I wish I could send you this smell.

In the rest house there is a chill, but the smell of warmth lives in the kitchen.

Red wine, and rosemary.  barely cooking. Bacon, in the pan, slowly soaking up the vapors.  Garlic. Onion.  Potatoes boiling in the next pot over.  It swells inside my olfactory.

Gives my life thrill.

Someday, I hope to write a perfect sentence.

Is everywhere.  I am paralyzed without it.

You smell like a dusty corner.

There is something wrong.  We have more available energy, and technology to utilize it, than ever before.  And WE are working harder than we ever have – IN HUMAN HISTORY.

Once survival has been assured, liberty should be assured.  Once liberty is assured leisure should be assured.  The benefits of progress are the right of all – to be shared equitably.

As I drove up to my house, I saw a young maybe teenage girl, in a calf length jean skirt, with a purple stuffed coat going down to cover where I imagine there were back pockets. She was walking to the house next to mine. I parked the truck and got out. Told the dog, Jane, to get out of the back. Jane ran right into the neighbors yard, and, as I yelled for her to “get back over here”, the combination of the dog running to greet her – and me yelling at the dog – scared the mousy creature half to death.  She let out as much of a yelp as you’d expect a mouse to muster. But it was a short scare, as the dog turned back when called.  As the dog returned, I began to apologize, but her back was already to me.

I walked up to the porch and found, tucked into the door handle, “Live Animal Christmas Play… Marion Avenue Baptist Church”. I walked into the house and sat in my overstuffed, once upon a time red, now mostly pink, smelling a bit of dog that wasn’t supposed to be up there, chair. I watched the girl through the picture window and noticed her combed this morning, wind’s been blowing, brown hair. Long in the back. Bangs curling into her brow.

She crunched across the stiff November grass, occasionally stepping on a spot of snow, and placed another pamphlet carefully in the door. I felt a twinge of cynicism as I watched her tread her mission. I resisted it and thought how she must find this very fulfilling.

Of course you’re not satisfied.  If you were satisfied, you’d do nothing.  Satisfaction is the enemy of action – insofar as satisfaction would bother lifting a finger to do anything as active as being  an enemy.

The more dissatisfied a creature the harder it will work to become satisfied.

Hunger is a dissatisfaction that keeps me alive.

I’d like to be more satisfied than my current situation allows for.  That’s the trap though, isn’t it?  When will my current situation allow for it?  Today? Tomorrow?  A year from now?  Ten years from now?

Hard work can be incredibly satisfying.  It’s meaningless hard work that strangles my soul.  Dilbert.  Soul crushing.  The Office.  Soul crushing.  These are the stories from which we draw our protagonists.

I want to build something.  I want to build something so badly that I really really love that IKEA piece of crap I put together last Christmas.  I got it on sale after Thanksgiving.

I create nothing… No, I create something worse than nothing.  I create email.

So pretty much it’s us, bees, beavers, Mick Jagger,  termites, and basically all the other social bugs, that share the medal for least satisfied creatures.  And none of us is happy that there’s just one medal.

I am not making eye contact.  I have not made eye contact since you wrestled my attention from the important thing I was working on.  I am making halting torso movements toward my project.  My gaze bounces as I nod and mhhmmm as unconvincingly as I possibly can.

WHAT PLANET ARE YOU FROM?!?! Nobody talks this close.  This is very uncomfortable for me.  Stop playing the Labrador Retriever to my tabby cat.  Seriously, have you been eating poop?  The analogy was not meant to fit this well.

How do I make you go away?  Is nobody seeing this?  Somebody please come save me.  An emergency – I don’t care how contrived.  Please. Cowards!  I know you all see this!

Why do you have to be the same gender as me?  I really have to go to he bathroom, but you’ll follow me and ruin it.  You’ll talk to me while I’m crouched – open and vulnerable (by the way, I don’t think toilets have gotten taller along with people).

You’re leaving. Oh, thank you, sweet nine pound eight ounce, gurgling, pooping, beautiful Baby Jesus (and you too Will Ferrell).  Now, what the heck was I working on…?