#cr

[[book-of-delights.jpeg|100]]

My friend Holly gave me this book on our trip to Cancún. It was one of those ‘wrapped in brown paper with a vague description’ mystery book purchases. And it was a perfect read for that week. I read 90% of it on the trip, which — despite Holly getting Covid, visiting a local hospital, and being quarantined for part of our stay — was still an absolute delight.

The premise of this book is to notice, or collect, delights. To collect by means of writing about. One a day, for a year. From birthday to birthday. And that’s what Gay does, in his friendly way, with meandering run-on sentences, curling little word-shells of beauty.

It’s a delightful book. Gay does not ignore the troubles of our world, the pain or horror. But he manages somehow, even in acknowledging awful things, to make a place on the bench for joy, to shift focus so the tragedy gets a little blurry and the delight sharpens and deepens and fills our view.

…in almost every instance of our lives, our social lives, we are, if we pay attention, in the midst of an almost constant, if subtle, caretaking. Holding open doors. Offering elbows at crosswalks. Letting someone else go first. Helping with the heavy bags. Reaching what’s too high, or what’s been dropped. Pulling someone back to their feet. Stopping at the car wreck, at the struck dog. The alternating merge, also known as the zipper. This caretaking is our default mode and it’s always a lie to convince us to act or believe otherwise. Always.

…in trying to articulate what, perhaps, joy is, it has occurred to me that among other things—the trees and the mushrooms have shown me this—joy is the mostly invisible, the underground union between us, you and me, which is, among other things, the great fact of our life and the lives of everyone and thing we love going away. If we sink a spoon into that fact, into the duff between us, we will find it teeming. It will look like all the books ever written. It will look like all the nerves in a body. We might call it sorrow, but we might call it a union, one that, once we notice it, once we bring it into the light, might become flower and food. Might be joy.