lolsob

These past few weeks on the west coast have been blissful. I officially believe in photosynthesis: my soul newly reborn in the sun. There were so many moments of self-intimacy — going to cafes and leisurely diving into hot chocolates, spending all day reading every essay James Baldwin ever wrote. So many deeply felt conversations like — this is the person I have been waiting to meet forever, like anything is possible when we are together. There were so many dance floors, so many failed attempts at finding good lighting, mostly — so much laughter. I don’t think I have laughed so much in ages.

We are told to wait for joy, told to regulate our pleasure, made to feel like everything has to be instrumentalized and oriented toward the future. But the future is now is the past is time, it becomes irrelevant, when you are with the people you love, just laughing. And in that way — we humans have developed time travel through laughter. We are here, but we are there, and we are going somewhere together. So here is to moments without reason, to unbridled and reckless joy making, to smiles that bloom in the most desolate places.

There is a new emoji coming out soon with a smiley face and one tear, the “lolsob.” You can’t tell if it’s smiling so hard it’s crying or crying so hard it’s smiling to try to stop it. That’s my mood board for this year: to welcome my sadness alongside my mirth. To refuse their bifurcation. To exist in tandem outside of these oppositions.

We can still have levity with gravity and gravity with levity. We can exist in two places at the same time.