Where you been? I don't know... Where have you been? It has been nearly a week since the last time a new piece was posted (perhaps the word "pasted" would better apply) in this space. It wasn't you; it was me. There's no shame, I hope, in admitting how much this was missed. It was no critical illness that kept me away, no family drama, no time in the hoosegow with Jose Padilla. Those are circumstances that nobody should ever have to endure. I'd like to be able to say I was slinging sandbags in the Gulf of Mexico, or scanning the border for illegal aliens through the unsightly green haze of night-vision goggles, anything to enhance my street cred, but no. Instead of doing anything dire or noble or even interesting, we moved. Didn't move far - just far enough to get away from the roar of gravel trucks and ambulances. It is an oddity that in our highly mobile, ultra-hip Western society, we still live within a mile of our first place in Phoenix. I don't want to get into relationships associated with places, nor do I want to reveal anything especially private here, but I do want to tell you that, in these last few days, I have been to the other side. Which one, right? The Other Side. That could mean anything on up to having a close encounter with a defibrillator. My experience turned out to be much less serious than that, actually. While I was busy packing and stacking and loading and driving and unloading and unstacking and unpacking, a cocoon of bliss was woven around me. I was cut off from the world. The newspaper stopped landing in the driveway every morning. The television sets were unplugged. Internet and e-mail went dark. The short drive to the new house was spent listening intently, not to news, but to headbanging rock. The only time we were able to stop sweating was for the minute or so required to take in more fluids. Thus, I was unaware of the news, unaware of the world beyond that which I could grab, lift, carry and drop. This is a reflection of a much simpler time in America. In the last century, technology has gone crazy on us. The style of our lives has obviously outpaced the evolutionary maturity of our brains. A hundred years ago, we were barely tapping out telegraphs. Horses could outrun cars. If you wanted to talk to someone, you had to actually go find them first. And if you wanted information, you'd have to wait - unless the gossip could outrun the papers, which it usually did. Being so disconnected from current events, I wouldn't have been able to write much anyway. I would get a glance here and there of what passes for news these days: Another big hurricane on the way, stock market goes in the tank along with the president's approval ratings, a spate of explosions in Iraq that push the troop fatality toll over 1,900. I guess it isn't really "news" at all. In the interim, my mind became unfocused, free. It felt pretty good to slip my head out of the media collar for a few days, to "go blonde", if I can still say that. The football was miserable, of course, but even watching my favorite teams lose (and show bad form doing it) seemed less like a mental defense mechanism than it has in the past few years. It's pretty cool. If you don't pay attention to anything, you can pretty much motor along through life without having your head wrapped around everything. It feels pretty good, this denial. But that's not how you got here. Bliss comes at a great cost, don't you know? That's not something I can afford, kind of like this house I just moved into. Extra helpings of gratitude go out to my buddies Chris and Moises, who helped me out greatly. I appreciate that, as you will see on the golf course this weekend (you too, Web Guy). The work is done. It's time to play. There'll be plenty of opportunities to examine reality later, and plenty of reality for the pondering. Paul Heller 9/22/05 << back to the archives
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