On Spring & Where To Be Happiest

Excerpt from "A Moveable Feast", by Ernest Hemingway:

When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.

I don't think I'm one of the few who is good as spring itself, but I hope not to be a limiter, either. Also, I like this imagery of too many happy choices. Isn't that like any new beginning?

Happy Spring!

Some Questions Are Heavy Wrenches

For lunch yesterday, I ate a Reuben sandwich on dark rye at a favorite place in the nearby Pike Place Market. I was sitting at a counter, oblivious to the customers seated beside me, when one of the sandwich makers confronted all of us with a question.

"Are you happy?" he asked.

I looked up at him. While I was rationally aware that his query was meant to be a simple one, applicable only to the product he'd made for us, my mind still fumbled for a few moments in search of an honest answer. It's a big question that gets tossed around as if it's not, and my reaction to it - almost every single time - is like having a motor wrenched to a temporary halt. Seriously, if you ever fight me in hand-to-hand combat and you want to buy yourself a few moments of time, just distract me with this question. There are very few times when I've ever been able to answer this question without hesitation - with a simple "yes" or "no" - and yesterday was not one of those times.

In the end, I simply answered the question by nodding; after all, I didn't feel comfortable engaging in a long and deeply personal conversation with the lad. But, for the rest of the day, I heard the echo of that wrenched motor and wondered what form an honest answer might have taken.

People should be more careful with their questions.

On "Enjoying the Day-to-Day Normalcy of Things"

She had always felt that the essence of human experience lay not primarily in the peak experiences, the wedding days and triumphs which stood out in the memory like dates circled in red on calendars, but, rather, in the unselfconscious flow of little things - the weekend afternoon with each member of the family engaged in his or her own pursuit, their crossings and connections casual, dialogues imminently forgettable, but the sum of such hours creating a synergy which was important and eternal.

Excerpt from Hyperion by Dan Simmons