July 18

This will be a brief odd entry but I just was standing at my kitchen counter eating lunch and I had a thought: at this moment, right now, in time, I am truly happy.  And I wanted to record it.  Why was I happy?  I walked this morning, did my pushups (140) and then grilled some chicken I had marinating overnight.  I ate it with brown rice and reheated mustard greens from a few days ago, in front of the TV, watching part of a rerun of The Sopranos (where Johnny Sac changes his mind about killing Ralphie when he finds out his wife is cheating on her diet).  Then as I was at the counter cleaning up everything I had a forkful of the mustard greens-not reheated this time-just out of the Tupperware, so that they were lukewarm.  And then I had one more bite of chicken.  The chicken was delicious.  I've started grilling meat with the lid open, so that it takes longer but allows more heat to go on each side, resulting in a crispier harder 'bark.'  I put maybe a smidge 'too much' pepper on it this time (white and black) but it turned out well despite that (perhaps because I had no garlic powder and had to use garlic salt, instead of pure salt and pure garlic powder as I do normally, thus making sure the ratio was 1:1?)  Anyway.  That's all.  Because yesterday I for some reason read my old journal from when I was in [Midwestern town] with [old girlfriend] (who I've been thinking about recently, and recently tracked down her PhD thesis online and read that) and I don't know.  I don't know what I thought reading that journal.  It stirred some bewildering welter of emotions, but of what specifically that welter consists, I don't know.

So that's all.  Just that I'm happy.  The play seems to finally have a shape.  The wife is in Rome, so I'm alone but not in a bad way.  Knowing the current isolation will end makes it seem not like isolation, in a way.  More like we're both away at work.

But that's all. The moment at the sink is the point.  Because happiness is just a piercing moment now and again, and it passes so quickly it's usually not worth setting down.  So I'm setting this down.  (And also, I should say that I've felt more and more of those moments over the past few months.  More than I have in a while).

That would be an interesting idea for a story, or some kind of devotional journal exercise at the minimum: "Moments of Happiness."  Where everyday you set down something in your life that made you happy, for an instant, and that was it.  "To Say Yes"  What you were saying yes to that day.