I spend a year trying to write about bliss, which mostly involves not writing about it at all. Instead of writing, I go for walks, spend time with friends when allowed, dance to pop music in my bedroom. I think about God, a lot. Realise it’s not a popular topic amongst friends and family. Some people I know are into it, like Hasib, and we go to a Christian church in Brunswick, a first for both of us. After the service, a woman named Beryl tells us that she doesn’t believe that God is some guy in the sky. Says if that’s your conception of God then your God is too small.
In lockdown I take hundreds of photos of the sun. The light is so severe that sometimes it feels like my phone might break trying to capture it. My attraction to blinding light becomes obsessive. I think this is partly a desire to be obliterated, by ecstasy, holiness, something like that.
Bliss: of earthly happiness and spiritual joy, and later, in Old English, the joy of heaven. I’m wondering when bliss was transported from earth to heaven. For me, bliss is rooted in earthliness, that which is real, which is felt. Bliss is reachable, not abstract, and never far away.