CONCRETE HAPPINESS
i spend a lot of my me time in my car, second only to working on my imac at home. maybe i should add the me time i spend sleeping, the time that includes dreaming; my subconscious working through past events, projecting scenarios on the screen of my slumbering brain and the waking me sometimes moved enough by the movie to applaud, occasionally disturbed to the point of questioning myself, questioning what in the world could i have been thinking of. but in general, other than sleeping and working at the computer, both of which are satisfying, although neither of which bring happiness in any extraordinary way even though both of which make it possible for me to keep on living and keep on being productive, nevertheless, other than computer time and sleep time, what invariably brings happiness moments is being in the car listening to music as i drive somewhere.
sometimes there is someone in the car with me and i am sharing songs currently high on my radar, songs i am enjoying but usually i am alone, driving back and forth between my home in algiers and the two schools, mcmain and #35 where i teach.
i realize that most of my day to day happiness happens when i am alone, which is not to discount the deeper moments i have sharing with others but rather which is to acknowledge that most of the time i am by myself when i am smiling.
i imagine i am not the only one who defines happiness as those small moments i spend with myself when i am smiling as some music moves me while traffic swirls around me. i see people dancing in their seats in the next car over; someone’s profile as their head bobs to a beat i don’t hear; the rear of a car turning a corner, it’s back windshield visibly vibrating as the rap music is turned up so loud the pimped out vehicle virtually bounces down the street; or is it the tarnished, old tercel i drive and me checking the rearview as i change lanes while admiring a particularly beautiful turn of music?
the last one of those moments i remember is tuesday evening, driving across the crescent city connection, the weather was beautiful, it was early afternoon around five p.m., harold batiste was in the car with me, melissa walker was on the stereo, the light was falling between the girders, a fascinating falling cataract of luminous blocks of metallic bright light coloring the steel and concrete, i wanted to shoot a movie of that moment. both harold and i were smiling at how beautiful the music was, or was it how beautiful we felt in each other’s company on that late summer afternoon and melissa was merely providing a soundtrack for the happiness of two old men still able to secure small moments of happiness?
i should write a poem and entitle it: the beautiful fullness of life is sometimes best tasted in the miniature of a fleeting moment.
—kalamu ya salaam