Here, not There

Stress makes some people voluble. It makes me incommunicative. I've been spending more time with the cats. They don't expect me to say anything. I've also been spending more time with the television. It talks, I don't have to. There is something to be said (ironically) for a medium which so well occupies the attention while yet placing so little demand on it. There were reruns of several episodes of the Great Streets series on PBS. I watched the ones about the Grand Canal in Venice and the Champs Elysee. There were so many nice images flickering by, it was quite enjoyable. It would be nice to be in Venice or Paris right now. There is no way to arrange that, though, so it's nice to have a video substitute as a distraction. Still, being reminded of the vast world that is unavailable to me leads inevitably to an increased dissatisfaction with my constrained life once the distraction has ended. Here I am again, and there's nothing to be done about it. I'll go back to petting the cat.