Happiness Happens

Today I saw morning coming in over the mountains on the east end of the ranch. The sky unlatched its door and the day entered quietly through a portal of pale blue light and wisps of white fog. I was driving to the Amtrak station for an early train, a necessity that earned me the privilege of bearing witness to this daybreak, license to pass through the mystery and miscellany of the world waking up, still blinking its eyes in wonder and bemusement. A fox darted across the road by Gaviota Creek -- another secret glimpsed -- and the lights of the pier were shining over a shimmer of dreamy sea.

You would think this was sufficient, but I needed coffee. There’s a place that opens at six. If I hurried, I could stop and still make that train. Forgive my Italian digression, but I was remembering cafés in Rome whose patrons swigged down espresso drinks from china cups while standing at the bar, focused and efficient. I'd been traveling with Fariba then, and we had our favorite source for caffé e latté, and we'd savor this pause at the start of the day, then charge into the Eternal City, women with a mission, no dolcé fa niente here.

Another Italian image came to mind as I drove. It was a July afternoon two years ago, and Francesco, a cousin of mine, was proudly showing me around the property behind an old house he was remodeling in the heart of Boscotrecase. In the back there was a secret garden, and a trail through pine, and in the distance, the looming profile of Vesuvius. The light was waning, mosquitoes were biting, and we picked figs from trees that someone had planted very long ago. We ate them on the spot, and we ate many, and they were rich and sweet like jam. And I couldn’t always follow Francesco’s broken and passionate English, but I understood a story about a lava flow that miraculously stopped at the gate of the church. And I know he talked of dreams and yearnings, for one phrase was clear: "It is important to want strongly!" Francesco declared. He said that three times. I think it’s in the DNA.

Back in Santa Barbara, I managed to get my coffee, on-the-run-cardboard style, but a sea gull casually sauntering along in the deserted parking lot served to remind me that summer is not for rushing. I had plenty of time -- and a yellow mesh bag from Mexico (with a picture of Frida Kahlo) containing the latest issue of the New Yorker, The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, a composition notebook, a brand new pen with a fine black point, my trusty laptop, and a DVD from Netflix that I’d been carrying around for so long I’d forgotten what it was.

I was soon on board and on my way. I pulled out my computer and began this very documentation of the morning’s non-events. Why? It’s how I unwind. I love tapping on the keyboard, forming words, shifting blocks of text, shaping a piece into something -- or letting it be nothing more than process without goal, which may well be what’s happening here.

And sometimes I just leaned back and watched the window scenes slip by: Carpinteria’s empty morning streets, bright yellow tents at a campground in Ventura, farm workers bent over misty fields near Camarillo, and stacked bales of hay behind Kahoots’ Feed and Supply in Moorpark, which is where we were when I typed that sentence. There’s a comforting sense of motion and progress when the train is really rolling. I like to be moving even when I’m sitting still.

A few days ago I walked along a hot downtown street in a summer dress, eating an ice cream. I felt disproportionately delighted. (But why constrain delight into rational dimensions?) Last week I helped a friend fold blankets, each of us holding our corners, walking forward, meeting with precision, a simple dance. We were in the grand old Hollister House, a century old, give or take a few years, and the four o’clock sun poured in through window panes of warped glass, and I knew I would write about our synchronized steps, these collaborative motions of domesticity and industry, this satisfying moment.

Happiness happens.

You don’t run toward it.

Unless it is in the running.

Does that make sense? I honestly don’t know. It is the transcription of a voice I heard in a dream. I thought it was profound, and I forced myself awake that night just so I could write it down. Now I’m not so sure that it means anything at all.