The Joy Report and Public Service Announcement or After School Special depending on who you ask.
All I want to do is wear jackets and quote T.S. Eliot all day long. The order came down and some changes were made. From this day forward the H.M.S. Royal Tears will work tirelessly to compile our unflinching report on the nature and practice of joy.
I would like to say I was musing on the beauty of naturally occurring fractals as I peeled myself off the bathroom floor this morning. This, however, would be a lie. In truth, sacred geometry was far from my mind. I met my own eyes in the mirror. I squirted some toothpaste into my mouth. I began to seperate the past few months of my experience into categories of 'joy' and 'no joy.' There were fair amounts of each and some moments overlapped. Joy in getting up off the floor. Joy in the way my aching legs protested. Good. Still alive. Quite alive. No joy when I saw my phone carelessly scattered by the toilet. Had I called someone last night? Joy when I got home and lifted a cold orange to my feverish head. What else do I remember? Music and driving and friends, a big, old, red dog, the floor. Joy, joy, joy, joy, and no joy, respectively. What is the point, you ask? Well, it's this: In one of the very first H.M.S. RT postings, I believe I said that we were going on a mission 'in search of the miraculous.' Now, knowing that the miraculous has changing properties, we expected to wander - we expected to roam, unsure at times of where we were headed. We expected to be confronted with smoke and brick walls and oozing fluids. But then we got lost. Really lost. The hull was up, the sky was down...we dressed our hands in socks and buttoned our shirts up the back. We looked without seeing and heard without listening. We forgot about joy and no joy. And the it happened - as soon as we remembered that we had forgotten we were set right again.
Pick yourself up off the bathroom floor. Wear your drunk dials like a crown. Show your badges of joy and no joy. Some fond memories of our time up a tree: Naturally occurring fractals, swimming, blood oranges, ridiculous manga synopses, existential short stories, friends in familiar clothes, TV on DVD, rolling a good joint, Serpico, the repetition of nonsense phrases and an endless parade of vegan chicken nuggets. Let the new era commence.