Charles Blackstone

Happy

"Are you happy," she asks me.  It's not entirely the truth that I don't know how to respond right away.  It's just that the question, for better  or for worse, is just that, a question.  Questions typically lead to other questions. People ask questions and want answers.  Succinct ones.  Clear ones.  Sometimes it's hard to come up with something to say, a way to satisfy another in a matter of words, a few sentences.  It's usually up to someone, to me, a person who writes, a writer, to have the words, the answers, but rarely do the words seem sufficient.  I've often looked at others, people who don't write, lay people, and thought, it must be so easy for them, they don't worry about not knowing, what they think they know they say and that's usually good enough.  It never is for me, though, and so that's why I have nothing to say to Ammo.

She's in town, with her fiance Michael for the weekend.  I live in Colorado now.  I teach English at the University.  It's fall break and Ammo didn't really get much of anything done, I have been quietly battling a mild television addiction since being out here, in Boulder, and I've taken to neglecting a lot of things.  My procrastination usually has me insensate, incapable, for many days, the days leading up to something to which I will have to do, to respond, and that frustrates me, but I don't do anything.  I wait.  I berate myself.  I watch more TV.  Since I could only wash a couple of dishes, dust off my windowsills and the cable box, I had a lot still to do on Friday morning, before Ammo and Michael came.   They were coming in at two and I was to meet them at the hotel in Broomfield at three.  So Friday morning I rose early, situated some boxes, and proceeded to put everything that seemed stray, out of place, in the boxes.  I figured I could sort everything out later, after the weekend, and that would be that.  If my apartment looked clean that would be enough.  It looks clean now.  Things are put away, there aren't any dishes in the sink, there's no evidence of the typical disarray that I live admidst.  It's a nice, clean apartment.  She'll see this and think that I'm mnore or less together, that I'm not undone.

It's at Chipotle, over fajita burritos, hers vegetarian, mine all steak, that she asks the question."

"It's hard to say for sure," I say.