Happiness

I took a walk today across the Stone Arch Bridge during lunch. The weather was beautiful: just on the edge between cool and warm, and breezy enough to be comfortable. I had my new PDA in my pocket, loaded with tunes. The breeze rifled my short snazzy haircut. I listened to Peter Mayer's "Holy Now" and thought yes, yes, that's it, that's it exactly.

I felt something sweet welling up inside of me, and I pondered it as I walked. I was happy. I am very happy, and I've been feeling this way for, oh, about a month. Since the great dumpster project, when I reclaimed my house. Was that the cause? Or was it the exercise program that has really gotten into a groove, or the new haircut, or the stage the girls are at now, or the fact that I'm at least starting to think about the book again? Who knows? I've fought depression for thirty-four years, and in the years since I've discovered medication, the best I could do for long stretches of time was to at least be not un-happy, and that state of being for me was rare enough to be grateful for, when it came around. That's the state I've been in the last four or five years, I think.

But right now, I'm really and truly happy, and I have managed it for more than a moment, more than a day. It feels like my state of being. It feels like a blessing, like a miracle.

I'm in my forties, and right now, it feels like the very best time of my life.

dinner with Lois and talking book shop

I went over to Lois McMaster Bujold's for dinner tonight, where she served salad with strawberries and chicken chili soup, and we talked about my comments on The Hallowed Hunt. Then we retired to the living room with our glasses of Reisling, where I told her about the ice palace book so far. She thought of one key piece: she figured out Rolf's backstory, where he came from, when I told her about a certain historical figure in the history of the making of ice palaces, and she said, That's Rolf, that's where he came from." Oh. Oh, wow. Oh, yeah. She was right.

She agreed with me that I was missing a key piece: the exact nature of the relationship between Rolf and Jack. What does each think they're getting from the other? Why are they working together when the book starts? I have a sense of why Jack turns away from Rolf to Solveig, but why was he allied with Rolf in the first place?

But after I had burbled to her for forty-five minutes or so with plot points and thematic stuff I've been chewing over, Lois agreed that it's a real book, which of course, really means something coming from Lois McMaster Bujold.

( More stuff on the ice palace book. Long and involves quotation of song lyrics. Sorry )