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🚨 long, hopefully interesting enough

Maybe think of joy as an occasional lotus rising through the mud of awfulness. I'm very connected to the lotus from a young age.

I remember seeing your user name maybe 2 yrs ago. Having a bit of familiarity with Buddhism reading up on it. Having had a World Religions course in College. Seen Buddhist art, too. I looked up who she was.

Let me share two personal stories of joy in difficult, and sometimes despairing times for me.

I worked in te NE corner office 73rd flr of South Tower 2 of the World Trader Center - '80 - '81. Extraordinary views! Watched them being built from The East Village in art college. Sort of made fun of the buildings, but fell in love w them while working there.

You can imagine the extra personal horror I felt during, and after 9-11. Some weeks afterwards during some art project sort of workshop I realized that I should "allow" joy despite the awfulness. I shouldn't feel bad about having it when I did. So I made a "banner" on paper with big lattering saying: "I still chose joy!".

After my mom died in 2008 I was devastated bc it was a sudden, unexpected, complex series of events, conditions; one freakish major thing of the past (20+ yrs!) causing the havoc with a new event.

So one day I was riding on the bus some weeks later, and saw a blooming flower pot on a windowsill. A joyful moment! Then I felt guilty for feeling joy during my time of deep grieving. Well, later I thought: my mom would want me to continue to find joy in all the ways I did. That relieved me from feeling bad.
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The Lotus

In a Science and Nature book series when I was around 12 yrs old there was a series of B&W photos of a Japanese scientist trying to raise 2,000 yr old lotus seeds! The final photo was in color, a beautiful shell pink lotus in bloom.
I was entranced!

I'd eventually see lotuses in Art usually from Japan, China, and India. I saw my first one at a special private ?museum. Then nothing.

A calendar yrs after that showed those same kind of lotuses at our NY (Bronx) Botanical Garden. Also the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. This was in March of that yr in the '80's.

Well, I went that summer, and almost every summer afterwards! So nany different varieties! Not during covid. Last year, again but too late ($ issue, my sis took me through a non-NYBG perk) to see more than one fading away, one new shoot coming up. Of course, the leaves were lovely.

So that's my lotus story. I've drawn them from life at the NYBG, and know some well enough to draw on my own.