Remembering Joy

With the perspective that sometimes only comes with distance: Remembering that joy is mine to keep.

This is what the gods gave us. To forget is to dishonor their gift.

I was born joyful: it is my natural state. I found it again, two nights ago, in a dance class in Berkeley, with a teacher who studied with my first teacher, over two decades ago.

About two decades ago: my first San Francisco Carnaval Parade

The music on Elisita’s playlist was all familiar to me: the melodies, the percussion, the lyrics, the sound of Brazilian Portuguese like an embrace from a long-lost loved one.

My body responded like a cat to caresses: all the movements were still there, waiting to be awakened from their slumber.

I haven’t smiled so broadly or steadily since the last time I took a Brazilian dance class, after moving away from California and my dance community. For the entire hour and a half of Elisita’s class, I was smiling with my entire body and spirit.

Dance welcomed me back like a run-away child returned home, unconditionally loved again.

I dance with the joy of moving to rhythmic music: to drumbeats. With the joy that is the birthright of our species. Not with a real dancer’s expertise (never have, never will), but with that part of me that knows how to connect with with the joys and sorrows of people not myself, across time and geography.

It’s how I’m wired.

This is my primary gift as a writer: I’m a good antenna. (My only gift as a dancer is simply the joy I take in it.)

At class, on a visit about a year ago in Sebastopol, with my much-missed, most recent teacher (who is also a poet!), Mara Leigh. Our beloved drummers are in the back row.

In the course of my ongoing voyage of discovery, I’ve found wonderful teachers and secret doors that have opened at my touch. (Just like the keyless lock on the front door of the place where I’m house-sitting now: the electronic lock registers my fingerprint and opens.)

As a poet and novelist, I have the privilege of sharing through words what I’ve seen and felt. “We are always recreating our whole life,” Goethe wrote in “Poetry and Truth.”

My journey has been frightening sometimes—and truly it’s frightening now as the entire world struggles to emerge from the darkness that seems to have fallen over us.

As a species, it seems as if we’re wriggling like a cocoon struggling to come to life, in response to a call that we need to make ourselves hear.

A command from the planet to bring our butterfly self out of the womb of potential, into the light.

Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

Every child is born into this world on a wave of relief and joy. I was. You were, too.

Joy is ours to hold close—to protect as well as we can, at every stage of our lives, especially when predatory sorrows and fears lurk in the shadows, waiting to rob us of our generosity and goodness. To change us into something less beautiful, less joyful, than we have the potential to be.

Send me a heart or leave me a comment! It’ll mean the earth to me, and will only show if you go to my Life-boat from the SubStack app. (It’s free and obliges you to nothing.) There are a whole lot of wonderful writers, probably some of your favorite writers, using the platform.

Here’s my website, if you’d like to learn more about my writing…

Be well! Do whatever it is, within the bounds of kindness and decency, that makes you feel happy to be alive! Please join me in sending out a gigantic prayer to the universe for peace on Earth and goodwill to all living things! Let us grow into our full potential to be joyful and good!❤️