Winter Without Happiness

Happiness was my lover before the dark times.  Together we laughed through carefree, barefoot days and her hair sparkled in the dappled, spring sunlight.  Our lives were tangled up in the soft intimacy of quiet comfort, secure in each other and our places in the world.  Every activity, no matter how mundane, was made more beautiful with Happiness in my heart and by my side.  We felt certain our days would carry on as blissfully as the summer roses unfolded in the mornings.

Photo via Flickr "roses" by Samantha Forsberg is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

Autumn brought with it a hint of the dark times to come but we bundled warmly and laughed in the crisp winds that playfully threw up leaves for us to dance in.  Happiness found beauty in the smallest things and the bite of the rain on a sharp edge of the wind simply reminded her she was alive.

Photo via Flickr "autumn and you" by cherry-vn licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 

The dark times descended with a powerful suddenness that was inescapable.  Brooding clouds swept low with the same fateful thunderous wind that tore Happiness and I asunder.  Straining to reach each other and being dragged off by the dark, roaring winds of change, our hands, the last things to be torn from one another, our lonely, empty hands, haunted my memories.

Dragged reluctantly into a private war I fought many lonely, cold and dark battles.  I walked barren paths without companionship and the warmth of hope.  I had lost Happiness to the vast, lingering darkness.  What hope was left for me?  I wished for her sake she had found someone to share her days with and all the while I resigned myself to the lonely gloom being my continued lot in life.  I was a prisoner of the darkness and there was no hope of escape.  Memories of Happiness would float unbidden to my mind in the small hours of the lonely morning.  Bitter loss accompanied the heartbreaking longing I felt for Happiness.  I had once found perfect and beautiful ease in her company and the loss tightened my chest with memories of the dreadful, inescapable moment when I lost everything for which I cared.

Photo via Flickr "darkest path" by Mrs Janet R licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 

Somehow, amidst threats of still worse ends, I was released from my captivity.  I cared not that I was free; life was wearisome without Happiness.  Aimless wandering down tangled and dark paths seemed to lead further into the darkness.  My loneliness and lack of hope were complete.  I trudged on with tearful footfalls amidst the overgrown, winding way.  The fates were nudging me forward to better days though the overgrowth served to hide the gradually lightening skies from my view.  Hopeless and weary I moved with unnoticing and heavy tread through leaves that Happiness, had she the misfortune to walk this road, might have found beauty in.


Suddenly, it seemed so suddenly, my path ended in a town I no longer recognized as home.  Did it feel familiar because I had been here before or because all days were tinged with a familiar bleak and weary tint?  I cared not.  Tales wound through town of a worn out, empty husk of a person who had wandered through the darkness so long they no longer remembered the light.  One such tale reached Happiness.  She mourned for this broken soul and something began to glimmer in her mind, the first hint of hope that it might be me.  If the darkness could relinquish one soul it could relinquish me.

Photo via Flickr "roses" by PHOTOPHANATIC1 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 

In a way my inner darkness was a spectacle.  Intriguing and self-contained it was a safe danger that drew spectators with its mystery.  Slowly pieces of my tale circulated in swirling dark eddies through town.  A poor soul, parted from Happiness, doomed to walk a weary world alone.  The story of my loss finally reached her and a whispered name of who I used to be.  The wind brought it to her ear.  The wind also whispered to me, Happiness, was all it said.  But somehow I knew that she was in reach.  I began to weep; all the tears I had not dared to feel in my loneliness and all the hopes I barely dared to believe could no longer be contained.  I shed my black mantle and walked haltingly to stand in the sunlight.  I will look for Happiness again.  And ever since Happiness heard my name, she has been running through the streets trying to find me.

Photo "Spring" by Madder Hatter licensed under CC BY 2.0 

“Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you.” Hafiz of Persia

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This short story was inspired by the quote from Hafiz of Persia “Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you.”

It struck me suddenly that I've grown up thinking of Happiness as a teasing woodland spirit who is ever fleeing from your grasp, at her best, and at her worst, as never showing her face so that you doubt her existence.  I loved the idea of Happiness actively seeking you out.  This beautiful quote immediately reminded me of parted lovers and thus this story of parting and longing and hopeful reunion was born.

Photo via Flickr "Italian roses" by Steve Batch UK licensed under CC BY 2.0 

It is not for me to write about the reunion.  This is because you and I, we are each of us the protagonist, and the story of our separation from Happiness may be similar, but the story of our reunion with Happiness will be as unique as we are.  All I know is that Happiness is trying to find you and it is up to you to step outside into the sunlight and write your own reunion story.

Polygonal Melodrama

Some people have the great misfortune to be plagued by people.  Yes people.  Maybe I'm just a misanthrope, that is still up for debate, but it seems to me that people have an alarming tendency to behave like weeds.  They pop up everywhere in vast numbers and there is almost nothing you can do to prevent them from turning up when and where you do not want them.  The problem with weeds is that they seem to be unhappy with simply growing in your garden.  They seem to like coming equipped with spines and thorns to make your life miserable while they slowly choke your beloved plants (cauliflowers, roses, what have you) to death, much the way people pop up with their unwanted drama and plague you with it mercilessly, slowly strangling all joy and happiness in your life.

Ok, fine, maybe I am a misanthrope.  If you dealt with the people I deal with, you might be too.  Don't get me wrong, I do like some people, for instance my housemate.  She brought me an adorable cauliflower cake from a tea shop the other day.  Relax, it's shaped like a cauliflower, not actually made from cauliflowers.  That would be the most rubbish cake ever invented, but I digress.

Cauliflower Cake from Betty's tea shop. Adorable, no?

So there are a handful of people I find acceptable.  The rest I'm rather tired of.  Whether you are a magnet for dysfunctional individuals, or you simply find yourself in the middle of a ridiculous amount of drama, you know what it is like to be plagued by people.  Much to my dismay I have occasionally found myself in the middle of a whorl of drama, either my own or someone else's, that I somehow managed to stumble into.  For several years now I have also had the great distinction of being a dysfunction magnet.  Sometimes the drama and dysfunction runs so deep that even years of study could not uproot it or untangle it.  So don't try.  Yes, I am advocating that you join me in giving up on worrying and contemplating.  The only solution to this sort of problem is chocolate.  Or cake, that works pretty well too.

So stop trying to figure out if you are involved in a love triangle, a love square, a love pentagram, a swirling vortex of drama or any other type or configuration of polygonal melodrama.  Don't even begin to try to understand it, or fix it.  Do not bring in any other verbs to deal with it.  Save your brain the trouble.  Break out some cake and enjoy life. 

Don't try to untangle things.  Trust me it's not worth the effort.  Just cut yourself loose from the snaring knots of strife.  Admit defeat.  Raise the white flag and declare that you are through trying to decipher the meaning behind the insanity.  If anyone or anything tries to get in the way of your timely retreat, don't just throw in the towel, throw it at their head.  Then sit down, put your feet up and eat some cake, preferably chocolate, but I'll let you decide that one. 

After all, you've just won the greatest victory of all.  Freedom.

Freedom without Fireworks

Being an American who lives in the UK there are all sorts of strange and somewhat unexpected cultural divides that I run into on a daily basis.  Sometimes the words I use get blank stares from the people around me.  Often my accent gets made fun of.  But the real problem of living here is that you can't really celebrate the Fourth of July properly.  You can't really run around saying, "I'm free from your tyranny", when you willingly returned.  You end up looking like the naughty dog that got off its leash and ran wild for ten exasperating minutes before returning, grinning foolishly, to your master to receive that withering look.  Of course, this doesn't stop me from running around wearing red, white, and blue and proclaiming my independence in this manner.  It just sort of dampens the camaraderie a bit.  If you can manage to find a few other Americans and all celebrate together all the better.  But we are still lacking one key ingredient.  Fireworks.

I don't know about you, but fireworks are the best part of the Fourth of July.  Don't get me wrong, I love the bbq's, the food, and the summer outdoor parties filled with friends, family, and the best of summer fruits.  But while I can attempt to recreate all of that here I am still missing the fireworks.  Fireworks are amazing, truly.  In my opinion we would all do good to invent more holidays that require fireworks.  There are just not enough times we get to have them.  And who doesn't love them?  I really don't think I've met someone who doesn't like fireworks.  Unless of course, you are counting your canine companions.  I have met a few dogs who quiver in fear at the loud bangs and if asked would probably tell you they hate fireworks.  However, I imagine that most of the people you'd be polling would not be answering from a dog's perspective, so I can safely say that most of them will love fireworks.  I can't imagine meeting a person who doesn't like fireworks.  They must be very odd people, and yes, I do realize I don't have much room to judge on the subject.  Have you ever met someone who doesn't like fireworks?  Think about it, they must be odd and very boring people.

What is not to love?  The deafening booms are regular, not like the somewhat terrifying and random demonstrations of canons in places like Colonial Williamsburg that can catch you off guard and make you jump out of your skin.  They are far enough away, for safety reasons, that they have a dullness to their booming that renders them slightly safe sounding.  Yet, if you are fortunate enough to be watching fireworks in a valley you can sometimes hear the booms echo off of the neighboring hills for great effect.  The colors and shapes, and fun fizzing sounds that fireworks make are eminently lovable.  There are the standard bright colors, the ones that look like smiley faces, and the ones that look like they are chandeliers made of fairy dust straight out of a Disney cartoon.  They are simply magical in a way that is all their own.  There is simply nothing that can compare to fireworks.

Maybe next year I should just plan on going home for the fourth of July.  But until then, Happy Fourth! Happy Independence! And enjoy the fireworks for me.