Doug Thorpe

Blog 2

1/25 08

So it’s Friday morning, end of January, sun is shining in Seattle. I’m listening to the soundtrack to Juno and thinking that there are certain small pleasures that make one very happy just to be alive.

Yesterday I sat in my cluttered office –it was another beautiful day, blue skies, a Midwestern clarity to the air – with two students talking about Leslie Silko’s novel Ceremony. This was officially a class, an Independent Study. We took two hours and could have gone on forever – or so it felt to me. Such pleasure sitting with these two, enjoying their engagement with the text, with each other, just enjoying. Kingdom was at hand. There was nowhere further to go.

That, in part, was what we were talking about: this paradox of time that we live within, that we swim within, and the strong sense of needing to get somewhere, and enjoying that sense, at our best: that sense of the journey, being on the road and delighting with where we are, passing through the small towns of Iowa, of Minnesota or Washington or Oregon, on our way somewhere of course and yet loving where we are.

Somewhere to go and yet knowing that there’s nowhere further to go.

Small pleasures. A summer morning. A Beethoven sonata, or a moment in The Magic Flute. So much great music! So much to learn!

And thinking that it’s worth remembering them, listing them even, just like Woody Allen does in Manhattan (which would be on my list of small pleasures).

And I agree with him about Louis Armstrong, about Fred Astaire and a number of other things.

Screwball comedies from the thirties– The Awful Truth, Bringing Up Baby, Holiday, His Girl Friday, It Happened One Night…. For those who want critical support read Stanley Cavell’s Pursuit of Happiness or James Harvey’s beautifully written Romantic Comedy in Hollywood.

Small pleasures do not mean trivial pleasures – usually in fact they resonate and stay with us because there’s something true in them. No grand statements – this is not U2 or Springsteen or Blonde on Blonde; more like Jonathon Richman or The Kinks in certain moods.

Little gifts. Small slices of mystery. Reasons to live.

Add your own.

dt