Now that I’m quietly alone here, the cats asleep on the bed, Merlin still recovering from something (a poisonous bite, plant or chemical), his mouth less swollen than two days ago, forming a smaller open O shape, his tongue sticking out slightly, I can continue this public private journalising and not concern myself with the opinions of others anymore.

Happiness!

All because my wife is home for a while and there’s no personal concern about losing her on a business trip because of the bad driving habits of others in her proximity.

Of course, here in our adopted hometown, the same calamity could happen.  Somehow, I don’t feel the same way.

My writing has always been an open love letter to my wife, the one person I trust completely (she knows everything about me because I keep no secrets from her, regardless of bogus NDAs or grownup clubhouse secret society stuff that others think are so exclusive until you’ve belonged to or read all the ceremonial hogwash and know they’re all the same).

I trust my wife to keep her secrets from me that she doesn’t want publicised because she knows me and my habit of writing anything that passes through my thoughts.

Some people tell me that I’m actually good at keeping their secrets from public view and who am I to tell them their secrets aren’t interesting enough for me to share here?

If my wife is safely situated in my virtual arms again, why should I keep writing?

Well, she’s at work most of the day and I have no viable means of support to keep me otherwise occupied and away from entertaining myself in writing love letters to my wife all day.

Alex Haley honed his writing with love letters, albeit for other sailors’ wives/girlfriends.

I think Kenny Rogers warned women about dreamers like me.

Did your parents discourage you from being an original, standout personality who doesn’t worry about conforming to an imaginary norm or upsetting the neighbours because that means you aren’t being a good citizen?

I feel like I’m running away from people who’ve tried to squeeze me into the animated character, Pinocchio, for one reason or another (“We mustn’t let Rick hang around with those dangerous boys in the cafeteria at lunch or on the playground,” a teacher once told my mother. “He’s a good boy but subject to bad influence”.)

I am a storyteller, who will, for the right price, tune stories to your liking.  In the world of advertising/marketing, truth and fiction are the same thing.  The world of engineering/science is not far behind.  The liar paradox is not confusing to my world view – “the world is a grand comedy to your sense of humour.”

How can I tell when I’m being influenced by other storytellers in the zeitgeist?  I surf the facebook updates, for one, noticing when more than one person is talking/thinking about the same notions I am, even though I have not spoken/written them down yet.

I’ve tried wearing different public personae.  My list of job titles would give you a few I wore for a while.

I no longer worry about wearing a youthful visage.  I don’t care if I hold you up or let you down – your opinions are yours, not mine, to bear.

I think my sister wished she had someone other than a cleverly cruel, nerdy brother to share her youth with, but I can’t turn back the clock and make my parents’ DNA produce someone other than me as an older sibling and brother for my sister.

I was born without my permission and I long ago forgave my parents for that fact.

The fact that I was no longer the only child is evidenced in the way I tortured my little sister as we grew up.

I apologise, Anne, for my childish behaviour, but again I was a child at the time and unaware of my susceptible sibling rivalry psychological condition while growing up in the same household with you.

We are who we are in large part because of each other, don’t you think?

I developed my dicing/slicing humour and you developed your loving/caring for underprivileged children.

Some call you a bleeding-heart liberal and you’re proud of that fact.

Some call me many things and I’ve grown accustomed to ignoring their ignorant, nonintelligent gibberish.

After all, I have a loving wife who understands me and puts up with my sloppy housekeeping.

I’ve blabbed to her ever since we were 12 and she’s waved off my jabs of humour without batting a teary eye (although I made her cry when I was in my “spread the wild oats” phase while we were dating).

In other words, a pretty normal relationship for two intellectual equals.

We like classical music and enjoy bowling.  We listen to bluegrass and visit art museums.  She’ll go to car races with me and I’ll go shopping with her.  Neither one of us is particularly pious religiously, being good, moderate but not too modern Presbyterians.

We don’t have to have separate lives together.

Interdependence.

Comfort zones.

I no longer plan to go sailing around the Moon.

I don’t expect to manage a network of people who live around you and you don’t know about but maybe suspect are involved in shadowy deals.

I’ve stopped those storylines because I had written them, like I said, as love letters to my wife, but she confessed to me this weekend past she’s never read any of my blog entries.  The only ones she knows about are the ones I’ve read to her.

Therefore, I can return to my simple domestic observations, free of worrying about getting the storylines right to please my wife’s imaginative reading habits.

She can go on reading Jane Austen and Tom Clancy books written for readers like her.

My first short story was an observation of a detective sitting in a lobby of Heartbreak Hotel, written not long after the death of my first girlfriend.

A year later, I was sending letters to my future wife and have been writing to her in one form or another ever since.

All along, I’ve been saying I can die a happy man because I’ve achieved all my dreams and now I believe I was telling myself my writing can die anytime, because I have a wife who loves me and no longer needs love letters from me for me to prove my love to her.

Life is simpler than we writers make us think it is.

Until next time…if there is a next time (or at least until my wife has to travel away from me again, or I away from her, during which time I’ll write to ease my anxiety).