Delights – how to capture fleeting moments

Experiencing delights has not been among my priorities recently because I haven’t been well. Thank goodness, life changes regularly.

Among my new plans, I’ve enrolled in the next Writing in the Dark twelve-week intensive course entitled ‘For the joy and sorrow’. It starts on 8 January, 2025.

How could I resist when Jeannine Ouelette, the creator of WITD, says,

Using the power of close, clear-eyed attention, we’ll learn how to first see, then truly perceive, and finally, vividly capture the beautiful and the broken with the eyes of a photographer and the heart of a poet.”

I’ve written before about Jeannine Ouellette, here and here.

Starting the adventure

I’ve bought the book recommended as pre-reading. Poet Ross Gay’s Book of Delights is a series of short essays which he calls Essayettes. I thought that was a made up word, but it’s not.

From a quick Google search, it appears that the word was first used in the late eighteenth century. It describes perfectly the little pieces written by Gay and published, two-per-week for a year.

Ross says that writing about delights is like the development of a ‘delight muscle’. He continues,

…the more you study delight, the more delight there is to study.”

(Preface, Book of Delights, page xii)

Reading his book, I’ve become confused about Gay’s choice of subject matter and the actual delights he writes about. American slang, esoteric experiences and some crude writing pepper his little essays.

I look forward to seeing how Jeannine Ouelette uses his work as a model for course participants.

I do like his idea of looking for delights, and it got me thinking. What delights would I write about and why?

Difference between delights and pleasures

Pleasure and delight are positive emotions on a continuum that includes at the highest level, joy.

Pleasures involve the satisfaction of a want. Food, for example, provides pleasure and so does good sex. A glass of cold water when we’re thirsty, or a warm bed on a cold night provides pleasure. We can seek out things that give us pleasure.

Delight can be described as the powerful enjoyment we get from experiencing something surprising and good. It gives us a sense of warmth or lightness. It can insire creativity and motivation.

One thing that delights me

Sundays! There are lots of reasons, but one that comes immediately to mind is the lack of noise in this busy part of the suburb in which I live. Sundays are peaceful and quiet here. I do like that! I wrote about doing something different on Sundays here.

The estate agent selling this apartment and the Subiaco Council assured me that the warehouse on the corner would be moving from its current position within months of purchase.

Seven years later, and what I thought would be temporary nuisance continues. Every weekday, trucks queue, motors revving, in the street or in the nearby car park, waiting to unburden themselves. Trucks backing up alert everyone of danger with their high-pitched beeping sound.

The worst offenders are the wholesale garden companies. Their trolleys of seedlings, indoor and outdoor plants and tools make a racket on the way to the delivery doors. How much better it would be if the trolleys pushed across the bitumen had pneumatic wheels, instead of iron!

Falling in love at first sight

I loved the open-for-inspection apartment so much that it never occurred to me there might be a reason why the opening times were on weekends and late afternoons.

The sunset from the north-west-facing balcony seduced me. Who would not love such a sunset? Sunsets continue to be more than delight. Some emotion on an altogether different plane. Awe, perhaps?

The windows and doors are double glazed. Closed, they keep out the noise. They help control the heat of Perth’s sizzling summers and the cold in winter. The air-conditioner set at 24 degrees Celsius keeps the temperature even year-round if I so choose.

The white-painted buildings opposite, with their cobalt awnings, remind me of a week-long view from an apartment in Nice (France). Behind the buildings, I could see the masts of tall yachts (super-yachts) in the marina beyond.

There are no yachts here but the view delights. The wide expanse of always-changing sky; trees of this green-canopied suburb; the sunsets. I love to watch the rain sweeping across the landscape towards me.

These random, everyday delights border on awe and joy.

What delighted you today, or this week?