“Because in trying to articulate what, perhaps, joy is, it has occurred to me that among other things—the trees and the mushrooms have shown me this—joy is the mostly invisible, the underground union between us, you and me, which is, among other things, the great fact of our life and the lives of everyone and thing we love going away. If we sink a spoon into that fact, into the duff between us, we will find it teeming. It will look like all the books ever written. It will look like all the nerves in a body. We might call it sorrow, but we might call it a union, one that, once we notice it, once we bring it into the light, might become flower and food. Might be joy.” -Ross Gay, The Book of Delights

                I have this experience of looking. Searching, you could call it. I remember one rough night, in undergrad, where I sat crying alone beneath a tree on memorial hill, wanting someone to talk to. And that loneliness is real. I don’t want to dismiss it, but I also remember all the people I met, all the people who welcomed me, and beyond the people, that tree (which I also remember climbing), that hill (where I sat watching lightning stitch through the sky), that sky (where birds came visiting, singing about spring). More recently, as a big social gathering, I felt the pull of this person and that person and another person I wanted to meet. My eyes kept glancing around. Which meant away from the people I was talking to. And then I felt a quiet moment of oh yes, here.
                If we sink a spoon into that fact, Gay writes. And eating oatmeal this morning, I wanted to sink my spoon into the quiet moments between looking. I mean: I went for a walk and a blackbird landed in the tall grass, and for a moment that was all there was, all there needed to be. Joy. I mean: I’ve always loved taking the bus because sometimes a bus driver asks “how’re you?” and I say “I’m enjoying that it’s a little cooler, how are you?” Joy. I mean mosquitos still bite my ankles when I go outside, and that’s itchy afterwards, but everytime I sit on the grass I’m awash with roots and fluttering leaves. In the spaces between (and beneath, and beyond, and instead of) my searching, there is such a depth of connection, of relating to one another. An overlapping us that washes outward. And this morning I dipped my spoon into that along with my oatmeal. It tasted like evening light through a glass of water when the crickets are chirping.