Dancing Bears and Water Bears

"It's the bear I can't figure out. Would you know if bears dance in their natural state?"

That is the question. And, of course, if they do, we are not witness. In the meantime, we shoot them.

You'll forgive the morbid opening. I'm of a pensive mood, the Wife having been dispatched once again to Points Abroad, wherein she can ply her wares. Her "wares" in this case being her psychiatric expertise where needed. She is a consultant to hospitals for the criminally insane.

She lives in the real world; I live in my mind.

To what can we attribute this difference between us? While true that my mother was a draft horse, the Wife's mother died. At an unreasonably young age, leaving her near thirteen-year-old daughter to fend alone. Perhaps that is where the Wife learned to maneuver in the real world.

Do I lack for her attentions? I am a grown man, with many interests of my own. I may be accustomed, however, to a captive audience. Certainly that is what we in the teaching profession are the beneficiaries of. Or the beneficiaries of the illusion of, since who, in fact, can guarantee the "audience" hears a word one says? I know what I have given; I do not know what you have received.

Curious that I should be in the position of being able to grade your reception. This was my least favored role. I would happily expound ad nauseum. It is your business if you benefit. I would just as soon have been the professor who each fall raked all the papers, and graded all the leaves. Thus, the tardigrade.


Note that they are also called water bears. And that they live on lichens and mosses, dunes and beaches. They can survive in environments of extreme temperatures on both ends of the spectrum, from absolute zero to 303 degrees F. They can last nearly a decade without water, and in a vacuum such as space.

They are the true survivors. We are merely would-be imitators. Imposters.

The Wife is gone. She will return. I will, in the meantime, babble to the blogosphere.