Warning: this post will be confusing.  Or confused.  Because I am.  (I think.)

I don’t even really know why I’m writing this except I can’t not write it, if you get that.  Remember those old cartoons where Bugs or Daffy would get a paw or foot or wingtip attached to a piece of flypaper and then flail around, becoming increasing more pretzeled and stuck?  Like that.

So I thought I’d try to just write my way out of this tacky muddle.  You get to endure the flailing, luckless readers.  Or you can bail now and spare yourselves.  I’ll wait a second so you can … [click].  There, only the thoroughly bored, the masochists and my best friends are left.  Oh, and it’s long.  Sorry.  Whoops, there go a few more.  It’s all right.  I do it, too.  Okay, here we go.

I might be too happy.  Not always, like for my whole life, but lately.

I took that test linked on Fay Paxton’s blog “Are You Happy?” and scored 4.87, a teensy bit higher than L.C. Neal (which I’m feeling a little smug about; if you know Lisa, you know why) but not the too-happy, dreaded 6, so at least it’s not pathological yet.  But the Things That Make Me Happy pie has too many cherries in it and it’s making me feel weird.

Here comes a lateral move.  Sorry, but I have to do it.  I did warn you back there.

My husband belongs to a lawyers’ group that occasionally has what they call dinner meetings.  They do meet and eat dinner, but to imply there’s business conducted … (picture a huge eye-roll).  They used to drink a lot, back in the day when everyone did that after work on weekdays.  When the president gets up to say a few words, it’s de rigueur for the 40 or 50 in attendance to pelt the guy with dinner rolls or, when that ammo runs out, balled-up napkins.  All in good fun, har har.

For a while now I’ve been feeling pelted.  Not with bread, more like sensually pelted.  Assaulted, even.  Okay, stop.  You’re going to think this is about sex, and it’s not.  I know I have a reputation (say that with the high school inflection, please), but this time it’s really not, or at least only a tiny bit.  I mean assaulted by things that grip me by one sense (or more) and light me up like a flare, envelop me in phosphoric heat.  Feeling so swept up, so consumed by an experience in life is a good thing.  It’s what we all search for, isn’t it, that frisson of bliss that brings tears to one’s eyes?  Of course it is.  But is there such a thing as too much?  Am I becoming overwhelmed by joy?

You look confused.  Me, too.  Maybe some examples from the past few weeks would be helpful here.

A display at a Sebastopol nursery:  masses of coral dahlias, darkest green foliage, with an understory of black Japanese grasses.  Violet geraniums in a red pot, turquoise handle.  Color juxtapositions so stunning the images I saw nearly sang with the saturated hues.  An enormous pot of green and gold grass sussing in the breeze that I had to run my fingers through.  Had to.  Almost couldn’t stop.

Dirt at a vineyard the color of Nestle Quik powder that felt, in my palms and on my bare feet, exactly like all purpose flour – hefty and light all at once – slippery and soft as cornstarch, noticeably cooler than the air.  Finely milled dirt, dust flour?  Never ever in the 60 years of my life have I seen dirt like this before.  Fairy tale dirt. 

A cat’s heavy, engine-like purr.  She wasn’t sleeping or being petted or fed, just walking around, purring for some catty reason, loud enough to be heard several feet away.  The rhythm of a pop song so compelling I play it ten times, singing along, then make myself stop, only to do it again an hour later.  The sound my wedding ring makes (it’s a rolling ring, three interlocked bands), like the tiniest bells struck by clappers, as the rings tink against each other, slipping over my knuckle and back down again.  And again.  And again.  The moony silvery gleam of it in the dark.

My husband’s scent – that leathery, pheromone-y musk in the triangle between his neck and collarbone and ear that just fits my face, draws me like a magnet.  I could eat that smell or, more apt perhaps, I might starve without it.  Lavender, my lavender path; I walk up and back, inhaling, listening to the bees.  The Peet’s Coffee store smell (now that they’re saving spent grounds for us gardeners in a big trug) that’s a combination of exotic beans and soil and chocolate that I can actually taste when I open the door.

Ground chickpeas and harissa on grilled sourdough bread, sliced garden tomatoes with drops of vinegar, flakes of salt, a snappy radish-y crunch.  Greek yogurt on a spoon, a Chino’s strawberry, warm from the sun, in my fingers.

Tastes and smells, colors and textures so beautiful and intense they make me grin or laugh or shake my head in amazement.  Or cry.  I’ve been working hard at not crying for weeks, and I’m getting tired; it’s like trying to carry a dainty-handled cup full of water for twelve hours without your fingers cramping.  You’d think I would be avoiding all this gorgeousness so my nerve endings could retract and stop bzzz’ing, but you’d be wrong.  I’m obsessed, looking for more, slurping it up.

I squatted in that vineyard, scooping dirt, turning my hands over, plopping it back down for ten minutes, noticing how it had already stained the white rubber of my Roxy flip-flops and marked my feet with tiny brown dots, dirt pixels, just like what I had to scrub off my ankles in the tub as a child.  The vine women’s Spanish songs were muffled by the tangled foliage, the words just vowels strung onto notes, but they hung alone in the otherwise silent gap between day and night.  I crouched on the path, cool handfuls of dirt in my palms, listening to them sing, my face warm and gold.  I could smell the apples in the orchard and the dirt, the stables next door, the roses.  Every sense but taste completely engaged, plugged in, hooked.  If I’d had an apple to put in my mouth, I might not have left.  Ever.

When I can’t find something to marvel at (like now, just sitting at my desk, among familiar things), I dig through my memories for the gems.

Just now I wove my fingers together and then slowly pulled my hands apart, feeling skin slide against skin, until each fingertip was touching its twin, like a spider on a mirror, and – pop – I remembered a kiss years and years ago that was minutes long (15, 20?), warm as blood, from perfect lips, as a man and I were breaking up, for good and valid reasons perhaps but not for lack of love, our last kiss.  Typing that description just made my heart pound.  That kiss wasn’t a step on a path to somewhere else; it was a kiss with no retreat, much regret, a singular quivering kiss all on its own, that had bliss and sorrow and lust and leaving in it.  It was goodbye.

And then there was that lightning-struck, bolted-to-the-ground shock I felt when the handsomest man I’ve ever known entered the room and I looked up to see his breathtaking face, those espresso eyes, and fell irrevocably in love.

In Hawaii, snorkeling, half my floating horizontal body in the cool/warm water, the top half toasting in the sun, drying, the line in the middle where the ripples ring me like the edge of a turtle’s shell, the line between sunny and wet.  Later, that sunburn, skin taut and hot to the touch of his cool fingers, radiating the day’s indulgence back into the night air and onto the white sheets.

Heaving, lifting, struggling, sweaty work in the garden.  Gasping and so overheated I think I might explode, I take off my hat and put my head under the faucet, my scalp nearly sizzling, then tilt up, water running off my hair, down my shirt, back and front.  I get a glass, fill it with ice and water, then drink, gulping, fill it again and lie back in the shade.  Fishing an ice cube out of my glass, I rub it over my collarbones, up both sides of my neck, onto my eyelids, then get another and watch it melt between my breasts like a Hershey’s kiss left on the hood of a hot car.

I can’t talk about my daughter and son-in-law and granddaughter, though they figure hugely in this.  I just can’t describe those feelings right now and keep typing.  But it’s them, too, being with them as often as I can, soaking them up, drinking their joy, kissing their faces, touching their hands, breathing their words, memorizing their laughter.  Top of the list.

And even though these things make my eyes fill – even right now, just describing them to you – with tears, I want them.  Again.  Now, right now, and then after that again and again and again.  I can’t get enough, will never have enough of all this beauty, this gorgeousness, these things I see and feel and taste and smell that squeeze my heart and make me shout with laughter and shake with tears.  But why?  Why now and why so much?  Have I just been lucky and found all this just now, all at once, more than ever before?  Why am I so thin-skinned and susceptible to being overwhelmed by the emotions they generate?

I’ve thought and thought, even dreamed about the question, puzzled.  I thought I might be dying and this insatiable quest to experience higher and higher levels of joy and beauty and even pain was a sign that I needed to fill this grain silo before time ran out.  Then I thought I had become a hedonist, like catching the hedon virus somehow.  Or a sensualist or a sensory-ist or a bliss addict although, as far as I can tell, there aren’t such things.  Or that I had a brain tumor that was causing neurons to fire continuously in the fabulousness-appreciation center (F-A/C) of the left cerebral cortex.  Flailing, flailing, I know.  Sorry.

Lame attempt at humor aside, I think part of it is just dumb luck, like looking up at the night sky and seeing a meteor shower.  Another may be that I’ve stopped lately being so caught up in negativity and anger and conflict that I finally had time and the patience to notice.  When I typed that, I felt something in my chest like a gong being struck.  The patience to notice, being open to seeing something, not just hurrying past on the way to the next unimportant, snitchy detail, some item to cross off a list.  I think that’s a big chunk of the answer.

I think, too, it’s a way to love life, to find happiness in wonderful things that are out there, that are free and available, and to balance out the peenchy, crappy things that exist, the people who relish annoying or hurting or demeaning others, who think gaining an unfair advantage or having the last word is a worthy goal.  It balances out the unavoidable ugliness and sadness and unfairness that I can’t fix, no one can fix.  It’s finding fullness in wonderful experiences, in people whose love shines like stars, in living on the gorgeous edge.

So, it looks like I refuse to live my life on the median or the mean or the average, to settle.  I know someone who believes that if you deny yourself the joy of the highs, you will be insulated from the pain of the lows, but a frank look at anyone’s life says it doesn’t work that way.  Life isn’t a scale like the one Lady Justice holds that you can add to or subtract weights from to even things up.  There is no Great Arbiter above the clouds who rewards you for your abstinence of joy by not raining sorrow down on your dutiful and deprived head.  Even if you believe in some god, I’m betting she doesn’t bargain.  Martyrs don’t win.  I refuse to believe they do.

Maybe I’ll get used to the fiery glow that comes with these experiences; maybe having them will stop making me cry.  Now that I’ve talked through this with you, though, patient readers, I actually hope not.

I want to still feel my eyes widen with wonder, to feel my lungs fill with the breath of the most wistful sigh, my hands tremble, tears run down my face.  I want to experience the Himalyas of joy, of sensory thrill rides, the Mariana Trench of love, the Spiral Nebula of a wide, messy, sticky, delicious, wonderful life.  If that means – and I think it does – being exposed to the possibility of profound loss, jaw-dropping pain, betrayal, disillusionment, then I’ll take that risk and roll the dice.

If you’d been squatting in the dirt of that vineyard with me that day, you would understand precisely why.