Just Because

I can't believe it's been over a month since I posted in this thing. Do I really have no commentary to offer? No snark, no existential musings? No self-indulgent, presumptuous statements about the way of things?

You often hear that ignorance is bliss. Maybe the reverse is true as well. I have found that though I am quite happy right now, thanks in large part to that thing called Love, I lack the traditional depth and focus I used to have on life's finer mysteries, the nuances of behavior in those around me, and how to perform rudimentary simple tasks such as walking without running into things. Last night I walked into the edge of the stove. This morning, I sliced my toe on a stray DVD player. Today I find myself unable to perform the function of sorting data in Microsoft Excel, or to remember where I stored a particular drafted letter. I put a sheet on my bed the wrong way and didn't realize I had done it until I was under the covers.

Is Suffering perhaps a close friend to Mental Acuity? And I, now hanging out with Peace & Contentment, have been ostracized from sitting at his lunch table? Seriously. Maybe bliss does beget ignorance. When you lack nothing which you desire, you lack the urge to discover, to analyze. You generate no answers, because you generate no questions.

Oh yeah, I was also in a car accident recently. I don't think that, at least, had anything to do with my not hasing smarts. Rather, that had to do with my not hasing tractions. Michigan winter can be pretty brutal, especially in an economy where plows and saltings are no longer affordable. My car turns from just having an offensive color to being a death trap on wheels. I skid, slide, and drift while going less than 20 miles an hour. Let me put this another way: if there is ice anywhere on a road, my awareness of my own mortality expands infinitely.

No one seems to really understand this either. There is some notion, somehow, that because I've only lived in this state my whole life I could somehow just be bad at driving in winter. I seem to remember driving in winter for 6 years prior to getting this car and not almost dying every time I got on an icy/snowy road.