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go ahead and spill an entire pot of tea on your lap. after the initial shock of heat (and assuming you're wearing jeans) it will slowly progress into what i imagine a relaxing afternoon at an onsen feels like: the spread of warmth, the adjustment, the calming, the coolness of the breeze as you stand and run around in circles.

really what's the point of leaving the house when you have such natural wonders at your command?

checking online in the dead of night (having been awakened by a dream of various spiders) i find my available credit balance at roughly six thousand dollars. conceivably enough to fly to any corner of the world on the next available flight from kennedy, conceivably enough to rent a nice hotel room and conceivably enough to purchase a small bottle of beer, to pop it open and lie on the bedspread sipping the cool foam, listening to the familiar noise of traffic outside the open window and basking in the lamplight that while obviously akin to north american light, oddly feels different.

rolling over in the dead of night, away from the glow of the laptop screen. flashes of spiders. this is so stupid, you think. spiders. the world could be destroyed by several men with power, keys and switches. a cab could hydroplane on the rain-slicked avenue and jump the curb, bumper slamming into you at about chest level. but you're lying awake at night worried of spiders, as somewhere in brazil right now an entire family sleeps in half this space, spiders crawling the walls and across the floor.

you lie on your back and stare at the ceiling. so what will it feel like when everyone is marrying and certain people are dying, the old and expected and the young and tragic? will you leave the house then, when alarms are sounding with every late phone call and terse e-mail? what exactly kick-starts a life?

do you remember when you and andy took the motorboat out on the lake early one morning, getting your sneakers muddy and ruined as you kicked the hull out of the deep sand? you floated about fifty feet into the waters as the sun hovered behind the treeline. after smoking and joking about the lack of a good kfc you decided to start the motor. pulls and pulls and it wouldn't turn over. finally laughing with exasperation you pull the cord and it putters to life. will it be like that?

will you still be lying awake in the dead of night, worried about spiders?