On Joy
“Director’s Notes” are excerpts from our monthly email newsletter, “Stories from the Garden.” Subscribe and see past issues here.
Dear Friends,
A few weeks ago, a dear and wise friend, unbeknownst to him, drew my attention to something I had let recede from my present sense of this place we tend: Joy. Of course it hadn’t disappeared; this is, after all, a place born of choosing another way in the face of despair, a garden made not of work, but rather, in W.S. Merwin’s words “of pure indulgence.” But after the fires in Lāhainā and Kula, and in these days of war the world over, a pall had settled in somewhere I couldn’t name or see. Since August I’ve turned often to William’s earlier work, revisiting in particular, and many times over, the strikingly contemporary poems in The Lice. And as I did my best to heed Terry Tempest Williams’ profound and essential call for the strength “not to look away from all that is breaking our hearts,” I had, unbeknownst even to myself, turned my gaze from what fills hearts up. I’ve been asking: how and where might we orient ourselves to look plainly upon the many ills of the world while keeping the joys in crisp focus, too?
In recent days, yet another wise friend here on Maui, no stranger to anguish, offered a set of questions that engage the imagination, the engine of change and possibility, to invite joyful prospects into focus: Where will we be when the light changes? What is the next frame? These questions have guided me back to a place (this very one) where present and future coexist, a place capacious enough to hold despair and joy and their prospects all at once, and to make something of them. Here are a few flashes of present joys, seeds that will bear fruit through dialogue with headwinds, storms, grief, pain; a new find in the house—an old photograph of a young William Merwin, on a north shore beach with his beloved dogs; a transformative conversation at our recent board retreat with poet Jorie Graham, author of the astonishing To 2040, who opened our minds to the privilege, responsibility, and even the joy—the kuleana—of living in a time when every thing we do, every gesture we make, matters; a glimpse of sound artist, composer, and recent artist-in-residence Leilehua Lanzilotti making ti leaf lei with her creative collaborators—choreographer Anthony Aiu, and vocalists Amanda Crider and Brad Wells of Roomful of Teeth—on the south lanai; a young palm planted by The Merwin Conservancy ʻohana, who gathered where the old ironwood fell last year, offering once again the possibility of renewal.
Today I revisit something I wrote in these Stories from the Garden two years ago, and remind myself: in our care and attention is our continuity, and our joy.
With warm wishes,
Sonnet
