The Miracle Of Delight

A year ago this week, the kids and I strolled over to the local playground with a friend. The three of them zoomed around on their scooters while an avalanche of texts and emails flooded my phone.

The School District of South Orange & Maplewood continues to monitor the emerging public health issue with COVID-19, also known as Coronavirus. The health, safety, and well-being of our students, staff, and community members continue to be our main priority. Therefore effective, Monday, March 16 thru March 27, 2020, we have made the decision to enact our SOMSD emergency closure plan, and all District schools will be closed for a period of at least two weeks.

Two weeks turned into a year and counting. The kids are learning virtually, though this year is a wash...especially for first grade. My husband is splitting wood constantly. I’m no exception, but this pandemic has kicked my ass. It took the quarantine a while to get the best of an introvert like me, but I have arrived.

For the better part of the year, I’ve reflected on what it means to nurture pleasure...and what it means to dwell in its absence. Be in sadness, be lost in the loneliest version of me, and let it linger. Without interfering, without trying to wipe away its right to exist, but to look at it squarely and say yes. Yes, love, this is the appropriate response to this shitfuck mess.

Everyone I talked with has been experiencing a version of this. We are balancing the impossible — family, work, money, futures, mental stability. Life. What does pleasure even mean right now? How do we position ourselves around it? Is it in us? Outside of us? What are the circumstances under which we may grasp it? And how can we possibly cultivate it for ourselves and each other?

These questions are swimming in my mind, and I have no definite answers. Pursuing solid answers is a fool’s errand...is what I learned after years of seeking solid answers. What I crave now is space to pour these ideas and feelings into. Not just mine, either. Space too, where writers can explore and meditate on what sparking pleasure means to them. So, I’ve asked a few gifted friends to write about it. They each offered up a bright treasure.

Daniela Groza’s letter to her young self unravels layers of intertwined bliss and personal history. Terry Jackson takes a look at himself and the most unexpected gifts with disarming humor. Jason Reuven Krospky chronicles an unexpected ice cream saga while moving from Oregon to Washington. And Rahima Rice’s essay about kissing is palpable and deeply human.

You can read their words on The Daring. Fittingly, this budding column is titled The Miracle Of Delight, and we’ll be adding more essays to it as time goes on.

New Website

I guess it’s time to have a website again. I’ve been thinking a lot about writing more regularly, and this will be a good way to keep my feet to the fire, so to speak. For someone building an online magazine, it’s funny that I’ve never blogged. I’m certainly old enough to remember the blogging craze of the early 2000s, and I always thought, nah, I don’t air laundry in public. Naturally, I’ve accumulated stacks and stacks of musings and scribbles (which I’m about to pluck from the closet and use as kindling for these last winter fires).

Anyway, here is a space where I’ll share news and think out loud from time to time. About art, creative processes, and really cool stuff I’m doing with The Daring. These musings need a home too.