The Last Word On Nothing

I saw a bucket of yeast at the brewery last week and I thought it looked like joy.

Not because beer is delicious (though it is), but because it could not be contained. As the beer fermented in a giant tank, the yeast dribbled from a pipe into the five-gallon bucket, bubbled and pulsed like a heart, rose to the brim, and—in frothy streams that left a growing puddle on the floor—overflowed and overflowed and overflowed.

Sometimes, in cold places, a river will overtop its ice and wend for awhile across its winter shroud before diving again. This is called overflow. Perhaps you are lucky enough to feel something like that, too—a sense of climbing out of the dark, of warmth and light that fills you to bursting, of frothing past the bounds of your skin.

I noticed it at a packed concert hall, this weekend. People pressed close in rows of seats, next to neighbors and friends and strangers they do not often see, in these pandemic times. Their chatting voices filled the room, even after the music began, like they simply could not stop, their low hum lifting the guitar and mandolin and bass and banjo, all of it spilling out into the freezing night.

I felt it alone, too, when I traded $50 for some old fish-scaled touring skis and bright yellow telemark boots. I strapped into them on a deeply snowed-over back road, strange on my thick new ankles. The glide up the slope started awkward, then smoothed, the dogs running ahead of my steady shuffle, their tongues flapping, the russet in their coats the same color as fall’s last clinging leaves. I gathered a few from a stem, folded them like pages into the pocket of my fanny pack. In those late afternoon hours, fog came in waves through the naked aspens and willows. The heavy overcast sky blended all light and shadow into twilight blue. The cold gathered in the sweaty band of my sports bra and the small of my back.

But when I turned back downhill into the rush of effortless motion—there it was, and I spread my arms wide to make room for it in the small cavern of my body. A color? A sound? A smell? A touch? Everything at once. Nothing I can describe better than that escape of river, that bucket of yeast.

Overflow.