{"id":140,"date":"2007-03-27T20:18:35","date_gmt":"2007-03-28T01:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/?p=140"},"modified":"2007-12-28T18:29:03","modified_gmt":"2007-12-28T23:29:03","slug":"joy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/?p=140","title":{"rendered":"Joy"},"content":{"rendered":"

March 27, 2007
\nTuesday<\/strong><\/p>\n

Did I ever walk the morning streets at twenty,
\nmy limbs streaming with a purer joy?
\n<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Adrienne Rich, b. 1929
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 American poet<\/p>\n

There\u00c2\u00a0was nothing\u00c2\u00a0extraordinary about today. It was\u00c2\u00a0just a Tuesday, and not even a Tuesday that I was\u00c2\u00a0going anywhere or doing anything special. Ron went out to fly his radio controlled planes in the warm and windless morning. That changes the energy in the house and I sat at the kitchen table and wrote in longhand for about two hours. The prompt from A Writer’s Book of Days <\/em>was “there are memories underfoot.” I started writing about places I’ve done a lot of walking \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Millersville and Lancaster, where I spent my undergraduate days, Dublin, where I lived one summer in a suburb south of the city and took a bus downtown every day, walking from the Post Office to the Winding Stair Bookshop on Ormond Quay. I spent my mornings writing at a table where the air was thick with the fragrance of the soup of the day, and then\u00c2\u00a0walked up to the museum on Parnell Square where my fiction classes took place.<\/p>\n

\"HerAfter a few hours I needed a break, and since the light and the air were fairly warm, and I’d been writing about all this walking, I decided to go down to my place by the river, seen at left. This is an area in the north end of the city, a few blocks from where I grew up. I like to walk here \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the terrain is flat and the trees and other plantings are lovely to look at.<\/p>\n

And there are lots of benches. I sat on this bench when I was fifteen, the summer I read Anna Karenina<\/em>. I have sat on this bench with many of the people on this earth I truly love. And when I walk here I bring with me the love and the care I feel for others, and my sojourn here becomes a kind of praying. I guess it’s fair to say that I never come to this spot nor really sit on this bench alone.<\/p>\n

Today I brought with me the joy that has been building in me for the past four months or so, since the death of my friend Michael set me to taking a hard look at the ways I was moving and being in this world. I’ve made changes, mended fences, reached out to new friendships.<\/p>\n

I am streaming with joy.<\/p>\n