In this moment, I am happy. I’m not sure why. All I know is that this is a moment I want to capture and hold, to feel for a long time to come.
It’s 2:30 in the morning, Sunday night into Monday, and I am finishing the trek back to campus after an eventful, if quiet, weekend at home.
The rain peppers the windshield making pretty patterns that last just a second before the wipers flick them away to make a clean transparent slate.
I’m listening to the sound of the radio, turned up; King Diamond’s House of God is in the CD player. I’m humming along with the thrumming music, keeping time to the drums by tapping the steering wheel. As I look out over the wheel, I see the lights reflected in the damp streets, making a mirror for me to drive on.
The roads tonight are silent, there is no one here but me, traveling so late, and there is, in the dusky emptiness, a peace – a peace of knowing that the world is sleeping.
It is the moment when all bad little children are going to bed, and the good ones have yet to get up. I am having an energetic time when the CD gets to the last track – track 13. The title is “Peace of Mind.”
King Diamond, for all his theatrics, concept albums and grandiose telling of horror stories, knows how to let an audience down gently. Just when his stories reach their point of unbearable climax, he pops in a soft, gentle instrumental. “Peace” is a wispy number, a simple riff, extemporized in simple solo runs. At that very moment, something hits me.
In my car, in the dark, speeding over the wet empty roads at two in the morning I have an epiphany of sorts. At that very moment, I feel that everything is OK. The universe and its inhabitants bear me no ill will, and I feel a calm belonging, as though, at last, I have found my place among the people, plants and stars. At that very moment I am happy.
I know I am truly happy, because the feeling inspires in me no clever pithy aphorisms, no cynical little retorts. For a moment there is no anger, no pain, no wishes, no regrets; there is only that moment, and I am in it.
Does it mean anything? Probably not. Will it last? Who knows? These things are not important. What is important is that in this moment, I am content. Awash in raindrops, and the sound of a crying guitar, in the midst of blessed silence and emptiness, in the vacuum of dimly lit highways I have my moment of perfect pleasant rest.
I could here offer my “secrets of happiness” or my beliefs about what is good and noble and how to enrich the human spirit. Alas, that is not my gift. I can only write about what I know, and I have not these secrets, and I do not claim to know the good and noble. All I know is that I am happy.
I am happy, and in this vulnerable moment, I choose to share with you my circumstance and not my thoughts, for some things, cannot be adequately explained. And to be honest, I do not wish to explain, for joy, like pain, is private, and while the feelings may be shared, sometimes the reasons should not.
For the greatest tool of a writer is restraint; knowing just the right moment when enough has been said to make a point and not belabor it (to refer back to King Diamond).
All I can say for sure is that tonight it is dark and wet and peaceful. No sirens blare and there are no cars in sight. The music drifts over me, and takes me to a place where all is understood, and for a second, I can see my face. I see that I am smiling, because tonight, in this one moment, all is well, and I am happy.Comments and questions are welcome.
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