A tiny red spider was crawling on the side of my writing desk this morning.  Are they (is it) harmful?  I can’t remember.  If there’s one, should I expect more than one?  On what do they feed?

Sitting here, all alone, I hear the chorus of a song, “I ain’t got nobody,” singing in my thoughts, competing with the tinnitus to block out residential sounds – bird chirps, dirt movers, tufted titmouse pecking, heat pump humming – while the word “Djibouti” resounds for no reason I’ve yet fathomed.

Yesterday, a bus passed by the house, stopped down the road and, minutes later, a young man walked by, his body weighed down by a large backpack.

Apparently, gravity has a direct effect on public education in this part of the world.

Birds are out in abundance today, scattering when vehicles motor down the lane.

A chipmunk scurries across from one side of the road to the other.

“Why did the chipmunk cross the road?”

“To get away from the noisy chicken.”

Inside jokes.

The birds are back, plucking insects and arachnids for midmorning meals.

What happens when a nation-sized entity goes into receivership?  Or, in bankruptcy, can we experiment with reorganisation while maintaining the people’s national identity, if such still exists in a multinational mix?

I am a kid in a grownup’s body, waiting for permission from a real adult to tell me it’s okay to call myself an adult, too.

Where are the real adults?

Real to me, anyway.

Responsible, loving, not trying to get rich by lying/cheating/deception.

It’s easy to live in a fantasy world, neatly cocooned in the artificial constructs of a writing room/study/library/junk room.

Where real adults can live together in harmony, treating each other equally despite inequalities of physical/mental capabilities.

However, I’m not running for political office, negotiating a deal that’ll break the back of a competitor who underbid me in a previous business cycle, cutting off the arm of a man who accepted a shipment of illegal drugs from me but didn’t sell them, or desperately searching for medical help to heal a child with multiple health issues.

Instead, I’m writing an artificial story of real life, like a romance novel or war memoir.

We don’t live in perfect harmony.

We live because we live.

States of energy bouncing around the way they tend to bounce around in this part of the universe.

One reader calls this blog a technical manual with a storyline.

I agree (of course, I’m that reader!).

The thing about being invisible is being invisible.

When light passes through you, what are you?

It’s best to pretend to be completely insane and imagine none of what I see is real.

That way, when I’m asked, “Should we save these people or let them die?,” I can respond without feeling happiness or remorse.

Otherwise, I would go crazy.

Is that the secret to being a real adult, pretending nothing is real?

What about physical laws, mathematical formulae, and other observable/measurable phenomena of the universe that are computed and predicted precisely?

Is that not proof of reality?

What do I get in return for leadership of the Committee?

Is proof that my edicts are observable/measurable phenomena sufficient?

Is that all there is?

If so, then ruling the world is not all it’s purported to be.

Why must we fear a megalomaniac taking over the One World Order?

I keep coming back to these thoughts because I don’t understand the motivation of this character, the reluctant Committee leader.

What’s the character’s motivation?

Can altruism exist?

Can a person truly act unselfishly?

I look up at the plaques on the wall in front of me – Eagle Scout Award recognition in 1976, with 15-year membership in the National Eagle Scout Association; Eagle Scout recognition from the Colonial Heights Optimist Club; Outstanding Student Award in Creative Writing from Walters State Community College in 1985; 5-year employment appreciation from ADS Environmental Services, Inc. in 1996 – signposts of my life, obscured by stacks of books, obsolete computer equipment, artwork by Deena Haynes East/Rita Burkholder/others, and stuff like plastic car/airplane models mainly significant to me.

We are the same, you and I, with signposts, big and small, to show we existed, if only in the way we stirred up states of energy for the brief moment we lived.

If we are the same, though, why don’t I give you leadership of the Committee?

I don’t know why I don’t.

Actually, I do know why.

I can’t find anything else to do that’s worth living for.

In that, I am selfish.

I believe too strongly that expanding life into the cosmos is the most important activity we call uniquely our species’ to give the leadership to anyone else at this point in the story.

I don’t care who benefits along the way, who destroys the local environment or who exploits the weak – that’s your goal, not mine.

Well, I care only when it interferes with getting us or our representatives off this planet.

Meanwhile, I am unimportant, not wanting to participate in the personality cult that dominates much of what we call news, a chameleon that slips in and out of social situations with unease, keeping our species in balance, if not harmony, while diverting resources for transporting beings into the great unknown.

I am so humbly an imperfect person, it hurts to be, perfectly, me.

If describing the Committee leader’s personality for this storyline is all I accomplish in my life, I have lived, stirring up states of energy like everyone else, in whatever way we know how to try.

Otherwise, a quiet, simple life with my wife is all I ask for, two imperfect beings padding our nest, sharing it with other Earth-based lifeforms, no matter how big or small, beneficial or harmful they may be.

That’s about as real as it gets.

Dancing as if it doesn’t matter whether people are or are not watching.