Chapel of Inadvertent Joy

Chapel of Inadvertent Joy

70 Chapel of Inadvertent Joy One minute you’re hissing at your wife about something trivial, the next you’re stomping derelict train tracks, when it emerges, its spires shooting up between your ribs, your gaze swivels skyward and catches a clutch of birds, glittering over a smokestack, sparkling back and forth in the sky, in various formations, like a math equation being worked out in the mind of a genius. Always pull the car over when you spot a teen punk rock show at dusk in a public park. Always drink a glimpse of a white horse in a sunlit pasture at the end of summer. Always laugh when the garden hose slips out of your hand and sprays you in the face. When they said smell the roses, they didn’t tell you that every day the rose changes, that first you must identify the rose. Today you’re in a field by the Hudson. Ribbons of nectar spool from a folk singer’s lips, your wife and daughter lollygag in the grass. Sunlight drizzles through tree leaves, an organic stained-glass window. Feel the convergence of all your stray voltage. Don’t pull out of that feeling. Let the father standing next to you 71 see your eyes well up, the inverse of how the neighbors sometimes hear you yelling fuck. It’s true—you don’t deserve this, but it’s yours anyway: the gold-tipped spurs of this moment, a red bird flinging praise through the sky. ...