Happiness Is A Fur Coat

Not Much

The weather has been cooler lately.

I wish it were like this more,

but I suppose then it would not be so special.

C'est la vie.

Repose

Why?

Why?

Why?

?yhW

?yhw

?hWy

w?yh

and furthermore, good sir, I say:

This Is Not An Essay, Sir

Work had not gone so well. He was late for the first real meeting he had had in weeks with a client and was almost positive they would not agree to the deal. His dog had snuck out the door as he had walked out and commenced a game of tag that had spanned three blocks and twenty minutes of precious time. Traffic had been horrendous. There had been an accident, a pretty bad one, and while he felt guilty for resenting its relatively minor effect on his life, he did.

He got to the counter. The barrista was a pert brunette whose nametag dubbed her Frances. She made Frances much more charming than he had ever seen it. She had very white teeth and only a bit too much make-up.

“Good evening, sir, what can I get you?” Frances asked. Her voice rang full.

“Already?” He didn’t mean to say that out loud. For being such a long day, it had been so short.

Frances looked confused, but her corporately endorsed smile never faltered.

“Never mind,” he corrected himself. It had been a long day. “Just an iced jasmine tea with honey infusion, please.”

“Okay,” came the pert reply. There was a pregnant pause.

He stared at Frances. Frances reciprocated, and then:

“What size, sir?” She asked as if he should have known to say. What did he know?

“Oh, uh, medium.”

“Mediano?”

“Yeah, whatever.”

The table was neither more nor less comfortable than expected, which was somehow consoling. He tried to block out his day. His mother had called him fourteen times in the past week, just to remind him that taxes were due soon. He did not need to be reminded.

“Mediano iced jasmine tea with honey infusion.” The portly man who had made his drink had a reedy voice he found irritating.

The lid bent the straw as the plastic pierced its counterpart. This was also irritating.

The second straw fared better and he sat down again.

He was in a garden. It looked like those English gardens marked by excessive, overflowing foliage that nevertheless maintained some peaceful sense of order or reason. His senses were overflowing. Flowers seemed to erupt from every side, and even below, where petite grass sprung with unprecedented resilience. The warmth of the sun was like a caress of the softest hands, all over his face and arms and legs, and especially where the barrier of his black suit created a comforting insulatory effect that reminded him of his mother when he was small.

The flowers were everywhere. The scent of them seemed to him something far more concrete than minute particles. A lucid and flowing entity, a shimmering curtain of fragrance swept over and around and through his body. He felt kind of giddy.

He felt like he was surrounded by the most beautiful women in the world, but there were none in the garden. There were only flowers. This was, strangely enough, perfectly acceptable if not better than the human alterative. Flowers seemed more perfect, somehow, more precious, right now.

He sighed the deepest sigh of his life. He felt like the liquid emulsion of purest fragrance and delight that surrounded him enveloped him entirely, absorbing every notion he had ever had of anything besides this delight. It was oblivion.

He swallowed, and picking up his phone he answered his caller for the fifteenth time.

Cancer

This quarter is going a lot better than last.

But somehow I'm outrageously busy.

But happy with it.

Maybe something hateful was in the air last quarter.

Here's wishing it stays.

And the second half should be better.

Let's not hope for a relapse, kids.

Stepping

Iowa legalized gay marriage today, which I am pretty excited about. It's funny, though, that Iowa did so before California. I have relatives in Iowa, and I'm not sure they're very happy about this. But it was a court ruling, which could explain some of this. After all, a court made it legal here at one point.

Anyway, I kind of feel that victories like this are not steps ahead so much as steps to the level where they should be... does that make sense? This is a particularly exciting event, though, because Iowa is not where you might expect this to happen. This is becoming less radical, perhaps? I hope so.