stillfugue

Eric drove the car on a barge of errands. His presence was not required, but there were red puffy clouds roaming through the house talking about a spring storm that might not miss the city and might just smash the front of his home into nothingness.

Earlier, Tommy told him that it is silly how our wives sometimes think that being married means being attached to each other as we go through all the strings of minor inconveniences that poke holes in the beauty of our days. Tommy explained that as we get older, we lose more and more of our independence until we no longer know who we are, which is okay because we need a loving partner who helps us get juiced on the major ups and helps us swim upstream against the travesties.

When Julie asked Eric if he wanted to go along on the burdensome list of errands, she knowing that of course he didn’t want to go along, he immediately consented to going along. As they circled the city as if spiraling down the drain of the dreaded lifelessness of duties, which are never much beneficial, Eric realized that whatever solitary activity which he had so richly planned was in the end the true nothingness compared to merely being present in the silent car that was circling the city.

On one of the errands, far away on the northern end of the city, practically in Iowa, he was able to see Julie do an immensely caring and compassionate thing for another human being who was hurting, and the emptiness of the errands started swimming with that floating stream of light purple waves that only come when fulfilling one’s purpose, those waves that seem to be singly responsible for keeping us alive.