Yowls and Other Moments of Happiness

Blue Morpho by Life Through A Lens.

"Pleasure is fleeting, like a flash of lightning or an autumn shower, only for a moment." ~Buddha

In preparation for their research papers, my students take several quotes by well-known philosopers and attempt to paraphrase them. Some are simple, like the one above, like the saying attributed to Jesus, "Judge not that ye be not judged," and the one attributed to Socrates, "Nothing can harm a good man, either in life or after death." But my students' lack of historical knowledge complicates the translations, and they often write soulless replacements; the essence of these elegant aphorisms eludes them.

I say they are simple, yet those simple ones are often the most difficult. It's hard to want to dig below face value of something we understand already. Some of my students don't get the key words without excessive prodding. "What's wrong with judging someone?" I ask. "Do you think Jesus would've minded if I had said, 'You da man!'?" It's condemnation we're after. Likewise, even a bad man can't be harmed once he is dead; his reputation is what counts.

This is a challenging assignment. In order to get the meaning, you must look at the man. For instance, Rabbi Hillel said, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?" Without knowing much about the good rabbi, it's hard to know what he had in mind. But it's not impossible. There's a certain amount of inferring we could do once we know he's Jewish—enough to get a good handle on the fact that Hillel was talking about righteousness, about standing up for ourselves and for others.

This assignment has seven quotations, including one each from Confucius, Nietzsche, and Sir Francis Bacon. I think I understand what all but one of these philosophers was trying to say.

Even though I have read at least three books on Buddhism, including a biography, the "pleasure is fleeting" quote still throws me. Maybe it's too simple. Maybe there's no digging to be done. Or maybe I cannot get beneath this one because it's the story of my life, and the truth of it has been my cross to bear since I was a teen.

Several weeks ago, a copy of Yowl, a brand new and attractive literary magazine, arrived in my mailbox with an order form and a book mark. All three had my name on them (though the bookmark attributed someone else's poem to me), and the magazine had a poem, "walking with bird and beast," that I'd submitted a year ago. It's still a thrill to see your name in print. I got a little "Yea, me!" dance going.

And then the thrill was gone. Just like that.

A few days later, my day began with a migraine and continued with a dull headache and torrents of rain and basement flooding and sopping towels to dam it up and cold bones and general ick. Moments before I had to leave to teach my class (the class on paraphrasing), I got the phone call I'd been waiting for, from Patsy Sims, the head of Goucher's MFA in Creative Nonfiction. I was on cloud nine—for about ten minutes.

A day or two later, I got word that my crab had been selected. I ran around the house cheering and hooting and screeching with joy. I danced with my daughter in the kitchen, singing, to the tune of "Nanny Nanny Boo-Boo," if there is such a song: "I got a crab! I got a crab!" My husband, who was cooking eggs, told my daugher I was a nut.

But I was only a nut for a short while. And then life continued—with papers to grade and dinners to cook and classes to teach and bills to pay.

Pleasure is, indeed, fleeting. But why is sorrow not fleeting, too? Why does it hover above our heads like a dementor, ready to swoop down and suck out our souls? Why can't the joy of grad school not sink under the weight of credit burdens? Why can't our names in lights not be snuffed out and banished to a darkened room by a headache? Why can't a giant crab sit anywhere it wants, even right in the middle of your heart, without the weight of so much of the world cracking your shells?

Maybe it's our human nature to doubt and second guess and worry, to wonder how long it will take, once that glass slipper fits, until it breaks into tiny bits.

I have never been able to hold happiness in my hands for any length of time. I treat it like some kind of butterfly. So worried I may tear its tender wings, I can't seem to hold it tightly enough, and it flies away. Maybe I need to be more aggressive. Maybe I should scoop it up in a net, grab the insect, and stick it to a board with a hat pin: Lepidopetra felicitas.

But I look at what I do, and is it any wonder? My proposed grad school book is, "Things That Were Fun When You Were Young (But That Hurt When You're Old." My poem from Yowl is about the death of a dog. And my crab, made from broken things, is blue.

How ironic that the very sadness that makes me feel like such a loser is what makes me a winner. And how fitting that in winning I am still no less lost.*


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*Please see Bruce Cockburn's "Civilization and its Discontents, a fine, fine song by a superfine man. This is, for me, that "one damn song that can make me break down and cry." Of course Cockburn's right: "We've all heard as much about that as we can stand." But there is danger in losing the will to express it. When you do, you go the way of too many poets.