Never Married

Why do we see the world through our eyes only? We are composed of chemicals and water and we’re animated by electrical charges. But why do we have this particular perspective? Why is the body the ground of everything that we know?

Standing there, dressed in his sky blue pajamas, Bob looked down at this feet and slowly began to scan upwards. Legs, abdomen, chest…that’s as far as he could see. He couldn’t see his own face without a mirror.

Maybe this isn’t me after all? Maybe it is another person, and my consciousness has blossomed inside their body? Maybe those aren’t my feet or legs? Maybe that’s not my heart inside this chest?

He became hungry, but now he wasn’t trusting his, or what he thought was his, experience. Nonetheless, he opened the refrigerator and took out a small container of yogurt. Plain yogurt, the color of a white ceiling. He dipped a spoon in, and then raised it to his mouth.

I hate yogurt. But I have eaten yogurt for breakfast now, for 45 years. It’s a habit. Why do I have habits that I don’t even like? Voluntary habit that I don’t like. He paused for a moment and considered that maybe he wasn’t himself, but rather, he was someone else. Someone who liked yogurt.

His wife was gone. She had risen, and left early for a business trip. He had discovered that his bed was empty when he arose. There had been only one body in it. It was his.

I like sleeping alone. I like the way the bed is all mine. Lots of room. No other body to nudge away when I feel crowded. No one else to steal the sheets and leave me in the cold.

He walked back from the kitchen and into the bedroom and sat on the unmade bed. It seemed large, even for a king-sized bed. The sheets strewn about, looked like pale ruts embossed in an impressionable cotton road. He continued to occasionally spoon yogurt into his hungry mouth.

I hate yogurt.

He looked out the bedroom window, which itself looked out on a stand of oaks and maples. The trees were silent and waiting for a change in the weather. They were sleeping. Each tree sleeping alone. Their bark was beautiful skin. Thick and old and rough textured. It was hard to imagine that their skin was theirs, and theirs, only. Who could imagine that the trees belonged only to themselves?

He phoned his wife. But there was no answer.

Funny, he thought, I wonder why I never married?