About

Joy can mean a lot of things. I don’t think of it solely as some kind of ecstatic revelry. I value different kinds of pleasures: good Pinot, cheap ice cream sandwiches, struggling through a poem that shows me something new as a result of its difficult structure, cucumbers, accuracy, the ability to feed and clothe myself, singing karaoke, learning even more than playing Elizabeth Cotten songs, a good night’s sleep, petrichor. Even more, petrichor after weeks of smoke-choked air from wildfires gives me the complicated joy of petrichor straight up, some relief, and some sadness that makes me think of the forest that is now gone, and I then long for that forest. There is joy in loving something even if it’s no longer right in front of you.

I am overwhelmed by what I see as inescapable climate change and the end of mammals on Earth. I grieved all of it several years ago when I read a report on Arctic ice melt and methane written by environmental scientists from all over the world (the Arctic Methane Emergency Group). Then I had kids anyway, so now the grief haunts me again but differently, more persistently and acutely, like a slowly swinging scythe or petrifying heart muscle. I had come to terms with my own early death, but with my kids in mind I watch the world disintegrating into hurricanes and plastic garbage islands. I am happy to have my kids. It was good for me and bad for the planet. And will they be happy I had them? Will the world we are leaving them be worth living in for the short time they may have? I grapple with this giant sad beast of inevitable ending again and again, and I always return to the same conclusion. All I can give my children is all we could ever give any child: the tools and incentive to find joy in whatever world and time they have.

Adults, including myself, need tools and incentive to find joy, too. Maybe I need to learn something new. Maybe I need to remember a moment, an approach, a perspective. I am a writer and an environmental science librarian. I play guitar and piano. I read a lot. I love running and haven’t done it in years. I am a really good cook. I have a quick temper. I eat meat and am an advocate for animal rights. These are some things about me, and I am a mammal living on this troubled planet. Fear has become the thing I experience most often.

Fear occludes other feelings, submerges other experiences if for no other reason than because I feel it so regularly. This is how brains get rewired: practice.* Yet, this fear is necessary. It is a healthy and accurate response to the current environmental and political state of things. Inevitably, ash from this fire floats into my days. This blog will sometimes detail the things I fear, the things that incessantly nip and lurk just under the surface of my daily life. However, the main aim of this blog is to document the things I find pleasure in on any given day.

By articulating these small pleasures, by practicing pleasure instead of just fear, I hope to bring joy closer to the surface of my daily existence. I hope readers will discuss my posts as well as post about their own “daily recipes for joy” as my friend Lucie calls them. I hope, through this practice, to keep joy available at all during a time it could easily just disappear.

*See The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.

Image credit: "Road through the Forest (Berkshires), Scenic," The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collections, 1898 - 1931.

Unless otherwise noted,  images on this site are freely available from the digital collections of the New York Public Library.