Other Pleasures

[Guest]

.

[Jill]

         Not that many years ago, when I was Washington Literacy Council
volunteer-tutoring Spanish-speaking people, trying to help them learn English,
(and, in the process, trying to learn Spanish, myself),
I came up with a Getting To Know Us (vocabulary-building) Exercise
that ended up being pretty fun
and "community-building."
      It involved each of us keeping and sharing running lists of
"Things That Make Us Happy."

       As I often think it'd be nice to learn more about our Kiva Friends,
with something less than terrific confidence about the overwhelming response
I'm likely to get,
I'm proposing that people post here,
and keep adding posts, every once in awhile,
sharing a little of themselves and the sweetnesses of their lives,
and in doing that,
letting all of us get to know each other maybe a little better than we already might.

     Just to get it started,
following are 3 in a multitude of items I found I'd included
in that old list I was telling you about,
that I recently just came across and which list made me smile,
again....

-- Seeing my parents laughing together
      (and so obviously enjoying each other with such pleasure and such love)


-- Seeing kids from different cultures holding hands being friends
     (For that matter, seeing people from different cultures of any age
      being friends, showing affection for one another).


-- The smell of the ocean, the sight of the ocean, the feel of the ocean, the sound of the ocean, the wildness of the ocean
                                                                                         
Note: 
         Instead of one-worders (or, "the obvious")
         like family, KivaFriends, cooking, traveling, whatever,
         the more detail, the more you-revealing,
         the richer this might be.                 

[Diane R]

I'll give it a try...

-- Sitting high on a mountain on a sunny day, surveying the vistas, feeling the cold solid rock beneath me, listening as the breezes move the branches and bring the scent of forest, and biting into a cool crisp pear.

-- Having one son on either side of me on the couch, leaning into my shoulders quietly, me turning left to right to sniff their hair smells.

-- Sitting down with family (and maybe friends) to a multi-dish meal which I've just finished preparing and bringing to the table, with the secret skill of inately being able to time the dishes so they'd all be ready at the same time.  As I lay my napkin on my lap, I look around at the loved ones who are sharing the meal I've provided for them, and it brings me joy.  (Bonus points for the scent of fresh-baked bread or pie.)


Sounds rather pedestrian when I put it like that, but these are the first 3 that came to me.  I must admit, I value my sense of smell, can you tell? 

--Diane.

[Jill]

Diane--
     In my old teaching days,
I once heard a quote that went something like this:
"The greatest compliment you can pay to a teacher
   is to surpass him (her)."

     I wasn't teaching (though I was trying to model),
but you, definitely, surpassed me! 

     I loved the word and sense pictures you created for us.
They were just truly lovely.
And yes, you did -- just absolutely wonderfully
exemplify that richness I was hoping for.

    For me, the best part of all the parts
was how you let us get to know our Kiva Friend, Diane,
happily, richly better.
     Thank you for that gift.

  I loved the detail of you sniffing the boys' hair -- maybe the most.
It was so "Loving Mom!"



 

[Henry]

I once heard a picture was worth a thousand words...

[Peter S]

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens;
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens;
Brown paper packages tied up with strings;
...
Cream-colored ponies and crisp apple strudels;
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles;
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings;
...
Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes;
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes;
Silver-white winters that melt into springs;
...
Sorry, this did for some reason remind me of that a little, I don't mean to be provokingly and Englishly ironic..

John Coltrane's version of "My Favorite Things", for certain

and lately...

Some laugh-out-loud passages from The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire

Tomorrow Never Knows from Revolver
(and smiling when Windows Media Player tells me how many times I've pumped that out lately)

Blackbird off the White Album

Diana Krall (anything...), a bottle or three of decent wine, and ah, very close company.

Jane Austen - anything, everything

Morning Train by John Prine, off Fair and Square

The Blute nur, du liebes Herz soprano aria and the Wir setzen uns mit Tranen nieder chorus from Bach's St Matthew Passion

Gratias Agimus Tibi from Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle


hmmm, the emphasis seems to be on music...   I'm done with being revealing for now 
(pretentious, moi?)

[Diane R]

Thank you, Peter.  After reading this, I've put on "Revolver", at quite decent volume, while I chop veggies for the Asian slaw and ready the scallops to saute for a late dinner.  It's one of my all-time favorites; I'm a happy camper.

Thank you for the thread, Jill.  It's brought me many smiles already. 

--Diane.

[Jill]

I was such a hardcore happy tomboy as a kid that even now, decades later, I still experience something like true joy when I'm walking around my un-ranch, belting out the words to Gene Autry's "Back in the Saddle Again" or Roy Rogers' "Don't Fence Me In," and discover, to my great surprise and relief, that none of the neighborhood dogs start howling nor, miraculously, do any nearby windows start shattering in the cacaphony (?) of my un-voice.  They are such sweet happy happy singalong songs.
      

      BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN
    "I'm back in the saddle again.
       Out where a friend is a friend.
       Where you sleep out every night
        And the only law is right,
        I'm back in the saddle again.
       
       Whoopee ti yi yo,
        Rockin' to and fro,
        Back in the saddle again.
        Whoopee ti yi yay
        I go my way,
        Back in the saddle again...."              or

   
      DON'T FENCE ME IN
    "Oh give me land, lots of land under starry skies above,
      Don't fence me in.
       Let me ride through the wide open country that I love
      Don't fence me in.
     Let me be by myself in the whistling breeze,
      Listening to the murmur of the cottonwood trees,
      Send me off forever but I ask you please,
       Don't fence me in...."

And that's when I'm not traipsing around,"singing" Aba Daba Honeymoon ("Way down in the Congo land lived a happy chimpanzee") or
"Who Put the Bomp?" (in the bomp puh bomp bomp-- Who put the ram in the rama lama ding dong) or any one of a million other unforgettable classic treasures -- especially songs from the Beatles first (?) album,Meet the Beatles.  Love Me Do.  I Saw Her Standing There.  She Loves You, yeah yeah yeah.
       
Singing.... and especially, listening to and sometimes blasting music-- music of so many many different kinds -- gives me almost infinite pleasure.
And, as with certain books,  just thinking about some of my favorite songs or certain pieces of music gives me a feeling of happiness and a kind of sweetness.

Back In The Saddle Again


Don’t Fence Me In    (This one’s especially priceless, thanks, largely, to scene-stealing Trigger!)

[Eli]

Small things that make me happy:

The sound of the dogs returning from their early morning outing.  As the temperature decreases, the speed in which they return increases, as they scramble to return to their warm beds.

The sound of a cool Fall rain on fallen leaves.

Anticipating the arrival of family, knowing you have prepared as much as possible, so now it is time to relax and let the festivities begin.

The silence of the snow.

Power outages, since it slows the world down.

The smell of my parent's home.

The laugh of my husband.

True love.  (Twue wove for Princess Bride fans)

Movies that make me both laugh and cry.

Anticipating a new recipe.

Fridays @ 2:00, when the weekend begins.

[Jill]

       I keep thinking/hoping that more and more people
will follow my/our lead here
and will let us get to know you better....

More Things That Give Me Pleasure:
--the early morning feeling of exhilaration and joy when starting out on a road trip

--the phantasmagoric collection of laughing, talking, bumping, happy milling mobs of people, and especially,
the colors, textures and shapes in the wonderful displays of vegetables and fruits and flowers and fish when you go to public markets like Pike Place Market in Seattle and, I think I remember, like Quincy Market in Boston (and like I imagine there'd be at El Mercado in Mexico City and at all the markets in Guatemala)

--sitting on a park bench with someone I love--
--casually strolling, walking, talking, laughing, singing through parks or along an ocean beach, anywhere

--the smell of fields of alfalfa -- the real and earthy and grounding smell of horse barns

--the wonderful variety of shapes and sizes of hay bales still in their fields, right after haying

--back on the road trip theme: the nearly irrepressible urge to belt out, singing,
"This land is your land, this land is my land," when driving through and being reminded of the incredible natural beauty and
diversity of terrain in the country where I'd lived my whole life and had never realized it was so magnificent

--pumpkin fields

--the smell of fresh bread and chocolate chip cookies baking, of freshly cut grass, of roses, and
sorry, Vegers, of steaks barbecuing (and always, the smell of my ocean, oceaning)

--big waves, giant trees, experiencing the power and wildness and magnificence in weather and nature
(so long as no one is getting hurt)

--finding people who love a book (or just about anything, for that matter) that I love and
who express what seems like almost the same amount of excitement and pleasure from it that I experienced, myself

--tenderhearted boys and men who are strong and caring and self-confident enough to be able to experience and express feelings,
even if, occasionally, and especially when, actually, that expression includes becoming "choked up" by something that touches them

--the sound that babies make -- that's not exactly a gurgle, not exactly a chuckle,
but that's an unmistakeable expression of contentment and of feeling safe in the world
(akin, maybe, says this dog lover, to what I think a cat is expressing when it purrs)

--sharing sappy movies with family members or dear friends
who laugh and cry at a lot of the same parts that make me laugh and cry

--coming across a poem that I actually "get" and even like.  the "oh yeah" of it.

--the way the sunlight hits, on certain kinds of partially cloudy days,
when it  makes the fall colors glow and everything look like a resplendent confirmation
of the artistic superiority of the Great Artist in the Sky

--the almost infinite and inexpressible pleasure I get from all different kinds of music and from sharing that pleasure

--and equal, if not greater,
the pleasure I experience in discovering how infinitely many amazing amazing fascinating things
there are, and seemingly, will always be, to learn about -- and sharing them, too.
The absolute miracle of the treasure trove of the Internet.

[Steff]

Jill, I am wearing a Pike Street Market sweatshirt right now.  We lived in Washington for a few years and visited Seattle alot.  And I took the train from Sacramento to Seattle and stayed a couple of days two years ago.  Pike Street Market is one of my very favorite places.