<p>The Woman rode the high of lovely friendship for days after that coffee date. For nearly a week, she reveled in the sense of camaraderie and coexistence. How lucky she was! How lucky that she had the chance to exist in the same universe as Her Friend! How lucky, how lucky.</p>
<p>Whenever The Woman felt this way, she would wander around the house and clean. She would take on extra cooking duties and make extra desserts for her cocladists and friends. She would stay in one form for far longer than was her usual, and remained now a panther. She would go for walks around the field, treating the house itself as a signpost at the center of widening circles. She would imagine that those circles might some day spread out across the entire world, never mind the varied infinities housed within the field itself. It was a thing to which she could give herself as she asked her high-minded questions: am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song?</p>
<p>These words of Rilke’s would dance unblushing through her mind, linking arms on one side with the words of Dickinson which ever twined around those of her clade — <em>If I should die, And you should live, And time should gurgle on, And morn should beam, And noon should burn, As it has usual done…</em> — and on the other with the lingering lines of the Ode that made up the names of her clade. “I remember the rattle of dry grass,” she would explain to the bees as they buzzed in friendship around her ankles. “I remember the names of all things and forget them only when I wake.”</p>
<p>And so she would cook her meals and walk in widening circles around this primordial tower that was her home, perhaps circling around God, though she did not care one way or the other if there was that of God in everything.</p>
<p>These were her joys to go along with the needs of ritual, of brushing her fingers along imagined <em>mezuzot</em>. To walk was her ritual, to spiral outward from her home in the warmth of sunlight and the dance of bees and the tickling of dandelions against her ankles was to cast that ritual in the light of pleasure.</p>
<p>I have never been quite so fond of walking, myself, kind readers. There is meditation in it, I am told. I am told there is the simple pleasure of the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other-ness of it. But friends, I am tired most of the time. I am old and I am tired and my pleasure lies in stillness and quiet. I love my mochas and I love sitting down before the page with pen in paw to put to paper, and I love bathing in story.</p>
<p>I say so often that stepping away from such a task is still writing. When I sit on the patio in front of our little bundle of townhouses and look out at the shared lawn, or when I step — <em>stepped,</em> for it is no longer here — out to the shortgrass prairie of my cocladist, to sit beside a cairn of stones or share a meal, that is still writing! Your narrator has written these words, this story, a hundred, a thousand times within her head. That is my joy, and graphomania my compulsion.</p>
<p>When The Woman overflows, she becomes ever more herself. She is — my attentive readers will remember this, of course — she is already too much herself, too present, too whole, too present. This is the nature of overflowing, you see: we become so much ourselves that it begins to ache, to press at our chest from the inside. For your humble narrator, that graphomania strikes with such force that meaning falls away from my words only gibberish comes forth, or perhaps I will write the same phrase over and over and over, unable to sate my own compulsions.</p>
<p>But, ah! This story is not about me. I am not quite overflowing yet, and The Woman most certainly is not. She is reveling in the warmth of sunlight and the dance of bees and the tickling of dandelions against her ankles and the purringly soft touch of friendship.</p>
<p>The turn away from joy was slow and, at first, unnoticeable.</p>
<p>The Woman did all that she could to hang onto joy whenever it slipped into her life. We all do, do we not? When I find a bakery that serves delectable treats, for instance, I will eat in the tiniest bites I can get away with — nearly crumbs! — just to let the joy of such a treat linger longer on my tongue. The woman did this with her own joy, you see: she would cook these lovely desserts for herself and her cocladists that she might store up joy in carefully sweetened and delicately decorated cupcakes or muffins or cookies or brownies. Joy, it seems, is stored in the chocolate, and so she doles that out to those who deserve joy — and The Woman knows that even she deserves joy.</p>
<p>But even like me with my little tasty baked treats, The Woman’s joy is parceled out bit by bit to herself and her cocladists and, just like my little plates of carrot cake — I <em>do</em> love a good carrot cake! — there is never an infinite amount, much as she might wish, nor, it always seems, quite enough.</p>
<p>She hung onto joy and baked her goodies and went for her walks and awaited, with some trepidation, to the regularly scheduled therapy, because I think she knew that, being confronted with recounting emotions of the past or discussing emotions to come, her grasp on joy would be tested. Once every two weeks, unless she was overflowing, unless she was in pain, unless she simply could not bring herself to go, The Woman had an appointment for therapy, after all, and she knew there was good to be had in it, for it had proven its use time and again over the years, and yet it was a time for threshing, for harrowing. It was a time for throwing herself at the Work at one level of removing and watching the chaff fall away and the fruits of her labor lay exposed. It was a time for dragging the implements of tools dialectical and behaviors cognitive through the dirt of her to break up into clods her varied neuroses. </p>
<p>But as it goes, as it always goes, the morsels of joy meted gladly out soon began to run dry and the sense of happiness that she felt, those truly <em>good</em> days began to fade once more into merely okay. </p>
<p>It was the day of her appointment that The Woman sat up in her bed, bleary-eyed, and looked around her, around her plain and simple room with her plain and simple sheets and plain and simple clothes folded neatly atop a plain and simple chair, ready for wear, and at last sighed, wondering, <em>Where is it that my joy has gone? Where has it gone?</em></p>
<p>Today was therapy, and her joy was gone.</p>
<p>There was no relief within her that. There were no thoughts of, ah, today is therapy! Today she would get to talk to Ever Dream! Today she would get to explore this idea of a joy meted out slowly until it was nothing.</p>
<p>In fact, I would say that there was perhaps even a sort of protectiveness. I think that she felt some sort of ownership of this concept. I think that she felt like this ending of joy was hers and hers alone. Something to keep to herself until perhaps, some day, she might share it and become still at last, or perhaps even beyond then. It was hers to set before herself and admire or loathe. It was hers to wrap up in pretty paper or hide away in the back of a drawer. I think she may have felt jealousy.</p>
<p>And so it was that The Woman, today a human, </p>
