On Solitude

It is not easy to obtain solitude in an urban environment. One might think poverty would be isolating enough to guarantee an evening without visitors, but just tonight as I retired to my private chamber an individual from the order Coleoptera announced himself from behind my bureau. I've been preoccupied with him ever since. And to think I had my evening so carefully planned! What he was doing around these parts is anybody's guess, although eating seemed to be a substantial part of it, as I originally had him mistaken for some kind of cricket. Then I was reminded of similar visit some weeks ago, only from a much smaller sojourner, maybe half his size. "I thought for certain you had gone for good!" I exclaimed, marveling at the resemblance. My companion whirled his antennae. "But how have you managed this long," I inquired, "for clearly there is no sustenance to be found in this house--indeed, so rarely even for myself--and nary are the crumbs that should fall within your many legged reach!"

This is what I tell all my houseguests, because while I don't mind a bit of the old ecosystem around the home, I prefer a fine-tuned one. Somebody died on the first floor this week and I didn't even know they had been staying here, nobody bothered to tell me about it. I still don't know who it was because they managed to conceal their presence in death with the same craft--and probably the same furniture--as they had in life. Of course, death in the late summer is scarcely concealed at all, as I'm sure you can well appreciate. But producing a body has proved a vexing occupation at best. I've only uncovered a gnawed Kool-Aid packet and some colorful fecal deposits where I thought for certain I would discern a shallow grave. I'm sure the old sport was only extending the courtesy of expiring in some out of the way place, but really death can be such an inconvenience when it begs the temporary repositioning of a refrigerator.

How, then, can one maintain a life of complete solitude? Murder comes immediately to mind, as it is much easier to work someone's death into your schedule when you are able to consult your calendar first. Of course, this brings with it certain moral considerations which are best suppressed--unless you enjoy moving heavy appliances on the weekend. A vow of solitude does not give us license to begin killing everyone willy-nilly, however. This is particularly true as we climb the evolutionary ladder, for instance, beginning with the arthropods and extending laterally to certain members of the Nematodes, commonly known as "the Bush cabinet." Also, anyone cute, who wears their hair in any sort of bob, should be invited in for dinner--and in this case I am not speaking of mice. Solitude is a permeable condition, not bound by trifles over right and wrong, and in this way mirrors the religious morality of our president, who more than anyone exemplifies what it means to be alone in the world.