Lark Metaphysics

I don’t know if this happens to you, but I sometimes get a lift without knowing why. That is, I sort of know why, in the sense of being able to describe the circumstance and its effect on me, though I may not know exactly why that particular thing affects me as it does. Last night, after dinner (and a good dinner, too, not consisting of a sandwich or fast food), I was driving to Starbucks. We’d had heavy rain earlier, the pavements were wet, and scraps of gray clouds were racing across a stormy sky. There was a kind of pearly light, for all that the weather was gloomy, which probably came from the reflections off all those wet surfaces. The sky looked manic and wild, as it often does here after a spring rain, and that was the key, I guess: I was suddenly looking at a spring sky rather than a winter sky. There was a feeling of cleanness, as if the rain had washed away not only the remnants of snow, but something more.

It had snowed just the day before, and the roads were so slippery then that I was afraid of an accident on the way to work. Now, suddenly, it was the moment that happens every year—though never in the same way or on the same day—when you suddenly feel things poised to change. The scurrying clouds, the tension in the air that comes with a thunderstorm, the difference in the light—all contributed to a feeling of movement and rebounding life. I could feel my spirits rising simply in response to that sky. I learned the importance of appreciating beauty where you find it a long time ago, but over the last year, I’ve become even more grateful for transcendent moments like this.

When you live in your car, you appreciate sitting under a solid roof and looking out at the rain from a dry place, as I did later in the evening at Starbucks. There were many times last summer when I had to sit up in the car until midnight before it was cool enough to go to sleep, but I was still enchanted by the sight of falling stars—and remembered to make a wish, you’d better believe it—during a meteor shower (for about two seconds, I imagined I was camping, but I couldn’t sustain it). I enjoyed the “nightlife” on whatever street I happened to be parked on: one night, it could be coyotes, the next night, it might be a prowling cat or a pair of opossums. I enjoyed looking at sunrises and the golden-leafed roof created by the autumn trees on one street. Most of the time, car camping is pretty miserable, so those fleeting moments of beauty stand out all the more. When you get a chance to try it, you’ll see what I mean.

This morning, the feeling of well-being persisted. I’m not normally a churchgoer, but I was stopped at a light and noticed a small red-brick church on the corner that I’d passed many times. In the mild sunshine (seemingly brighter and purer than it had been the day before), that little church looked so emblematic of Sunday morning that I wanted to write a story about it. It’s been a while since I had that Sunday morning feeling that’s an amalgam of peacefulness, restfulness, and a sensation of things having been freshly washed, but it was quite pleasant. You don’t have to be religious to appreciate that feeling.

There is a song from the musical Carousel that was sung at high school graduations when I was in school and may be still, for all I know. Rodgers’ and Hammerstein’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone” has the lines: “At the end of a storm is a golden sky / And the sweet silver song of a lark.” I often think of the lark’s song when the sky clears after a storm, though I’ve never heard it. Last night, I could almost hear it. It was like that moment in The Polar Express when the hero boy rings the Christmas bell and senses he’s about to hear it for the first time. I’m not saying that there is any relation at all between this feeling and anything that’s about to happen: I’m only stating that I felt it and was glad I felt it.

Hey, Rodgers and Hammerstein? Songs of a lark? Hero boys and Christmas bells? I get it that it’s not hip and if you happen to be, say, a millennial, this is all hopelessly maudlin. (Maudlin itself being another old-fashioned word.) But if you ever find yourself suddenly on the edge of a dark wood after an extended sojourn within, you may remember reading this and have a different outlook. I’m not saying it’s certain, mind you. But it could happen.

I’m gonna have to say I think the good dinner had something to do with it, too, all those greens and that tilapia starting to course through my system. And then there was the vegan coconut pie . . . But that’s a different story entirely.

Stay Loose

Sometimes, it's the little things. The other day, I was sitting in my living room in the early afternoon, just sitting on the couch with the blinds open and the sunlight pouring in. I was looking at my rug, which I had vacuumed the day before, and at the floor, immaculate and gleaming in the light. I was thinking how good it felt to be sitting in a clean room, with no visible dust, thanks to my (sometimes imperfect) efforts to stay on a cleaning schedule. Unexpectedly, a feeling of contentment and serenity came over me, and it was all on account of not seeing any dust bunnies under the coffee table.

I've never really enjoyed housework (and am not crazy about it now), but I do like the way I feel once it's done. When I worked full-time, it seemed like a real chore to mop and dust, but now that I've been spending more time at home, I've come to appreciate more closely the Zen of a clean room. Adding to the pleasure was the fact that I had done the work myself. If someone else had done it, I'd probably still enjoy the idea that the room was clean but might be suffering some residual guilt over the fact that I'd had to pay someone to clean up after me. I'd be totally missing the happiness of giving myself the gift of a clean room.

It doesn't sound like much, but believe it or not, it was probably the highlight of my week. Peak experiences come in all strengths and flavors, I guess, from the barely there to the resoundingly dramatic. Watching the light shine on a wooden floor may seem to have little in common with something like, say, reaching the top of a mountain, or even just watching a mountain reveal itself to you from different angles as you drive past it, but they're just different points on a journey.

Actually, I had the mountain experience recently on the interstate out west, and part of the marvel of it to me, then and now, was the fact that I had the capacity to see and respond to the moment regardless of anything that took place on the way to it. The mountain itself seemed to be saying something like, "Be hard, be immovable, be adamantine when you need to be," but there was also a whisper of something else, something like, "And remember how blue the sky was when you saw me, and how free you suddenly felt. Remember how my slopes gleamed in the sunshine. Don't forget."

Well, as Wendy Doniger has said, a mythologist needs both a microscope and a telescope. Sometimes you're looking at a grain of sand and sometimes you're looking at a mountain, but the important thing is to stay open, to retain the capacity to marvel, even though you won't feel it all the time.

Stay loose, everybody.

The Light at Five O'Clock

Even in rain, autumn in Lexington has been offering up scenes worthy of framing. Earlier in the week, there was the drive home down a street of vintage houses, newly washed in afternoon showers. As I turned onto this particular street, near downtown, the always-graceful homes were especially lovely in a setting of soft, rain-washed light, autumn colors, and slowly drifting leaves. It made me want to be a painter.

Later that day, evening came on with a tumultuous sunset of storm-wracked skies and billowing clouds, steel-gray on one side and turbulent orange where they reflected the light. Even on an evening of uniformly gray drizzle a few nights ago, the neighborhood appeared cozy in the damp, with house-lamps shining out in the mist, a cat sitting calmly in a driveway, and the cheery hue of chrysanthemums on porches echoing the colors of the trees.

But in weather, as in most things, variety is the spice of life, and of course, we only stand for so much of that English dampness around here, whether it's good for the complexion or not. The sun shines bright on my Old Kentucky Home (or at least it's supposed to), and we've got the state song to prove it.

The sun came back today. As I was driving to the coffeehouse this afternoon, I was struck (not as bad as Saul on the road to Damascus--for which I thank my Elle sunglasses--but rather more pleasantly, let us say, enlightened) by the quality of the sunshine. After a few days of rain and drizzle, I had stepped out into a day that was dazzlingly bright, with a phenomenally blue sky--almost a surprise after all the grayness.

I had put my sunglasses on and pulled out into the street, enjoying not only the sunshine but the subdued Sunday afternoon traffic. I hadn't gone very far when the quality of the light, layered on buildings and trees like liquid gold, brought on one of those zen, eternity-in-a-moment feelings, when the world coalesces around you and (despite strange neighbors, the policies of the Federal Reserve Bank, seasonal allergies, and the decline of modern cinema) the universe seems to be perfectly-imperfectly in order.

I looked at my watch, and it was five o'clock. Hey, it's five o'clock somewhere! Not somewhere else, but here. It's five o'clock here.

You may scoff, but there's a name for these things. Psychologist Abraham Maslow called these kinds of feelings "peak experiences," these occasions when feelings of bliss and harmony seem to fold you into the world and make you one with it. This one was fairly mild, as peak experiences go, but it was nonetheless welcome on an ordinary Sunday afternoon, the kind of thing you never say no to. I take bliss as I find it, and I also take it as a sign: I must be doing something right.