Indeed Indeed

One’s personal freedoms are hard to measure, yet the scope of those freedoms correlate closely to the number of people in what I’ll call a person’s “sphere of experience.”  The correlation is a negative; the greater the number of people in one’s sphere of experience, the fewer personal freedoms one can enjoy/experience. For example, a person living alone has essentially no externally imposed restrictions on his or her behavior, but simply living with another person introduces a plethora of restrictions. No longer can one stand naked in the kitchen and howl at the moon at 3 a.m. because that behavior could intrude on another person’s peace. Add another person and the restrictions multiply; only one person at a time can use the single bathroom in one’s living space. Freedoms available to the person who lives and works and otherwise experiences the world around her disappear—or are drastically reduced—when another person (or other people) are introduced to one or more spheres of the single person’s experience. Yet in the majority of cases, it seems, the freedoms lost with the introduction of other people into one’s sphere of experience have less value to the individual than the values added through the addition of others. Over time, though, one’s judgment of added value may shift; the freedoms lost may regain their reduced appeal. Obviously, though, one determines that lost personal freedoms have less value than do additional and enhanced experiences. This is all speculative, of course. But it makes good sense to me. In my case, I miss feeling free to go to Waffle House at 2:00 a.m.; not that I would be likely to go, but living with mi novia restricts my sense that I am free to do so. So there you are.

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Would you judge me if I were to have leftover hummus, pita, and gyro meat for breakfast? Not that it matters, of course. Others’ judgment of my character on the basis of what I choose to have for breakfast is irrelevant to me. Of course, I doubt anyone outside my house and the limited readership of this post give my choice a breakfast even a fleeting thought. Yet what if, suddenly, my choice of breakfast was on the mind of every person in Garland County? What if strangers who pass me in the grocery story or post office knew about (and disapproved of) my breakfast and looked askance at me? Would that bother me? Probably, but only to the extent that I would think it incredibly odd that anyone else would know about and/or have any interest in my choice of breakfast foods. Why in the name of all that’s holy would this be on my mind this morning? Nobody knows. Not even me.

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Now is the time to trim crepe myrtles to maximize their explosion of flowers in the coming months. But I am not in a condition to do the trimming. Fortunately, we have a lawncare person who may do the trimming…and the removal of dead plants or parts of plants, plants killed by the monstrous freezes of January…plants that could have been saved had I arranged to have them protected. But I can be a lazy slug; not usually, but sometimes. Unfortunately, I was a lazy slug when it mattered to the poor plants that suffered from my sloth.

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This post is badly cracked and may well shatter in a thousand pieces if I do not finish writing it and publish it right away. But why would I do that? Why, indeed.