The Daily: 29 April 2024

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COVID in April: it’s a new tradition of mine. Not one I particularly enjoy. Each April since 2022, the virus has played havoc with nearly the entire month. It makes planting season rather fraught, though it does make for an interesting Poetry Month…

This April round was bad. It started just after the solar eclipse as a tickle in my throat and a persistent, hacking cough. By that weekend, my lungs were filled with fluid and I was shivering through fevers as high as 103°F. I tested positive on Wednesday after the eclipse and remained positive for over a week. The fever vanished with the end of the active infection, but I haven’t been able to shake the cough. I’ll think that it’s gone in the morning, but then by nightfall I’ll be coughing up small internal organs. I’ve been masked for the last two weeks of work, itself an impediment to breathing.

On Friday, I felt pretty good, though still tired from lack of sleep because I’m coughing all night. Still, I thought I could get all the piling up garden work done over the weekend, especially since the weather was finally supposed to be dry and above freezing for a full forty-eight hours. Nothing doing.

It was warm enough, and Saturday was dry though dark clouds rolled in around noon. But I woke to thunder on Sunday and it poured off and on all day long. It was not terribly cold, and the rain was fairly good for planting. But it’s not so good with a chest cold. And as to that… On Saturday, the cough came back full force, along with a wet rattle in my chest. Going upstairs was enough to set off a fit that could last a quarter hour. By mid-day I had a dull headache likely related to a paucity of oxygen. I get the same headaches when spending too much time above 10,000 feet.

So no gardening happened on Saturday. I got more than I thought I could get done on Sunday, but there is still a pile of garden work to address. However, I don’t think it was a bad weekend. I made my yogurt and bread — both excellent. I made a creamy sweet potato and rutabaga sauce that I could use for pasta, burritos, or thinned down as soup. I also made a couple more quiches for the freezer. I did my laundry and a bit of house cleaning. And while that was happening I put away mid-spring stuff and dug out a small bit of May ahead of May Day this week.

I also spent a fair bit of time just enjoying myself. I played rainbow hunter with the cat. (Involves spinning the crystal prism that hangs in my eastern bedroom window and laughing at her ensuing antics, only somewhat marred by coughing.) After watching the film adaption of Soman Chainani’s School for Good and Evil on Friday evening, I dug out the book and read the whole thing, remembering why this series is one of my favorites for middle graders (and for those of us who refuse to give up fairy tales). I did a couple sudoku puzzles, always pleasantly relaxing for me. I read poetry from Montpelier’s Poem City project and the last half dozen entries in Taisia Kitaiskaia’s Literary Witches. I had oatmeal for breakfast and bread, fruit and cheese for dinner, neither of which are difficult to make or clean up and both of which are satisfying and delicious.

Somewhere in this day of mild hedonism, I decided that there was a lesson in this. My body felt fairly terrible, aching and coughing and miserable, but I was content, happy even. Recently, I’ve run across many writers talking about doing what brings them joy. Most of the time I brush that off as advice for the privileged. It feels much more like most of us do not get to choose how we spend our time. Most of us don’t even have the time or resources to sit down and figure out what constitutes joy, much less how to go about pursuing it. It feels like joy is often found in the cracks, quite by accident. But maybe there are ways to widen those cracks.

Remarkably, I do find joy in many required tasks in my life. For example, I love all aspects of acquiring food for my body. This is a good example… because many of the tasks are decidedly dreary.

Weeding the garden is never something that is fun in the moment. However, tending to the garden beds brings such a sense of satisfaction that weeding becomes its own kind of joy. I can see the weedless and healthy garden in my mind. I taste the vegetables that grow more bountifully when not in competition with aggressive volunteer plants. I smell flowers and hear the peaceful hum of insects in my burgeoning garden. That these joys don’t often happen in actuality does not diminish my appreciation of them in my mind. Much of the pleasure in the garden is in imagining. So I weed with something like happiness, even though weeding itself is an uncomfortable and endless chore.

Similarly, nobody likes the actual tasks involved in cleaning the bathroom. But a clean bathroom is such a pleasure that cleaning up the toilet is not merely tolerable, it is fiercely joyful. I am doing this thing that is hard and disgusting but that will make my life smooth and comfortable. Then there are the things that I do for those I love. Again, nobody likes cleaning the cat box. But I enjoy living with my cat and I love doing things that make her happy and healthy. I am not especially fond of the messes left under the bird feeder, but nothing brings a smile more readily than talking with well-fed chickadees and wrens. While doing laundry can be meditative and calming, it is pure joy to neatly fold the tiny garments of your infant child, inhaling the scent of baby and gentle soap. And hanging out clean diapers to dry in the breezy sunshine is near ecstasy.

As I was putting floral pillow covers on the window seat pillows and tidying away the week’s messes, I marveled at the smile hovering around my lips and the contentment in my fluid-filled chest. All these things need doing. All these things are requirements of being embodied as me. Isn’t it amazing that they bring joy! Isn’t that a source of joy, in and of itself!

And it hit me afresh that anyone can find joy in being who they are. It does not cost in time or resources. It may take a while to figure out and perhaps a few lessons in the definitions of happiness. This culture of ceaseless advertising and manufactured desire does rob us of real joy by overwhelming our monkey brains. One of the best ways to find contentment is to turn off the screens that set unnecessary and, truly, unwanted goals for a life of satisfaction. Truth is, if those goals actually brought satisfaction, if we were truly satisfied, we’d stop spending money and the whole system would topple. So, as I’ve said before, they don’t want us to be happy; they want to spend our lives pursuing what they call happiness. But the fact is, it is easy to be happy if you just make your own happiness by making your own life, doing what brings you joy in whatever form seems good to you.

I do spend money on some joys. I listen to music which involves buying tickets to live performance, buying recorded music, and keeping the technology that enables me to listen to things in good shape. I buy seeds and plants and other garden needs, not all of which are strictly needful, and many of which cost more than I like to admit. I buy expensive cat food for my aging friend. I have a houseful of things that are symbolic and meaningful to me, that give my life color and import, but probably seem frivolous to people who are not me. I have a bit of an addiction to the fiber arts, though I am probably the least practically productive crafter to ever wield spindle and needles. And I spend a good chunk on reading, both of my time and my money.

So I recognize the privilege in my own joy. But there is still quite a lot of happiness that does not come with a price tag, neither of extra time nor money. To the contrary, much of my joy comes from rejecting the paths that take time and money from a life. I intentionally do not pursue things that are put on me by this culture. I don’t want the expense and effort, but I also don’t think they bring me happiness. Travel is seldom even comfortable, never mind fun. Consuming expensive food and drink is no more satisfying than the cheap warm bread I pull from my own oven — and often weighs heavier in and on my body. I am mystified by fashions of all sorts and uninterested in transport as a fetish. I rarely watch television, and my screen time is largely limited to things I do for this website, augmented by YouTube surfing to discover new things (and to learn how to do new things…). Turning away from all these things that manufacture want allows me to better find happiness in meeting my actual needs — because these things are my actual desires, things I want to do and be, not things that culture is telling me to do or be.

Maybe that’s still privilege, but it’s not costly. It is more the attitude you turn to living. Maybe I wouldn’t be so blithe about joy if I had to clean toilets for a living… I have done that. It was not fun. However, even as a hotel maid in college, I found contentment. I like doing a job well, so there is that satisfaction. But I worked by myself, so I was free to entertain myself as I worked. I imagined elaborate stories in each room. I sang and danced about as I worked. I made each room lovely and welcoming, which is my one and only super-power… thus something I take a fair degree of pride in… A life of cleaning up after people would not be fun, but it could be joyful — not least because you’re doing something that actually needs doing, that helps the world, that makes the world a better place. Even if nobody else shows appreciation for your job, it is still a job well done, which is more than most people can say of their work, more than I can say about my own day job now.

This weekend I resolved to pay attention to that smile that hovers about my lips when I am doing things for myself — and to the teeth grinding and frowning headache that accompanies doing things that do not generate any sort of joy. I am going to try to do more of the former. I am going to stop doing the latter. As soon as I feel that frown forming because I am wasting my time or doing something that does not benefit anyone, I’m going to stop. Life is far too short to spend time and effort on tedium and misery, and there are plenty of ways to meet my needs without resorting to paths that can’t bring joy. In any case, I suspect that my needs are better met by the paths that do bring joy. There is undoubtedly a relationship there…

And so… I have a few weeds to pull out of the garden to make it beautiful… and then I have a book on adolescent fairy tale characters that I must go read… with perhaps a steaming cup of chamomile-lavender tea… and Debussy, Ravel and Satie whispering their own fae stories in the background.

And just to leave you with a smile… here is rainbow hunting…

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©Elizabeth Anker 2024