Uh, this short is a little overwrought but right on the money

In the morning I say to someone, "I am tired." I am forever telling people that I am tired. A person, unnamed here, due to spotty internet access, (and shouldn't any piece of information that I desire be at my fingertips when I damn well want it?)once said that we are only assured of death and taxes. Too true, my friend. However, we are also assured of sleep and of telling other people that we are tired. I'm not even sure that I know what it means to be truly tired or bone weary. Perhaps that's something I can report on with more authority after having a child. So, forgive me in advance for the many times that I'll say to you, "I'm tired."

Forgive me in advance for the times that I'll say to you, over the phone or at the water cooler, or standing in the cold, "Our lives are really different now." Because everyone already knows that, but I've run out of things to say. I've spent the afternoon cooing at something that has the IQ of a door mouse. As I stood on the corner waiting for the light to change a nanny walked by pushing some genderless (in appearance obviously) child next to me and stopped. The child had a large head and was gripping its toes in the way that babies do. And, as we stood there, waiting for the light to change the child sat up and started smiling. It was a beautiful thing, this smile. And I let my gaze travel to the same point that the child was gathering so much joy from. It was a chain link fence with a construction sign on it. One can draw one of two conclusions: the first is that children reawaken our sense of wonder in the world. They can glance at a chain link fence or a ceiling fan and find its beauty. One of the greatest things about children is that it allows us to relieve our own childhood minus all the angst but with all the nostalgia piled on high.

The alternative conclusion is that children just aren't that bright, and the fact that they find things like a chain link fence engrossing isn't exactly helping their collective case. Of course, this is relative to a full grown adult. Children are amazing little learners, it's quite a treat to watch them trying to figure out the world. And their ability to grasp language is enviable. And it is that very dynamic quality that makes them engrossing to their parents and, I'm just guessing here, slightly boring to others. It is a true case of not being able to see the beauty. Anyhow, I'm biased. I have a bit more of the discover new worlds sort of life goal rather than the discover more efficient ways to transmit e-mails or change a baby. They just don't carry the same cosmic weight in my mind. It's an obvious pretension. However, as I think I pointed out in an earlier post, self-knowledge is most often useless because just making ourselves aware, which I'd argue happens a million times over in our endlessly verbal culture, doesn't actually change our behaviors. I'm often aware that I'm behaving foolishly in life, yet I'm rarely swayed by that knowledge to curb my enthusiasm for stupidity.



Fiction (Touching)
The neighbor’s dog, a Maltese, is at the fence barking as if all hell has broken loose in the world. A squirrel has just run up a tree. “Shut the hell up Jeeves,” yells the neighbor, Mr. Richard. A crotchety, if that’s the sort of word we are okay using, man of about sixty five, who lived alone, smoked alone, and yelled at his dog alone. Kevin gets up from his rocking chair and approaches the fence where Jeeves is barking incessantly. He takes the back of his hand and swats him in the nose. “You dumb bastard,” he says, as Jeeves whimpers, and he walks back toward the house with his long tail tucked between his legs.

He had experimented for a while with ants that wandered through the cracks in the sidewalk. Naturally, he wondered what it would be like to feel pain. He had made friends in his first day at the new school by opening up a cut, with a ragged piece of plastic on his palm without displaying any consternation. This lack of pain, had made him God-like in elementary school, capable of taking all sorts of licks that slowed down his less evolved classmates.

If you asked him, and you probably would, or at least you’d want to, what was the best thing about not being able to feel and this is wholly dependent on catching him in the right mood, he’d tell you about that day that his little sister found a bird’s nest in the back yard. He didn’t really remember what type of bird they were, a jay, or some robin. It was something common. And she had seen the mother push one of the little chicks out onto the ground, and she’d picked him up, held him close. Put all of her hands onto him.