Nomi Stone's "Waiting for Happiness"

Thoughts on happiness.

Waiting for Happiness

Dog knows when friend will come home
because each hour friend’s smell pales,
air paring down the good smell
with its little diamond. It means I miss you
O I miss you, how hard it is to wait
for my happiness, and how good when
it arrives. Here we are in our bodies,
ripe as avocados, softer, brightening
with latencies like a hot, blue core
of electricity: our ankles knotted to our
calves by a thread, womb sparking
with watermelon seeds we swallowed
as children, the heart again badly hurt, trying
and failing. But it is almost five says
the dog. It is almost five.



originally published in Tin House (2018)

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I think I am thinking of this poem because there is a sort-of-secret-but-not-really-secret hill that cuts away from the famous Harlem Hill in Central Park. It is, essentially, the peak of Harlem Hill, but one must depart from the main road in order to access it, on one of the many small paths that snakes up from the drive and goes up and up and up. If you know, you know. And if you know, such a place is not a secret, but a treasure.

Anyways, if you find yourself running up Harlem Hill in the early morning of any day — and I mean the early morning, that time of just-after-sunrise when anything is allowed because the world hasn’t yet arisen from sleep — and if you turn off the main road and up one of those little ascending paths, and if you keep climbing even though the path is steep, you will emerge onto a field that is encircled by a cinder track, and in that field, you will see a hundred dogs, all of them off leash and grinning, their owners in the field or just to the side of it, some of the dogs standing with their tongues hanging out the sides of their mouths, some of the dogs sprinting and then stopping and then sprinting again, some of the dogs running at full tilt with their leash flapping like a scarf in the wind, and you will smile — I guarantee it — because it will feel like a surprise — this convention of dogs, this morning congregation — and because you know you will carry the knowledge of such surprise forever, that you can, and will, ascend that hill again in the just-after-dawn light and stumble across a field of running dogs as if they were wild horses sprinting across the horizon somewhere in Wyoming.

That image — of dogs and surprise and joy — is like the opening lines of this perfect poem by Isaac Jarnot:

On this most perfect hill
with these most perfect dogs
are these most perfect people
and this most perfect fog

All that to say, I’ve had this poem saved on a little tab of notes I keep on my computer, right next to another poem by Nomi Stone — “Thinking of My Wife as a Child by the Sea, While We Clean Mussels Together.” That one reads, in full:

Before prising keel worms off the backs of mussels,
we have to tap them with a knife, when good sense, fear,
life, shuts their lips. I do chop the lemongrass. I do close
the lid. Their bodies inside are soft. It hurts me to do it,
but not for long. We bring the shell-clatter after to the loch
with our dog and son. I love this quiet house by the water
and lighting the fire and imagining my wife as a child
throwing a sweater over her pajamas to cycle with no hands
by the sea. Isn’t it beautiful and terrible to exist inside
time: to already be not there but here then here—

I like these poems talking to one another. I like all poems talking to one another. I like how today’s poem mentions our bodies, “ripe as avocados,” growing “softer.” And I like how this poem above mentions that the “bodies inside are soft.” And then, too, that dissonance:

It hurts me to do it,
but not for long.

And, from today’s:

the heart again badly hurt, trying
and failing.

Happiness and hurting. Hardening and softening. Aging and feeling all the more grateful for it. Aging and wishing, because of such aging, that we weren’t aging at all. We live inside these polarities, these complex arenas of pain and joy, filled with longing, wishing for things to happen and hoping for things not to happen, these bundles of missing and loving and worrying and so much else.

Stone captures such humanness when she writes — even as she writes about a dog:

It means I miss you
O I miss you, how hard it is to wait
for my happiness, and how good when
it arrives. 

Yeah. How hard. And how good.

I want to talk about happiness today. But before I do, I want to talk about today’s poem, how lovely it is, how full of sound, and how full of lines that stun and surprise. Like this one:

air paring down the good smell
with its little diamond

Or this:

brightening
with latencies like a hot, blue core
of electricity

Brightening…latencies…electricity. All these echoes. And these images. This poem of dogs and waiting that becomes, at the same time, a poem of praise, holding the whole world in a bundle of gratitude. Think of this line:

our ankles knotted to our
calves by a thread

And think of how it reimagines our relationship to our bodies, how it makes you look again at your own ankles, these things we walk upon, and how it makes you look, too, maybe at your own fingers, your hands, that bundle of cartilage we call an ear. What a crazy mishmash of circumstance we are, so fully here and so close to not being here, just a silken thread away from not existing: a heartbeat, a strand of muscle, a thread of could’ve-been-something-else knotting us from where we were to where we are.

All that to say: I love this poem. I love how it begins with the disarming image of a dog. I love how it inhabits the disarming language of a dog, this language shortened and made even simpler. And then I love how it subverts that shortening, how it offers an idea so rich and complicated that it stills me — the idea that it is the missing that makes us love the returning more. That we know people will come back to us by the fact of their leaving. That, as the dog waits, it is the dissipating smell of who they love that makes them know that the smell they love will come back. Which means, yes, that the person they love will come back. Our joy, in other words, is wrapped up in our longing. Our missing is a symptom of our love. And our love allows us to say but over and over again. But it is almost time. But I know they will return. But I believe. I am lonely, but I know you will return.

This means, too, that we are fragile. Always on the verge of breaking, of missing and never holding. To remember the fact of that — in everyone, at every moment — is a wild truth. It means that everyone, at every moment, is almost always waiting to be held.

And so what about happiness? Maybe I am returning to this poem today because, as I think so often these days about sorrow, I want to know how to think about happiness. It is important, I know, to think of sorrow. To bear continual witness. To turn, and turn again, to what hurts. Not because we love the hurt, but because to recognize and acknowledge the hurt of others is one way of saying that we cannot be made simply of such hurt, that there must be something else we can feel — joy, even — in this world that we have made into a world of hurt, and that we could make into a world of so much else.

Nomi Stone turns us to that so-much-else in this poem. This world of avocados and watermelon seeds swallowed as children and dogs waiting to hold and be held. This world of waiting, yes. And hurting, yes. And missing, of course. But also this world where there is the certainty of happiness on the other side of all of these sorrows. And maybe that is something I had not considered, and often should. We learn too often from humans the certainty of loss. We don’t learn enough about the certainty of happiness. But it’s there, isn’t it? It must be. It has to be. On the other side of all of that waiting. On the other side of all of that hurting. Or even alongside of it. That moment when, as you’re caught up in all of your tears, you are brought to a kind of surprising, almost-stifled laughter by that friend who knows you better than you ever thought someone might know you. Little joke that goes a long way. Happiness alongside the pain. Who would have ever thought we are capable of feeling so much, all at once? And yet we are. It’d be a pain in the ass if it wasn’t so beautiful.

One more thing. Just today, I went to see some of my high school students play in their league’s championship basketball game. I hadn’t seen them play before, these students who I have seen every single day in my classroom for the better part of a year, and so I wanted to. I wanted to see them do something they really loved. I sat court side with my wife and a handful of fellow teachers, and I cheered and watched these boys bound down the court. I watched them leap and shoot and fall. I watched them foul and get fouled. I watched them get mad at referees and put their heads in their hands and pick each other up off from the court. I watched them spin and muscle for a shot, almost longing to be hit. I watched them dance, too. And celebrate. I watched them clap. I watched them smile.

I love this line from the other poem by Nomi Stone I mentioned:

imagining my wife as a child
throwing a sweater over her pajamas to cycle with no hands
by the sea

Thanks to today, I have this image now of these kids in my classroom as kids on a court. And I love that I have it. Two of the best players on the team are in a class of students I taught this year who all had to retake a state exam they failed as juniors and had to pass as seniors in order to graduate. I love that class so much. They are a group of students with so many stories and so much heart. And they are sometimes sleepy, yes. And sometimes loud. And often distracted. And so often funny. I watched them struggle through standardized test practice questions and so much else. And sometimes I was frustrated and at a loss. Sometimes I didn’t know what to do. And often I was proud, yes. Yes, I was proud.

But today, to get to see two of them on the court? To watch as one of them dribbled between two defenders as if he were water slicing between two stones? To watch as one of them — I kid you not — jumped what seemed like four feet in the air to grab a rebound? To watch them direct their teammates, talk shop with referees, gather themselves after frustration, sink a couple three’s? To watch them be happy, in other words, in this language they have practiced where they are most fully themselves? Now, if I ever am frustrated with them, I only have to imagine them like that — full speed down the court, reckless and bounding, looking for the rim — to remember who they are and how full of life they can be. Sometimes we forget that our joy is what can keep us alive. That we do so much — so much waiting, so much hurting, so much trying, so much failing — just to feel it. I don’t want to forget that anymore. I want to remember myself happy. And you. And all of us. It will remind me that it — such joy, such happiness, even here, even now — is possible.

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Some notes:

1. Annie Dorsen put together a spreadsheet of presses, organizations, and other institutions of the arts who have been affected by the loss of NEA funding. Here’s a helpful guide for how to support small and independent presses who have lost their funding, put together by Deep Vellum Books.

2. Here is a website — put together by volunteers — that tracks the jobs lost and lives affected by the de-funding of USAID. It’s worth reading in order to fully understand the severity of what is happening, who it is affecting, and how to help.

3. I have found that Writers Against the War on Gaza is doing great work in building solidarity and awareness and justice in this contemporary moment. You can find a list of their resources and areas of further support here.

4. Workshops 4 Gaza is an organization of writers putting together donation-based writing workshops and readings in support of Palestine and in awareness of a more just, informed, thoughtful, considerate world. You can follow them here and get more information about them here.

5. If you live in NYC, I have found Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for mayor to be inspiring and empowering. You can find ways to support his campaign or get information about it here.

6. If you’ve read any of the recent newsletters, you’ve perhaps noticed that I am offering a subscription option. This is functioning as a kind of “tip jar.” If you would like to offer your monetary support as a form of generosity, please consider becoming a paid subscriber below. There is no difference in what you receive as a free or paid subscriber; to choose the latter is simply an option to exercise your generosity if you feel willing. I am grateful for you either way. Thanks for your readership.