Joy

Joy is a commodity like every emotion.  In the chemical mix--acid and alkali--it is its own kind of combustion.  Joy is an element.  Joy persists while the compounds fall apart, head in disintegrating hands, holding what turns out to be one's very last breath...

What might joy look like in the days of decomposition?  If it is persistent, it will manage expression--find its laughter, its shining eyes.  Even in the catastrophe to come, in war, in pestilence, in loss and alienation, joy must necessarily survive, a nonnegotiable portion of the human experience.  Sometimes jokes harden on the tongue, something to choke on, broken english.  And yet even wet with this sadness, dripping with sarcasm, drowning in irony, the humor eludes the pain.

Joy is its own sustenance.  An antidote.  A salve.

If I look long down the dark tunnel of days, the future with its closing in, its claustrophobia, there is the inevitable, encroaching desperation.  But joy retains....  What will it look like?  Under what name will it arrive?  There will always be dancing girls.  The jesters are in the wings.  And music makes for a comforting thunder, in the background, heard from my bed.

Remember the origin of joy, its gorgeous contours are defined, described by our suffering.  If the underbelly of this torment is the impossible smile, then the smile, the smirk, the uncontrolled laughter itself all find their resonance, their rich echo, in the vaulted cathedral of that (all-too-human) brand of pain.