The header image pictures a riverbank. It is an image of space empty of me. This empty space contains my last remembered moment of happiness.

The Gulley

I had floundered about in a dark gulley carrying a set of mud and dirt encrusted flower pots, the four of them cemented together by clay that had set up hard, like concrete. I brought them to this spot two at a time, plonked myself down on the rock surface, made a sort of workplace on the banks of the river, and began the process of unsticking the pots.

The Delirium

There was a delirium of happiness associated with this activity. For one, it was cool by the river. For an extended period I was safe from the heat. For two, the gurgle gargle of the great river as it went rushing past on its way to the sea, the same sea on which I had floated, had overflown, had surveyed the horizon eclipsed by 60 knots of damp fog, an ocean of ancient water molecules of which some number are presently inside of me, form part of me, have been excreted by me at odd spots within the boundaries of the Canadian national park system without me being arrested for the criminal act of micturation required to sustain life. A long winding river deserves a long winding sentence.

The Molecule

I was happy for I was engaged in a stupidly repetitive act that involved water and the appearance of accomplishment. The pots were scrubbed and brushed and dunked and watered, drowned and emptied, submerged in a river flow of chill water rolling down an imperceptible slope, the carrying away of a small cloud of clay particles, a cement that no longer clung, no longer painted my skin a ghostly white. A splash and the ghost was gone. I spent an hour or two in this happy state of delirium, went home, collected the other two pots and returned to a further period of joy.

If I possessed a greater stock of clay encrusted pots, I would be there still, scrubbing and dunking, the water carrying all before it, me carrying my water atop two spindles, the pair called legs, water propelling the very language you read, each droplet a word circulating inside your brain in a mysterious way, yet unexplained.

This is a description of happiness.