“Happiness. It comes on/ unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really….” Raymond Carver wrote in his poem “Happiness.” It isn’t the result of a formula, the achieving of a goal, the absence of pain.
The sun today makes me happy, the warm coming through the large windows from where I sit in the upstairs gallery above Signs of Life. Justin Marable’s art all around makes me happy, especially the way he uses suns and moons as off-center cores of his work. The wooden floor, the comfortable but sturdy black leather chair, the Christmas tree with an off-center candy-cane striped bow on top, the woman who just circles this room, smiling at the art — all of this adds to the happiness I feel.
But happiness is also much more like a place to arrive, a pool of light to step into, a perch to stand on from which to view the world. It’s a despite-and-because-of, beyond-reach-and-within-touch kind of place to breathe into, and from this place, to look around and within, and feel the innate joy of being alive and well while the people below me drink coffee and chat about the holidays, while the train several blocks away sing-howls its arrival, while the late afternoon sun cusps the buildings.
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