far away

It has been a helluva a long time since I've been here, my fingers type nervously, shyly. It is like I have lived lives since then, like I've gone to some place that is not as real as when I wrote here last. I wonder if you are still listening, and that because I have not been talking, telling you abut why I drifted away. I guess, in a way, that makes us both lonely. Can we? Can we get back?

I am in California now. Santa Monica. Where the beach bunnies multiply and the tan-lines resist erosion.

As a sociologist, California provides much fodder for the imagination. I observe the naturalization of the insane here. Wisconsin, the state of, is like a million million miles away. The cold and the snow. The air and steel-gray clouds. The birds that forage for the rare food. The warmth inside beside the hearth. The early dusk. The Christmas light. The tree. The television and the sound behind it. All glowing, all going, caroling, bells, snow falling, the world blowing.

Christmas. In California, you just don't know it.