2008 Woodie Awards
Read this column and you will find happiness
Max Lux
Issue date: 2/22/07 Section: Op/Ed
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There's a small wooden electric lantern, the kind with translucent paper walls and an oriental aura, sitting on a small shelf in my room. Switched on, it illuminates the wall behind it with an orange-yellow glow, a soft, radiant light unobtrusively filtered: too dim to read by, but just enough to see her face. She looks at me with large, almost predatory eyes, pleading with a hidden smile for some attention, her pajama-clad body wrapped in blankets, sheltered from the bitter cold her insensitive boyfriend lets in through an open window. There's a hushed chuckle of recognition as she notices my description, her eyes straying from her homework to my steady monotone typing. An approving hand reaches up to rub my shoulders. I hate being watched while writing and shoot her a annoyed glare, which quickly softens to a smirk and a quick kiss on her pale cheek.
From the wall above, Daredevil sits back, maskless and relieved, enjoying a moment of peace before the inevitable status quo shift that will no doubt arrive by issue's end. Underneath, and elsewhere, a blonde in mid-backstroke finds herself framed by both the blood-red title somehow hanging overhead, and the titular beast rising from below. I notice the exotic beauty (half Cherokee, part Brazilian and yet none of the above) to my right has shifted position, her body temperate and soothing against my own, a yawn containing the lamentation 'this book sucks' escaping her chapped red lips. Resin gray gargoyle, plastic meditating Spider-man and ceramic Buddha line the cracked white windowsill; while a seldom-worn cowboy hat hangs lonesome on a facing wall. I never put batteries in my retro-style, Target-bought wall-clock for fear the steady ticking would impart a "Telltale Heart" style madness upon me, and so it hangs as functionless décor. At this very moment, 10:59 p.m., sitting here, typing listlessly on whatever comes to mind, girlfriend lightly dozing right beside, I am content.
It's such a alien thing, contentment, happiness in its most fleeting and invisible form. So often, a split-second after recognition, the feeling is gone, replaced by a sensation whose equivalent can only be described as existential impotence: an inevitability to again achieve the sense of wellbeing and complete calm previously experienced. Case in point: the woman to my right has just sat up, answering the obnoxious blare of her cellular phone as it fills the silence with vibrations and cacophonous audio discord. While I am still comfortable, that brief period of collegiate zen has mysteriously vanished, without trace or reason. So, how might we set about attaining the impossible: sustained, continuous contentment, a mind free of self-consciousness and worry and with a sense of paradoxical duality--oneness with life and stark individuality?
From the wall above, Daredevil sits back, maskless and relieved, enjoying a moment of peace before the inevitable status quo shift that will no doubt arrive by issue's end. Underneath, and elsewhere, a blonde in mid-backstroke finds herself framed by both the blood-red title somehow hanging overhead, and the titular beast rising from below. I notice the exotic beauty (half Cherokee, part Brazilian and yet none of the above) to my right has shifted position, her body temperate and soothing against my own, a yawn containing the lamentation 'this book sucks' escaping her chapped red lips. Resin gray gargoyle, plastic meditating Spider-man and ceramic Buddha line the cracked white windowsill; while a seldom-worn cowboy hat hangs lonesome on a facing wall. I never put batteries in my retro-style, Target-bought wall-clock for fear the steady ticking would impart a "Telltale Heart" style madness upon me, and so it hangs as functionless décor. At this very moment, 10:59 p.m., sitting here, typing listlessly on whatever comes to mind, girlfriend lightly dozing right beside, I am content.
It's such a alien thing, contentment, happiness in its most fleeting and invisible form. So often, a split-second after recognition, the feeling is gone, replaced by a sensation whose equivalent can only be described as existential impotence: an inevitability to again achieve the sense of wellbeing and complete calm previously experienced. Case in point: the woman to my right has just sat up, answering the obnoxious blare of her cellular phone as it fills the silence with vibrations and cacophonous audio discord. While I am still comfortable, that brief period of collegiate zen has mysteriously vanished, without trace or reason. So, how might we set about attaining the impossible: sustained, continuous contentment, a mind free of self-consciousness and worry and with a sense of paradoxical duality--oneness with life and stark individuality?