Happiness in 87 Words
“It is raining hard. The stereo is playing. I am alone. All the windows are shut, five o’clock in the evening. The rain is thundering, coming down hard. The stereo is up loud. I’m completely happy. It feels too easy: like walking in a dream. Surely I am missing something. It cannot be this easy. Happiness is supposed to be sought after, complex, to be found only with the greatest amount of cunning.
Water roars off the roof, and I am dry.
Later tonight I will fix coffee.”
This is a complete section of the book. Call it a chapter, a story or call it what you will, this is the thing complete, and I like it. I like the feel of it and the structure. Look closely. Listen.
The first sentence is four words: one syllable, one syllable, two syllables, one syllable. So simple and clear, I hear the rain more than the sentence. Then another four-word sentence, this time with stereo's three syllables in the middle. Now I hear the music, but it's my music because I've already noticed the third sentence: "I am alone." I'm that I.
Bass, knowing he has pushed this simple sentence far enough, messes with it now.
The next sentence isn't a proper sentence. It's more poetic than prose, the phrase after the comma left dangling. He repeats that in the next sentence with the rain, but the appended phrase functions more properly. From there he goes back to a simple sentence about the music turned up loud. This is warm up for the biggest thought of the day. Listen:
I am completely happy.
He is filled with happiness to the top of his being. It's as if he is happiness itself. It is a revelation.
He says, it feels too easy. His happiness is so large, he turns to simile, to the impossibility of dreaming, something we all know.
When he begins the next sentence with "surely" I smile and almost laugh. Had he said that he was missing something, I wouldn't have believed. Had he asked, I wouldn't have wanted an answer. "Surely" says that he knows beyond being sure, that he's missing nothing, that he feels this thing absolutely.
The next line, the longest of the whole piece, states what is the common thinking about happiness, the supposed to be, and puts the lie to all that.
Not done, he hands out a statement that may or may not be a metaphor. The rain roars but he is dry.
He finishes out of the blue: Later tonight, I will fix coffee.
I want that coffee. And later today, I will fix some just to keep feeling this happy and to be complete.