“To get the full value of a joy one must have someone to divide it with,” said Twain. I believe he also said a contingent thing about grief—that it can take care of itself. I will look it up, as Twain would say, by and by.
How many times have I divided joy with someone? What does dividing joy mean? I think the division is often unspoken though not always.
I remember my sister, now a physician in New York, once telling me about a holy woman, a guru, who emanated joy without speaking; how her followers just swelled up with the electrolysis of divinity; that the whole thing was quite sincere. I didn’t make a joke. Her story was of unaffectedness, naturalness, human beings around a fire—never mind it was imaginary. And there’s nothing wrong with an imaginary fire, unless of course you need a real one. The unspoken joy is longitudinal; it spreads like motes.
But I like not having to say a thing. A miniscule joy? The smallest joy in the world. A friend to see it also.
How it happens:
I’m in the woods with my friend David. We’re walking among trees. We’re respectively trying to not poke our eyes out on the small branches. We’re each trailing spider silk from our ears and pates. We’re shivering on the inside. I remember someone saying that delicacy in women is strength. I imagine I’m a strong womanly man among spiders, sunlight falling before me, sweaty hands outstretched.
Then we are laughing. Neither of us has said a thing. One of us may have swallowed a spider but won’t say. One of us has inoculated himself against trepidation by climbing through an invisible window. You can’t say a thing about that while walking between trees. What would you say: “Friend, I’ve just climbed through a window on Mt. Athos, called by incense dating back to the ur-villages of the Red Sea.”
No you wouldn’t say this. Nor would your friend quote Alexander Pope aloud: “The spider’s touch, how exquisitely fine! Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.” He would perhaps think of it. But then a twig would catch at his leftward eye socket. He’d be driven back to shuddering.
But there it is, two men trembling without spoken words and moving among trees. This is a fine thing.
There’s the proverb: “Silence is also speech” but this kind of sentiment tends toward the truisims of emotional intelligence—“There is no reply to the ignorant like keeping silence.”
I’ve always liked Alduous Huxley’s assertion: “After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 