Come Back Here With My Life!

For the first time in more than 3 years I am separated from my wife, who has gone to California for 4 days. She is still a fairly new wife, being the third of who knows how many to come, and so the pangs of separation seem new as well, though experienced already in the dim past of other marriages.

When the woman leaves, it seems like she removes more than just herself. It seems that somehow she takes along a great portion of what makes the days special. The lion's share of the marriage seems to fall away like an unevenly cut loaf of bread, leaving the man with the crumbs which make him crave the slice.

Drive, purpose, initiative, not to mention a sort of tender tyranny, fly away with her, divesting the hours of any particular point.

And suddenly the floor, the tables, the sofa and chairs, the beds and the stairways are magically populated by all sort of things that should not be there--dishes, crayons, papers, bits of mail, dust balls in the corners, chunks of earth, broken toys, cups, cups, cups, and spiders; grocery bags, potato chips, hats and shirts and shoes--and the whole mess together altogether defies comprehension. I know not how this happened, but only that it must somehow be rectified by Tuesday.

Which is still three days away. No rush. By some unusual circumstance they may go away on their own.

In the meantime, I find that either the visit counter on this blog has gone kerplooey, or actually no one has visited here in three days. Can it be? It's a lonely feeling under the circumstances. And so if you really are there, please say something for heaven's sake. I feel like I've offended everyone at the same time--as if I possessed any such power to come up with such a perfectly comprehensive offense.

Paranoia sets in, you see--loneliness, silence, doubt, ennui--and the man is left to commune with the near empty vessel that he really is. Either that or talk to the boring-ass Chihuahua.