Up and down. Up and down.
I think the best sound in the whole wide world is laughter. I was going to narrow down to toddler laughter which bubbles up and out of little people bodies as the best of champagnes, but really, it’s any laughter expressing unreserved joy.
I’ve been crying a lot. I used to worry that if I ever started crying, I wouldn’t be able to stop. If I opened the sluice gate, an ocean of tears might wash me away. So, I didn’t cry. At least, not often and never deeply. But now I do. Grief feels soggy. Heavy. The way a body feels waterlogged after a full day of lake swimming, skin sponging the tang of seaweed, fish scales. I’ve felt, at times, as I move through these days, that I’m sunk beneath a wobbly surface. Laughter pulls me up splashing. Up and down; the way life moves.
Grief, like creativity, is a process. Six months post leaving my marriage I’m …still processing. But the grief—which doesn’t erupt a monstrous geyser in the way I feared, instead[1], it’s discreet weepings I indulge then pack up and away, get on with the day—has illuminated my writings. Allowing myself to cry has also allowed myself to see and understand some of the reasons I’ve resisted revising my own pieces…I wasn’t ready to see the pain I (unknowingly) layered there. By pain I guess I mean sorrow…regret…shame. Seeing it now feels…embarrassing. It’s so obvious. Like, decades of obvious.
Crying improved my (re)vision; laughter, goddammit, is gonna help me process embarrassment. Kind of feels like answering the front door in the nude. Would I do this? Maybe. It’s important to push my creative practice from its pillowed comfort towards the perilous shadows. The only way I’ll learn and grow.
A recent Saturday afternoon found me staring down the barrel of a good cry. I was going to write too…I seem to be able to do both these things at the same time, a curious dexterity that won’t earn me any trophies. A friend texted she was running a creativity workshop, something to do with comedy. Few people showed up, would I join her? I read the text through watery shimmers and worked to compose a polite decline. But my hands refused to send the message. My fingers deleted my crafted decline three times before I twigged I wasn’t entering the right response. So, I typed I’d put a game face on and be there.
The workshop included drama and improv games, the kind of theatrical exercises that involve the whole body and breath work and screaming out your chosen name[2]. The kind of exercises that, had the bartender offered to give me a public enema instead, I would have enthusiastically accepted[3]. I will say that I traded an afternoon of crying for laughter (and embarrassment) and I had a lot of fun. Unfortunately, some of this was caught on camera, which I leave here for your enjoyment with the caveat that I look much better when I let my hair down and sport moonbeams. I even ended the afternoon singing a karaoke song[4]. Invitations: can’t fault an old broad for sounding boundaries[5][6].
It started as a low laugh, skipped stones tingling my throat, expanding rings with every exhalation, a laughter that brought the rain clouds down, had me surfing the troughs to the crests[7].
[1] Ok. Not entirely true. I did experience some epic wailing sessions. Interestingly, the worst of them brought on by reading a most beautiful passage in the novel Foster, written by Claire Keegan, where the little girl protagonist gazes across a field topped with dozens of flitting white butterflies. The scene hauled up an image of my own (no longer) vegetable garden, the golden light of late August lighting up the cabbage moths like confetti, hovering the flower blossoms, circling the globes of fire red tomatoes. The grief took me then, a clenched fist to the stomach that had me gasping for breath and buckled my body. I mourn losing the garden.
[2] Aloura. I have no idea why that one popped from my mouth. Desperation I assume.
[3] Probably exactly what you need Biro, such a tight ass.
[4] Yes, of course this was after two IPAs, the only way to really get the pickle out of Miss Stress’s bum. I sang Journey’s song, Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’, which I must assure you retains only surface significance with its glancing reference to crying. This was the first time I sang karaoke…I hit a few flat notes in the first phrases (dreadful, but the show must go on) and managed to warm up and belt out the sense of revenge the song requires to really hit it home. I dislike the too many na-na-na-na-nas at the end and left the stage long before those were completed. People had more patience in the 70s.
[5] Come on Super Man, put those old phone booths to use; Kérd a számomat.
[6] This is a sure-to-make-you-laugh piece, Who The Hell Was Mr. Saxobeat Anyway?, written by Josh Baines.
[7] I’ve returned to working on my longer form project, pulling out old sections of writings, collaging them together, stitching in some humour and even exploring my dark. Feels good to be moving again. Recent epiphany: I’m actually living the life I’ve always dreamed of …like, right now. So, resolve to stop crying and get on with shit. Embrace joy.
Process Peace 