Pockets Full of Exclamation Marks

A poem by Rosemary Wahtola Trommer titled, “How it Might Continue” begins:

“Wherever we go, the chance for joy,
whole orchards of amazement —

one more reason to always travel
with our pockets full of exclamation marks,

so that we might scatter them for others
like apple seeds.”

I found this poem in the “Indie Poetry Bestseller” — How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. And to be honest, I almost did not pick up this book, partly because of the word bestseller, and because of late I have become so freaking bitter and jaded. There it is, the truth, haha. But then I noticed that Ross Gay who wrote a book I love, The Book of Delights had written the foreword. So I was first a little swayed by the word “indie” and then more so by the name, Ross Gay. And I was right to be swayed. I was worried that the poetry would be light and frothy, but instead found that it is steadying and real.

The thing is, that in the proper context, talk of gratitude is helpful. (When it’s just offered as a chaser to the usual, “remember to breathe and drink water” platitudes I can’t help but roll my eyes). In the intro, the editor, James Crews quotes David Steindl-Rast who said, “In daily life, we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful. It is gratefulness that makes us happy.” Crews says that this book is a model for “the kind of mindfulness that is the gateway to a fuller, more sustainable happiness that can be called joy.” And “We may survive without it, but we cannot thrive.” I love that the book has reading group questions in the back. I would definitely choose this for a book club book at the library, for example. And as it turns out this book and the wonderful array of writers and poems did lead me back to joy, at least a little joy, a small pocket of joy. And you know what? I’ll take that.

I am also highly amused by the phrase in the poem that begins this post — “pockets of exclamation points” which I love. Amused though because a professor once said to a class I was in that each writer should only get 10 exclamation points to use in a life and we should use them judiciously. Well, this was pre-internet and before the trickiness of conveying emotion in emails and texts. I’m sure I’ve used thousands by now! (make that 1001).

So another book that I almost didn’t get, but then did, is Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder & Things that Sustain You When the World Goes Dark by Julia Baird. In her intro she also quotes Steindl-Rast when she wonders “Is it possible to experience what monk David Steindl-Rast calls ‘that kind of happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens’? When our days are shadowed and leached of meaning, when circumstances shower us with mud how can we be sure to re-emit lessons we absorb in sunlight?”

Light is one of my favourite subjects, though I’d not contemplated phosphorescence. Winner of various Australian awards, Baird’s book has become a bestseller, too. From a Guardian article: “Blending science writing and personal memoir, Baird’s bestselling book explores the impact of happiness and contentment on our health, weaving in the story of her cancer diagnosis and subsequent surgeries.”

It’s very readable, and while I sometimes wished she’d have dug into things a bit more, I was also sort of grateful (there’s that word) for something that was easy, you know? And it’s not that it’s not deep, but sort of excessively accessible. I was hoping for some weirder bits, but that’s on me, and I’m happy with the book as it is really. She tells about getting to know Henry Rollins, and I love that part:

“Every now and then you actually do encounter someone who glows: someone who radiates goodness and seems to effortlessly inhabit a kind of joy, or seems so hungry for experience, so curious and engaged and fascinated with the world outside their head that they brim with life, or light. These people are simultaneously soothing and magnetic.

“The inspiring punk musician Henry Rollins proudly told me that he gets ‘tired but never jaded.’ Talking to him is like sticking a fork into an electrical socket — you walk away infected with his craving to do, know and be more, to span seas and conquer weakness and fight for the rights of those who cannot, or should not be forced to, fight for themselves.”

Baird talks about how she is “acutely conscious that it may seem as though I am suggesting we all Pollyanna our way through life, always looking for the glad things, the bright parts, the shiny bits. In truth, life is often ugly and awful, and in the face of it we can grow small, angry, and obsessed with crumbs.” These are the contradictions. We want to point out the astonishing beauty of the world, but we don’t want to gloss over the hideous horrible things that are in the news all day every day. (Here in Canada right now we’re finally listening to Indigenous people and learning to call a genocide a genocide). It’s an amazing person who isn’t a bit jaded by the world as it is right now.

I guess what I’m wondering is if it’s even such a bad thing to be both jaded and joyful right now? (Rhetorical question really). But I also know that for my mental health, I need to re-train myself away from the small and angry response to the world. The poem by David Whyte keeps popping into my head lately which ends:

“Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.”