Happy is a list of things felt strongly by this body
Here's my list in no particular order.
This is my happy song.
It is the ground beneath, humming with the warmth of soil turned by diligent worms, stretching and strumming at newly tuned strings. I feel the melody of it, strong and resilient, reminding me of this, my presence, inside the envelope of life’s long letter.
Happy. A note. A tone. A feeling.
It is the sky above, changing daily, moving swiftly with the chunder of cloud and time and atmosphere. The metronome of my mood. My heart arrests itself at the sound. Tremolo, tremolo, tremolo. I sing and I sing and I sing. Chest voice meets head voice as the blood surges its harmony within.
Can you hear it? Will you sing along?
With each verse, my concert hall fills its lungs with a synesthetic breath of twirling and skwirling. Legs vibrating, fingers wiggling, I accept the tuning fork buzz of it in my bones. I am in the world. I am the trees and birds and canyons and creeks. I am the ocean swell humming beneath me as I paddle above this kelp forest, weaving back to thread its briny staves.
This is the grateful tune of existence in this moment, unbothered by the reality waiting at the shore. I raise the instrument of my elation—a smile conducts its way across my sea-salted face.
This is my happy face.
The wrinkle of my time on earth folds its hands at the corners of my eyes. Content. Beaming. In my flushed cheeks, a line creases and there’s another, yelling loudly of the peace and love found in my moment. With eyes shining, I catch this joy kite on the air of this world and marvel at the scene.
This is happy. I have no mask for this.
Mine is an older face now, caught in the sepia of freckles fading and skin weathering. It props up its crooked smile, blurred with charming, honest edges, and fixes to straighten and announce its earnest truth.
It is a warm face, an amazed face, at times a wiser face that grins at the day, raising eyebrows at the news. Blushing at your love. Grimacing with wicked laughter that disrupts its stern visage. This face cannot hide happy. This face has been and seen and knows the lines—the comedy of permanent wonder etched upon—were worth the laughter.
And so, this face, this smiling dial, it shifts and turns and transforms and projects its thrill at the coming of the day and at the fading of the light and at the promise of tomorrow and the memory of you, of yesterday, last year, and at the beginning of my life. Wow!
This face sparks up with a radiant and inexplicable glow at the happy giggle, the quiet whisper, the love words sent on wires and wavelengths low and serious, expressing the joy and volume of my heart with bright and visible teeth. This smile voicing with no words that which cannot be faked.
This is my happy voice.
I cannot kill the trill of it in far off rooms and close at hand to fill the void of silence I create in my aloneness. The tone of me oozes and lilts and rises in the air as a murmuration of happiness to dance around the ears of those who dare perceive, even my own. I speak it to myself at times to remind me of my life. My life within my life. That I live. That I am in the process of. That I exist on this plane as a dot, a blip, a moment that one day shall be gone.
What magnificence to be here now!
Fun and funny and laughter and love, held in that signal. In my voice. That I broadcast to you. With this, my happy voice, I adjust temperatures and walk it through the lanes and alleys of disaffected me, jaded me, angry me and ask it to bring me back. To lift me up. Smother stress. Destroy the anxious. Let happy be.
Feel the spring of the grass on the soles of my feet. The tong. The hammer. Strike me with great energy. This voice is all I have and when it is fully alight, it cannot be extinguished. When this voice fires up and spurts and sings and soars, it creates a space where the honesty of being reigns.
This space. This time. This place.
This is my happy place.
Sometimes home. Sometimes away. Sometimes with you. Sometimes with them. With all of us and caught in the laugh of it. The joke of this play. Caught in the laughter and our love for each other, in the fidelity of our companionship. I live I die I am with you and not and the happy thought holds me to you, a string across the world no matter where I am. I think of you and my face and song and heart and voice light up as a Milky Way inside my brain.
This world, this life, this this. This is my happy place.
Happy is not guaranteed and is not a constant thing. It is snatched moments in a day in a life in a beat—the Universal intermittent fast of humanity with short and unpredictable eating windows. Happy is not guaranteed by success nor money. Happy is not found at the moment of defeat of an enemy or in the conquest of mountains. What a pain is happy!
This is my happy thought.
Memento mori, as they say. Remember you must die. Happy is a virus.
Pass it on.
Watch the Video about the themes in this post 👇
This week’s amends…
"The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to... As an artist, I feel that we must try many things...but above all, we must dare to fail. You must have the courage to be bad...to be willing to risk everything...to really express it all."– John Cassavetes
On Rotation: “Sicily” by Queens of the Stone Age
(Sike! I know. You were expecting “Don’t worry, be happy” by Bobby McFerrin.)
A reminder that all songs featured in this newsletter over the years are added to the giant mega super playlist of magnificents and magnificence which you can access with an effortless depress of this button. 👇
Tom Matousek’s story about how he ended up working for Disney and painting his dream.
This is impressive. iPhone sounds performed a cappella.
Via Eric Maierson’s Fave 5
Shameless Podcast Plug
Listen to audio versions of early issues of The Stream on my podcast, Field of Streams, available on 👉 all major podcasting platforms 👈
Here’s Apple