Some thoughts on joy.
I didn't think about joy too much until January 31, 2020. It was the day my roommate in Brooklyn, upon walking through the threshold of our fourth floor pre-war apartment in Bushwick - old scuffed floors, funny little entryway in which we hung a tiny disco ball, about ten inches of counter space occupied almost entirely by our always-full coffee pot and a rickety fire escape outside that was likely more of a hazard than any actual fire - sweaty from the gym, announced she had just listened to the best podcast episode on delight while she was on the treadmill. She thought I would like it; the guest was a gardener and a poet. That was, generally, my deal.
As she walked back and forth getting ready for class she played clips from This American Life's "The Show of Delights," talking about tomatoes and school buses and rummaging through her bookshelf to find her copy of the guest's collection of poems: Ross Gay's Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude. She poured herself a cup of coffee and left the slim volume on our coffee table. Grabbed her bag, slipped on some Doc Martens, and ran back out to catch her train, telling me I could borrow it I wanted. Told me to tell her what I thought of the podcast.
I don't mean to be dramatic, but it changed my life.
It’s better if I let Ross Gay explain joy to you and why it matters. Why it's different than simple pleasures, why it's bigger than delight alone (though delight is perhaps the appetizer, the signal that joy is nigh), why it matters. (Might I suggest his 2023 book Inciting Joy, or one of his many interviews, maybe this one with the On Being podcast?) The thesis, generally speaking, is that joy is not the absence of hardship, of anger, of grief. Quite the opposite. Joy is, instead, perhaps defined best by the last lines in "Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude":
"Soon it will be over,
"which is precisely what the child in my dream said,
holding my hand, pointing at the roiling sea and the sky
hurtling our way like so many buffalo,
who said it’s much worse than we think,
and sooner; to whom I said
no duh child in my dreams, what do you think
this singing and shuddering is,
what this screaming and reaching and dancing
and crying is, other than loving
what every second goes away?
Goodbye, I mean to say.
And thank you. Every day."
Singing, shuddering, screaming and reaching and dancing and crying, loving what every second what seems to go away - and helping each other do the same. I like to think that this is what EcoGatherings are all about.
We’ve spoken a lot about rage during our EcoGatherings, which emerges amidst the swell and collapse of an economic system premised on endless, exhaustive exploitation with no regard for the sacred. Capitalism strips everything - everything - of forms of value that cannot make a profit. Joy, for me, is about seeing - really seeing, really loving, really celebrating, dwelling on, writing about, laughing about, crying about together - everything in this weird, wonderful world that cannot make a profit. Joy, in other words, is rebellion. Reckless, beautiful rebellion. Rebellion that we practice together.
And so it seems fitting that I close out my time with EcoGather with reflections on joy. “Food For the Journey: Ross Gay and the Book of Delights” is the first lesson I wrote when I started working on Food Systems Thinking on a contract gig during my last semester of grad school, the one I wasn’t sure if I was “allowed” to include. I wasn’t sure how poetry would go over. But instead, the ideas I offered found a space at the table, were embraced. EcoGather embraced joy. Soon it will be over, sure. But there’s no one else with whom I’d rather practice the rebellion of joy - no one else with whom I’d rather do the singing and shuddering, the screaming reaching dancing and crying with - than Nicole, Nissa, Nakasi, and Conner, and of course all the other humans who have shown up along the way. So just as I began, I’ll end with the words from Ross Gay that first changed me:
Goodbye, I mean to say.
And thank you, every day.
