Today, in the Potbelly line, my friend and ex-boss Travis asked me about the upcoming change in location for Clare and me. Would we be staying together? How would that work? I answered honestly that I did not know. I know we are not breaking up, but the future is anyone’s guess. Then I heard him say, “Well, does she matter to you?*” Travis is not a man known for his tact, but this question was straightforward in a way I did not expect.<\/p>\n
My mind’s eye immediately turned to my mental Batcave. Campily decorated computers tickered out tape, buttons flashed and gears turned. Thinking happened<\/em>. I never considered the question seriously. I mean, of COURSE she matters to me. But as I always must, I wanted to mull over all meanings. Is my life \u00e2\u20ac\u201d in the rational, mundane, day-to-day sense \u00e2\u20ac\u201d really effected? Beyond having to do my own household chores, will I really notice a change?<\/p>\n Despite myself, the short time we still have together in the next few months has mostly been spent at separate workstations, plugging away at personal projects or pastimes. I get up and go to work. When I come home, we hem and haw over what to have for dinner and what to watch while eating. That will rapidly become internal monologue.<\/p>\n So, in the Spartan industrial sense, I guess… no, she doesn’t matter that much. We have both always said that romantics though we may be, it would be silly to say we could not live without one another. We could. We prefer not to. When she’s gone we will both adjust. One could say, she does not matter.<\/p>\n But no! I won’t say that about this woman who has been my most perfect companion for the past 6 years, who has borne my idiosyncracies and pushed me to become a man of whom even a cynic like me can be proud. She doesn’t MATTER? How can someone even ask that?<\/p>\n Asking whether something matters, what does that even mean? Does acting in theater really matter<\/em>? No, but I love doing it. Does Clare matter? No but I love doing… you get the idea. What kind of question is that?<\/p>\n Even in the darkest moments of men complaining, I have never heard the most jaded man say (in any seriousness) that his woman does not matter. A car, a career, even the world at large: these things can be dismissed. But no man could say that his woman (his partner, his spouse, whatever) does not matter. Clare matters to me very much, regardless of my ability to live a life without her.<\/p>\n All these things churned in my mind, as my forehead knitted my eyebrows into sweaters. I shook from my rumination long enough to see Travis looking at me expectantly.<\/p>\n “Or is it just the school thing?” Travis prompted.<\/p>\n “Sorry, what?” I asked.<\/p>\n “I said, ‘What, is she mad at you? Or is it just the school thing?'”<\/p>\n “Oh. I thought you said… No. It’s just the school thing.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today, in the Potbelly line, my friend and ex-boss Travis asked me about the upcoming change in location for Clare and me. Would we be staying together? How would that work? I answered honestly that I did not know. I know we are not breaking up, but the future is anyone’s guess. Then I heard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[8,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p73iP8-cv","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":85,"url":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/?p=85","url_meta":{"origin":775,"position":0},"title":"Invitation to the Justice League forthcoming.","date":"3\/29\/2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Story below lifted from Applegeeks' Emily Adamo: \"My baby brother turned 5 this St. Patty's Day. Dude, that's all of the fingers on one hand that's had no accidents. He will proudly thrust his palm in your direction to demonstrate just how old he is. He was opening some of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Found Art"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":286,"url":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/?p=286","url_meta":{"origin":775,"position":1},"title":"The Wedding: Reception","date":"3\/28\/2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The reservation casino which hosted the reception was vast and Vegas-like. Due to our misplacing of the invitation, MHG and I were not staying in the casino hotel with the rest of the wedding party. And so, we milled about the reception hall after dropping off the exceedingly heavy place\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Self-service"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2529,"url":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/?p=2529","url_meta":{"origin":775,"position":2},"title":"Totally","date":"11\/2\/2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses. To explain\u00e2\u20ac\u201dsince every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Ennui"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1538,"url":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/?p=1538","url_meta":{"origin":775,"position":3},"title":"Three poems you shouldn’t read","date":"7\/7\/2014","format":false,"excerpt":"These are poems I created for Marcee, with the dates, in chronological order. All of them were written under duress, meaning I needed to have a gift for her, and these were the best I had. They always express me, but don't really speak to feelings I had for her,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Poetry"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1836,"url":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/?p=1836","url_meta":{"origin":775,"position":4},"title":"Free write from May 2013","date":"7\/25\/2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I found this on my ipad in the pages app as I worked on the schedule for this week at the theater. Forgive repetitive content and misspellings. I did not edit. Just copy\/paste. ------- Why I decided to forego Shakespeare, just this once. Having played Caliban in a highly acclaimed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Ennui"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":235,"url":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/?p=235","url_meta":{"origin":775,"position":5},"title":"Channelling Don Rickles?","date":"1\/17\/2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Thanks to birthday girl, Keiko, who invited MHG and me to a hafla (that's belly dancer talk for \"gig\") benefit. Barika danced to Blondie's Rapture. That's pretty sweet. The highlight of my evening, though, came the next day. Keiko had invited us afterward to eat korean food at Han Kuk\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Ennui"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.steelbuddha.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}