Writing on Little Triumphs

I like when things feel like little triumphs. Like seeing the sea for the first time on the way to the beach and it is just going out, you realise you’ve hit the point where things just keep continuing. Little triumphs because they are horizon changing, but seemingly incidental in the moment. Little triumphs are the things you trip over. Little triumphs feel like having a crush. Fluttering like inside lighting things rather than outside coating things. Little triumphs are arrivals, and also departures but only the soft and mellow type. Little triumphs are looking at your watch and there being either more or less time to go than you thought, matching your want for there to be more or less time. Little triumphs are sparklers and big triumphs are fireworks. Little triumphs are soft warm feelings whereas big triumphs are like nose clearing mint. Little triumphs can sometimes be harbingers of big triumphs but it’s a fool's game to think about things in that way because you won’t get to enjoy the sparklers. Conversely, big triumphs can often germinate various little triumphs, which is usually the nicer part of that process. It is a nice transition between the two states because little triumphs are less overwhelming. Your contents stay the same with little triumphs, you can carry on with whatever you had. They are enriching or thickening or brightening. Little triumphs are not memory making but rather tone setting or tone enhancing or tone breaking. They aren’t the sort of thing you can chase, they are the sort of thing that makes the chasing of everything else okay. My favourite type of little triumph is when something is perfectly mood matching like a song or a friend or the weather. The clicking skim that happens makes everything double, it is an affirming thing and a boosting thing and a quiet personal thing. The really special things magnet us to their way, there is something in that, something in the process of being taken over and wholly convinced. But I like most when I am the one doing the convincing, I am choosing to pull the thing into my own orbit, forcing it to dangle up and remarking on just how perfect it catches the outside light. My least favourite type of little triumphs are ones that seem like big triumphs and have to be contextualised down to little triumphs because they don’t play out the way you thought they were going to. These are the most important type and the most frustrating type. They whine about being thankful when you are complaining about something. Sometimes I just want a thing and I can’t get it and it doesn’t turn sour it is just black screen. And in that moment you see yourself and you probably don’t like how you look because you were liking being lost in the new thing and now it is just you with black screen. There is a bit of colour you but it is mainly just greyscale you and black screen. Nothing then has scent or flavour or texture. But that is okay because although black screen is a stopping thing it isn’t a removing thing and you have what you had to hold. You can look at the black screen and imagine the previous thing continuing to play out there if you like or you can just squeeze really hard hands and eyes and anything else and pocket the thing as a nice little shiny fossil gem. An added thing rather than a stopped thing. An adding thing and a holding thing. Maybe a changing thing. A gem to hold onto and bring out sometimes and say softly to yourself “look at this, I had this”. And maybe after a little while and not soon because it hadn’t marinated yet you can pull out the gem and squeeze it really hard in your hand and a bit of dye will come off and seep into your palm and give all of you an inside lighting.

This is an essay from This is What It’s Like. Click here for more information