Dispatch from Delight
On Book of Delights by Ross Gay, with thanks to Michelle, who recommended it.
On a Megabus to New York last week, I had the pleasure of devouring many of the essayettes in Ross Gay’s Book of Delights. The book, in case I haven’t cornered you in the past week to proselytize about it, is the culmination of a project that Ross Gay undertook in his 42nd year to write one essay about one delightful thing every day for a year.
The delights are mostly mundane (see babies, fireflies, writing by hand), often very funny (see reckless air-quotes, dreams that aren’t real, an abundance of public toilets), and always observed in prose that I can only describe as smiling from ear to ear— whether cheekily, enthusiastically, conspiratorially, or some combination thereof.
It is an earnest and overflowing testament to gratitude without ever drifting towards being saccharine. A feat! A feat accomplished by his willingness to engage with delight in the context of everything that surrounds it, the murky waters of racism, sexism, homophobia, and living in a violence-adoring country. (One delight which follows the observation that America is full of statues of white men carrying guns: a statue of musician Hoagy Carmichael, in whose outstretched hand someone has placed a bouquet of flowers.)
So anyway, my bus jostled into the city and I disembarked, feeling like I always do when I visit New York— an ingenue, just two seconds away from her big break— and wearing the rose-colored (Ross-colored?) glasses that Book of Delights placed over my eyes, ready to be delighted.
And you know what? It happened almost right away.
At a bus stop, an older lady walked up to me and asked me if I knew when the next bus was coming.
Apologetically, I said, “It looks like it just left.”
And she said: “Fuhgeddaboutit.”
She said it just as I have spelled it out here! And to top it off, then she said, “I’m not waiting that long,” and stormed off. Because this wasn’t a mealymouthed, wishy-washy fuhgeddaboutit. She meant it.
So many delights in one. The delight of hearing a phrase that is so ensconced in pop culture that I forgot it was actually real! The delight of witnessing someone be grumpy about a minor, yet rightfully annoying, delay! (I was so charmed by her ire that I abandoned the bus stop altogether in solidarity.)1
Oh, and the root delight: which was that I stepped off the bus wishing, yet not totally expecting that something like this would happen, and then it did, with very little effort on my part at all.
Ross Gay writes that witnessing delight “requires faith that delight will be with you daily, that you needn’t hoard it. No scarcity of delight.” When one makes a practice of observing and honoring daily delights, they proliferate like hydra heads.2
Which is not to imply in the slightest that delights cancel out the many, many horrors of the world, or that we should use them to numb ourselves to the atrocities that are occurring. Delight is not an antidote to rage or grief, but a buttress for both. Abundant small fires, sustaining us on the long walk forward.
And on that note, I want to end with one final delight, a question posed by my partner as we returned home from a march to protest the ongoing genocide in Palestine:
“Do you think,” they said, “that cops sometimes get our chants stuck in their heads? I mean, they’re walking beside us for hours. Maybe they start humming along without meaning to?”
This question makes me want to take to the streets and shout all the louder, until every cop goes home with a resistance ear-worm. Perhaps it does for you, too.
To me, one of the most endearing things about people on the East Coast is their willingness to be grumpy in public. I think my fellow Midwesterners suffer too much foolishness in silence.
Upon editing, I’m realizing that maybe a less scary metaphor is more appropriate. I meant to say that delights proliferate like squirming, riling pile of puppies. Better?
The ear worm drawing is so delightful!!