JADB

It used to amuse me for the longest time that when I’m at my happiest I tend to be most quiet about it. It seems that I’m then so busy being happy, that I don’t want to waste any time on non-critical things like blog entries.

I used to think I was alone or unusual in that, that is till I listened to Harvey Danger’s Happiness writes white from their Little by Little album.

Ariella, 7:30 I don’t want to get up yet
Listen to the morning music cursing the alarm you set
As you know I’ve never been a praying man
I don’t need a God to make me feel alirght
But if you wonder why I never wrote you a song
it’s because happiness writes white

I also started paying attention to other blogs, and, while by no means a universal phenomenon, it does seem a lot more common than people would credit.

He had been quite happy in the aquarium, for quite a while. That was before, of course. But there was a time he’d been quite happy indeed.

He could remember a time before the aquarium, swimming free. It hadn’t always been fun, not always comfortable, but he could remember the feeling of swimming wherever he had wanted to. But but that was another life; before he had been caught.

He could remember what it had been like when he had first been put into the aquarium; remember how she would come and coo at him, looking so joyous at having him there. He now wasn’t sure but it could have been the novelty of him being there, but, still, he was quite convinced that she’d really been happy to have him in her life, in her aquarium, there in the beginning.

But that had been before: before she’d sometimes forget to clean the tank, occasionally not feed him, not clean the filter. Of course he’d forgiven her that; she’d been so loving in the beginning; surely it was all just an accident…

But then it happened; he saw a brochure for a marine aquarium! But he couldn’t live in one of those! And there was certainly no chance of another aquarium fitting into the room! Maybe, he thought wistfully, she was just looking. Maybe she was just curious…

Then the day came; he heard her say that she was going to release him… At least she wasn’t just going to flush him down the toilet; she claimed to still care for him too much!

Well that was all in the past, he thought, it was all behind him. Right now he is in mid air; he wasn’t back in the water yet but he was out of her hands. He doesn’t know what is waiting for him beneath the calm-looking surface, but he had no choice but to go find out.

Maybe it would be an adventure, maybe happiness awaits, maybe death, he doesn’t know.

But he does know that the next one will have to work a hell of a lot harder to catch him…

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

The Hollow Men, T.S. Eliot.