussion of what is happy happens right after happy hour. Of course, happy hour is every hour.
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