After watching a trailer for Japanese consultant Marie Kondo’s Netflix series Tidying Up (but before yet having watched the series itself), I wander about my house asking of objects, “What will give me joy?” The one that answers is an LP by a Bootsy Collins project called Sweat Band. It’s not a “great” record. Some of it bores me, but for some riffing back and forth by the drummer and the sax player. Does this record give me joy, or should I sell it? “Jamaica” saves it, I decide; the record’s worth keeping, even just for that alone.
What I want, though, is an intensification from within, jewels and miracles revealed amid an otherwise empty present. Sometimes nothing short of pennies from heaven will do. But absent that, I tell myself, try exercise.