Part 1: One of My Many Delights

Reading Ross Gay’s ‘Book of Delights’ truly changed my perspective on the simple day-to-day occurrences of happiness in my life. Like most recently, it’s been a little challenging adapting to living on campus this semester in a dorm. For the entirety of my college career, I’ve lived off campus with my family. However, this semester I needed to move on campus because my partner separated from the Air Force and moved back where their family is in Texas. So, I’m not only living in an entirely new environment, but I’m also experiencing a familial lack for what feels like the first time in a while. Not an ideal situation for the last semester of my undergraduate studies but I’m making do, and this awesome tea house in North Charleston where I used to live called Gong Cha gives me comfort.

Lately, I’ve found myself making a fun little trip over there to get a large black milk tea (hold the boba; yeah I know that’s weird, the texture just doesn’t agree with me, don’t judge me) whenever I have a bit of free time. It’s not only the drink itself that’s a delight for me. It’s the entire process. I just recently bought a new car (my first “big girl” purchase) and get this… IT HAS A SUNROOF. I cannot tell you how much this delights me. So, I let the Charleston breeze waft through my car while I’m blasting my favorite tunes (using Apple CarPlay, which is a first for me) on my way to Gong Cha. Sometimes I’ll take a detour over the Ravenel Bridge because there’s something about that gigantic bridge overlooking Cooper River that makes me feel a little giddy. The drink tops off the whole experience. The blend of creamy, earthy goodness pleases me and I often find myself gulping slowly to let each taste bud in my mouth capture the flavor. Occasionally I’ll head across the street to Books-a-Million to peruse through the aisles, each book cover reminding me why I chose to be an English major in the first place. The stories. Anywhere there’s a plethora of books feels like home. I gently run my fingers across the covers, once in a while picking a book off its shelf to flip through the pages and inhale that fresh paper scent while peeking at its contents. On the ride back downtown to my dorm, I peacefully sit with my thoughts. Each time, the entire experience offers me a unique sense of calm and quiet that’s much needed in my busy day-to-day as an undergraduate senior.

Part 2: Podcast Narrative

For the first fourteen years of my life I lived in Southeast Michigan with my mom and older brother. I frequented local parks while growing up there since my childhood was before the explosion of technology we know today, and also because my older brother Shawn played baseball throughout his childhood. My mom would sit in her camping chair on the sidelines during his games while I’d playfully stomp through the playground and surrounding grassy fields with my best friend at the time named Katie, whose older brother also played baseball. Back then, I didn’t embody the profound realization that death was looming over all of us. I instead had a childlike wonder towards the tickling feeling of grass beneath my bare feet, the breeze of the wild tangling my long, brown hair. As I’ve experienced life however, and after reading Ross Gay’s poem ‘Thank You’ for the first time, I recognize there have been many times I’ve walked through a grassy area with my bare feet and felt an enduring sense of melancholy that comes with the realization of death which Gay criticizes in this poem. 

‘Thank You’ by Ross Gay

“If you find yourself half naked

and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,

again, the earth’s great, sonorous moan that says

you are the air of the now and gone, that says

all you love will turn to dust,

and will meet you there, do not

raise your fist. Do not raise

your small voice against it. And do not

take cover. Instead, curl your toes

into the grass, watch the cloud

ascending from your lips. Walk

through the garden’s dormant splendor.

Say only, thank you.

Thank you.”

I’m a new consumer of Ross Gay’s work. I first read his 2019 collection of essays titled ‘Book of Delights,’ and this poem gives me the same sense of delight he highlights in that work, specifically gathering delight in things which remind us of our mortality. His personification of the earth using “sonorous moan” is an interesting tool and I think it connects the reader to mother earth in a profound way. The feeling of grass beneath one’s feet and wind, ground the reader in a sort of spectacular moment of realization that all things are one and impermanent. Gay suggests, however, to not allow our human emotion to ruin a moment in nature like this. Instead of feeling sorrowful or angry with mother earth, we should embrace her. Revel in the feeling of the grass tickling our bare feet, find consolation in observing the wind, the clouds, and the overall landscape. To be alive is to experience, and as such we must be grateful for this chance.

I think it’s interesting that this poem is fourteen lines, making it a sonnet, but it doesn’t adhere to an end-rhyme or iambic pentameter. This sort of narrative-like, lyrical quality to the poem, in my opinion, allows the reader to ruminate with what each word and line represents. There’s a wisdom Gay wants us to take away from the poem and apply to our everyday lives. When I think back on my childhood and other times when I’ve wandered through nature barefoot, there’s a strong contrast between the experiences. In childhood, there was a playful approach, yet in adulthood, I’ve been more inclined to associate nature with death. However, I think what Gay is trying to convey is that nature is playful and each time we experience it we should keep that experience as just that. We shouldn’t associate negative connotations with such an experience because to do so takes away from the present. We have no control over the inevitable future of loved ones passing away, of everything before us disappearing eventually. To savor the present is to be grateful for the now. And we’re the lucky ones.

‘Thank You’ by Ross Gay

“If you find yourself half naked

and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,

again, the earth’s great, sonorous moan that says

you are the air of the now and gone, that says

all you love will turn to dust,

and will meet you there, do not

raise your fist. Do not raise

your small voice against it. And do not

take cover. Instead, curl your toes

into the grass, watch the cloud

ascending from your lips. Walk

through the garden’s dormant splendor.

Say only, thank you.

Thank you.”