Tag Archives: flowers

What Happens When Joy Fills You?

Do you break open? Do you fall down? Do you float away?

Are we vessels for joy? Maybe. And, like, a lot of others things, too, right? Like pain and despair and incredulousness and dignity, honor, pride, grief, and boredom, and…

We carry EVERYTHING.

Joy makes us feel alive I think. It feels like the opposite of pain (most times). Sometimes joy makes us cry, though. And sometimes joy can hurt – even though it’s the opposite of hurtful – because it’s all wrapped up in more than one experience, more than one moment. Joy is bittersweet with remembering and pride and impermanence, layers of dark chocolate with raspberries. Maybe.

What was the last thing that filled you with joy?

Some people describe joy as “really really really super happy.” But, you know, happiness comes and goes. Other people describe joy as the thing that is always there because it exists outside of time and space. It’s like this all-pervasive essence because it doesn’t come from material things; it comes from spiritual things. Even if you don’t believe in spirit.

For me, joy is that lasting thing that exists all the time. It is a brightness. It flashes and sparks. It’s like that emoji with three 4-pointed stars of varying sizes.

So, joy’s always there, but it swells. Joy SWELLS. Are you thinking of the ocean? Yeah, I think it’s kinda like that, like waves.

The most recent thing that filled me with joy was watching a genius musician THRILL at the awesomeness of another musician’s art. Watching a musician experience another musician’s song and appreciating the hell out of it is magical for me. I feel it in my face around my mouth where I can’t stop smiling. I feel it in my forehead around my eyes where my brows are lifting. I feel it in my chest around my heart where my blood is pumping.

This also happens to me when I see a writer in awe at another writer’s words. But it’s a little quieter. I feel this kind of joy settling in my gut and connecting me to the chair, and pressing me into the floor. It’s because of the depth.

Those practiced musicians, writers, artists, they know what it takes to create. They understand technique, nuance, texture, tone, subtly, craft, discipline, decision, inspiration, failure, serendipity, dryness, synchrony, expression – which is connection, to self outside of self where you can see it from a different angle. Artists know when something feels unfinished. They know when something feels complete. They know because they live it, too. And they know what happens when they collaborate – WOW – everything is multiplied.

That’s really what joy is: depth and connection – depth and connection that expands and sparkles. Joy is not a surface thing. It bursts from the deepest places and brightens the skies in its explosion.

Joy is not an alone thing either. I mean, I can experience joy when I encounter the scent of wild onions, but it’s not about the scent of wild onions, you know? It’s about the first time I remember smelling wild onions, one of the first times I remember connecting with the earth, so it’s me and the earth. The joy is reliving that connection. In reliving that connection I’m also connecting to another version of My Self. I am re-membering myself, putting myself back together. And because those kinds of moments are so powerful, they exist outside of time. I know there are neurological explanations for this, but I don’t care about any of that right now. In this moment, I don’t care about the explanation.

I want to be
in joy.
Inside it.
I want to create joy
and receive the joy that I create.
I want to thrill at someone else’s joy,
and I want to bring our joys together.
That’s where art is. Even when it hurts
I want joy to swell up from the depths of me and
knock me over so many
waves in the ocean on the shore in the sun
in the morning in the rain in the bright
and glowing dusk of change.

I am a curving vase.
I am emptying at the same time
I am filling,
water holding dying flowers
at the same time I am filling,
dirt holding living flowers

I am dying and living

I am paying attention

I am filling up

I am breaking open

I am remembering and reliving and receiving and
I am
So
Deep
In it
I am
Outside of it,
the vase
I am inside the flowers
I am the water
and the dirt
and the emptiness
I am EVERYTHING

What does joy mean to you?
What does it feel like – if you could reach out and touch it, or lift it into your arms and carry it – what does it feel like?
Where do the sensations of joy show up in your body?
What do those sensations feel like in your muscles? in your bones?

What makes you joyful; what fills you with joy?
What kinds of joy do you create, in your mind and with your hands?
How much joy can you hold before it spills out of your eyes and breaks you into pieces even as it puts you back together?

Joy and gratitude are different,
but my, my, my are they the same.
When you go so deep into the present,
you touch the everlasting instant.

Seeing Love

Squished banana adornes the counter,
turning formica to quartz,
sparkling, innocence like the eyes of infants.

A vase is filled,
broccoli blooms buttery
and the cilantro bolts to corriander,
tiny white flowers like lace.
Stalks of swiss chard, their deep red veins
and ruffling green leaves stand supportive
at the bouquet’s back
and the mint waits to be noticed.

Headed for laundry, I pass through the kitchen,
wipe up the abandoned fruit
and wonder about the remaining scent unseen.

When my babies are grown, explorers in the wild world,
how will I see love?

Abundance surrounds
the cut herbs and harvested vegetables
like an aura in the full kitchen.
When the empty bedrooms gape,
radical gratitude must be my first nature.
Then the absence will be as abundance,
the overflow of my blessing cup.