Proverbs 21, Verse 10
"An evil man loves to harm others;
being a good neighbor is out of his line."
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I'm stuck.
I'm stuck and I'm sticking to a mood of a funk-- of a glowering, lowering mess of a rut. Don't try to help me, though-- if you offered me your hand, I'd probably drag you down into the sinkhole. That's what I'd do, and do it I would.
I think I want you in here, down here deep with me in the dark. I think I want you here with me. I thought I didn't, and so I said to my wife, flatly, in the kitchen, in my pajama pants with hearts on them, "I'm not going to blog tonight."
It was a grand pronouncement, though made in that deflated, deadpan, Wes Anderson way.
"Okay," she said to me in equal reply. Two yellow Reese's peanut butter egg wrappers lay in tatters in front of her on our red kitchen table.
"Oh-- you ate both of those?"
"What, did you think I was going to save one of them for you?" she answered with a smile.
I love being married to my wife. Which is rather a good thing, you know, since I'm married to her. Other people are married to people who aren't my wife, which I hope is working out for them, since they can't have her. I have her. And she has me. Whenever our children point to the rings we wear on our fingers, we always tell them, "This ring means that Mommy and Daddy belong to each other." I love that we say that, because it's true, and because it's rather a nice way of putting it, and I'm glad that's what our children see. When I kiss my wife, my daughter's face lights up and she coos, "Ooh, Daddy love Mommy!" No dullard there.
In case you weren't able to tell, recounting colorful anecdotes like these is a strategy I'm trying to use to lift myself out of my shitty mood, even though I am caked in it to the eyebrows, and I don't know if it's going to work, I don't know if it's having an effect on you, because I can't see you or hear you. It's a wonder that any stage actor ever decides to write-- in a way it's so anathema to performing on the stage. There, you have instant feedback, and you can turn it up or dial it down depending upon the reaction you're getting. No offense, but writing for you is kind of like performing in front of the residents of a local town's mortuary, or at a cat shelter. I have no idea if what I'm doing matters a damn to you in any way, and it's frustrating. It's why, the one time I went on the radio, I was terrified. All I could see were little needles on little dials going from right to left and left to write. And they weren't laugh-o-meters.
A girl at the Apple store was flirting with me today-- she had no reason to talk to me, I was waiting for my OS to reinstall and I told her that, but she kept the conversation up, joking and inquiring, excessively, I think, about my line of work. I even had the perfect opportunity to let her know that I'm married, but I didn't. Why? I guess I liked the attention. She had nice glasses but was otherwise only passingly attractive. As in, if I passed her on the street, I would have thought, "Oh, she's attractive," and continued on my way quickly changing thoughts to death or my current financial lamentations or fantasizing about how a night's unbroken rest might aid my welfare.
When I came home, I told my wife about my transgression, which she laughed off. "That's why you're telling me about this," she said, "it's your incessant guilt-- you can't keep anything from me." And she's right. Years ago, when I worked on the street as an EMT, a nurse gave me a piece of paper with her phone number on it, which I immediately threw out as soon as I was out of her sight and I told my wife as soon as I got home. She laughed. She was glad "other people saw things her way". Why won't someone punish me already?
I want to write about work, but I'm too afraid that, if I start to do that, I'll cry. Not that you'll be able to see it, but still. I'll know. And my wife, who's sitting across the room from me happily thumbing through endless screens of palaver and folderol and fiddle-dee-dee would have to deal with that, and I fail to see how that would aid her welfare.
Or yours.
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