This Week's Laughter #12
An archive in joy and tummies
This week will return to something of a normalcy in form. Here are, in no particular order, some of my laughs.
On a street named after the peak, the utmost, the crest of a hill or mountain, which exists maybe not even halfway up said hill, there is a house whose roof is being worked on. This involves scaffolding, construction vehicles, hoses, and construction workers in their reflective vests and boots and helmets. Occasionally, on extremely rare occasions, you can catch them on break or on lunch, sitting over the scaffolding, with their legs dangling in the air some thirty feet off the ground, kicking like school children sitting on a barber’s chair unable to reach the footrest. Eating their sandwiches. Not really talking but perhaps giggling. What is this if not a type of sheer freedom? The soul buckling under the weight of the world and here the inner child reaches out to, Atlassian, lift it up once more and make a game of exertion.
Sometimes, just paying attention moderately can gift you with a vision of comedy. Sitting at a donut shop, I witnessed a man walk in purposefully, peruse some of the decorative, old, hardback books on the wall. Or rather, he plucked one off the wall, one of the thicker works, and flipped through its pages for a few seconds, before taking it and walking back out. The whole interaction — step into store, walk to wall, pluck book, browse, leave with book — took less than a minute. I don’t laugh here at his need or his circumstances, it is getting colder and especially in the northern climates, unhoused individuals use many of the books from those little free libraries for kindling, for a way to warm and dry off in the pacific northwest freezing rains (perhaps consider donating bundles of fresh and thick socks to local aid organizations if you’re so inclined!). I laugh, though, mostly because that’s the best use those decorative books could have hoped for since they’d been placed so intentionally along the walls. Surely nobody was going to pull one off, read it, and put it back.
Here’s a quote from translator Ali Kinsella’s introduction to Halyna Kruk’s collection Lost in Living (also tr. by Dzvinia Orlowsky).
For a poem to feel urgent, our imaginations must be on high alert. The poem is a call to action. However, the poem must make the occurrence or knowledge at hand palpable, and believable.
Much of Ukrainian poetry today is being called on to serve some serious, reflective purpose — as written by Kinsella, “the world is calling upon Ukrainians to document the effects of war,” via poetry. Yet much of the origin of contemporary Ukrainian literature is in some form of satirical, comedic element so as to evade Russian critical machines intent on minimizing the negative view toward Russia. In this way, Ukrainian poetry shows us that comedy is a means of making palpable. To laugh so as to acknowledge.
Once upon a midday dreary, I helped to move a friend. It wasn’t immensely strenuous, but moving always comes with its interpersonal turmoil and struggles. Most of the way through the end, or rather as we were dispersing and departing, this friend’s parents, whom I was meeting for the first time, were about to hop into their truck and drive off along with the rest of us. I told them, Text us when you get home. You ever replay moments in your head and tell yourself how funny you are? Let us expand this further. Hello, you, reader, you are incredibly talented, so funny — star of your friend group, they all look forward to you appearing before them so they can belly-laugh like they haven’t since the last time you were there. You’re also gorgeous and your taste in media is astounding. You’re hardworking and kind, you’ve developed this sense for knowing when and how to care for others in ways that are meaningful to them. It’s a miracle you exist in even one of these superlatives, and yet here you are, the star of the show. Yesterday was the autumnal equinox and what is the equinox of laughter? A churning core that resettles overtop itself. If magma were to be spun cyclically, would it cool itself falling ontop of itself?
Honestly, I really don’t like Katy Perry. I am one of those pop-drama fiends who read through the court reports in Kesha’s case against Dr. Luke (rapist producer who now works with Doja Cat and Kim Petras). And in Kesha’s case against Dr. Luke, Katy Perry’s testimony was effectively victim-blaming, and trying to justify the abuse against Kesha down to ‘just how the industry is.’ So when I see the downtrend of responses to her latest album, I can’t help but laugh. Do you ever laugh at your enemy’s failures? Would you say you have many enemies? Most of mine, I don’t believe, recognize that they are my enemies. I keep that information close to my chest. But, yes, I laugh when they struggle.
This final laugh of this week was a dream so odd that I had to document it. Oftentimes anxiety dreams manifest in repeatable and familiar scenarios — chases, escaping houses, being stuck on planes/trains/boats — and this was no different. I was stuck in a house and needed to escape in this dream. However, the means presented to me of escaping was a Millionaire-esque gameshow where I had to do speed math in order to unlock various restraints and door locks to outcompete my way to victory. My childhood neighbor’s son was competing against me. I do enjoy doing arithmetic quickly. But such an odd dream to wake up to. As if I was anxious but my mind was attempting to refuse and make light of that which caused me anxiety. Laughter as a recycling bin yearning to be full and bring purpose to discarded objects.
Hopefully these have brought you some light as a start to your week and offer the warmest of endeavors to tackle. As usual, tell me if there are any particularly crunchy laughs you’d like to share.