happiness – three good words

April 12, 2025April 12, 2025

Jeff Goldblum smile

What are 5 everyday things that bring you happiness?

Ah, what a question. Five, five, five. What an interesting number. A full hand. Makes you want to grab it, doesn’t it? A number you can literally hold. Look at that sky. Reminds me of this one time in Italy, lovely summer. I ran into this incredible artisan, he carved these little elephants out of stone pines. Tiny. Perfect. He was from Sierra Leone. Led the most fascinating life. Oh, is that coffee? Wonderful, wonderful. What blend is it? Costa Rican? Mmmh, wonderful. Perfect. Thank you. Have you ever been? You should go. Travel does such good things to the heart and mind. It opens the soul to the world. Now, where we? Happiness? Now that is a big question. Tricky, tricky. Happiness is like water, isn’t it? You have it then, whoops, misery. Worst day of your life. Suddenly, a butterfly flutters by, or you run into an old friend you haven’t seen in a while, and there it is again, happiness. It’s such a fascinating part of existence, isn’t it? This coffee is very good, you have to tell me where you got it from. The shop, of course, ahahaha, silly you. Silly me, too. Let’s all be silly. People should be silly more, shouldn’t they? Just abrooblibloop and there, no sadness. Just happiness and butterflies, tiny elephants, and coffee. Wonderful.

July 20, 2015

07/04

July Fourth and they were all in New Jersey at a grand cook-out in Inez’ parent’s back yard. Inez had invited everyone, and almost all had come: Chloë and someone new by the name of Will (Nicolas was hi-sto-ry, oh, you wouldn’t believe), Clarissa with her Greg, who had recently been promoted to ‘the love of her life’ (though she still wasn’t sure if he wasn’t seeing someone else ‘on the sly’), Olivieri with Rachel (calm and content as always) and Matisen alone. He’d decided Inez had to have some hot cousin he could chat up and talk into God-knew-what, Lana didn’t even want to know.

By the look of it he was succeeding very well with a certain Isabella, it was depressing really. Never mind all that, there was her, Lana with Timothy, Timothy who had his arm around her whenever he could. There were tables and chairs set up in small groups, children racing around, the Santa Cruz talking and laughing animatedly, merengue cascading out of the enormous stereo on the veranda, one whole side of the garden an enormous smorgasbord of delicious food. The sky was wonderfully blue, the parade worth seeing, and everyone happy to have a day off to celebrate.

Lana was already on her third margarita, her fingers still sticky from the fantastic barbecue, not that she was complaining, Inez’ family really knew their food. She was anyway laughing at Inez, who couldn’t stop grumbling about another suitor her family had set her up with, this time a certain Ramón. He seemed quite nice, not bad-looking either, but Inez ‘so didn’t care’, though she remained polite. They all meandered from table to table, listened in to wild stories about the Santa Cruz’ life in New Jersey, laughing with everyone, and generally had a really good time. Every now and then Timothy would pull Lana close and kiss her lips, always gently with a hint of more, making Inez’ mother wink at Lana and then give her daughter a telling look that made Inez sigh and roll her eyes.

July Fourth and it turned out to be one of the few days in a long while where Lana was just happy to be where she was, with her friends and Timothy, her surrogate family. July Fourth and for a few hours Lana was just happy to be alive.

May 26, 2015May 26, 2015