12. 21st Century Lovesick Biologist

During the halfway mark of tonight's jog, some hilarious and enterprising youth screamed Fuck You! from a passing car window.

It's hot, and we're all a little irritated.

New Philosophy is on my mind as we round the corner into the fat concrete slab of Mid-Summer, that meaty chunk of endless daylight where all the pretty girls shed their clothes, all the horny testosterone watches agape, and the sno-cone truck parked at Balcones keeps its flap up and lines long.

My philosophy in question is not new, I suppose, though it's certainly new to me. I speak of a protracted, aggressive, engaged form of Love Apathy. Allow me to explain.

I am a unusually hapless romantic; I jump too early, making mountains of potting soil, and I frighten the little squirrels away with a lot of wild clucking and flapping. Squirrels - at least these 21st century kind - are violently alarmed by enthusiasm. Enthusiasm and sincerity are the tragic enemies of squirrel-baiting, and as such, most of my safaris have ended in anticlimactic fashion, me slumped under a brush tree, sweat dotting the brim of my cabana hat. It's tiresome to leave it out there on the savannah, over and over.

So I will really work hard at not caring. I'm not trying to be cute, and I mean this in earnest - I will be engaged about my apathy. Do not confuse this with apathy of a decidedly passive sort. There is no pride or happiness in that, there is only soft resignation and, probably, mild depression. I speak of actively looking the other way. I'm talking about nothing less than re-engineering my tendency to wear my heart on my sleeve like a pedometer, counting the steps with great care we take to get to Something Real, that place where two souls become monogamous and lovely with one another. That's fine, and, maybe, I'll always be that guy and this Great Experiment will fail operatically and comically.

But maybe - maybe - by fighting my nature, I can learn something new about who I am, what I want, what I need, and where I'm going. Those are four pretty honking questions, the smooth black obelisks of my mind, mysterious and unmoving, ten ton stones. Maybe my fists have been balled up tight for so long, I've forgotten what can happen when we let go, let it out. Casual fun, do what feels good, quit overcaring, oversharing, overanalyzing, overbeing. Quit trying to craft a narrative - never your strong suit - but rather, live like the mellowest bohemian prince of your overheated imagination.

This won't be easy. Our boy JK is anxious in a not always charming way, and he leans towards melancholy. Melancholy is the wading pool for serial monogamists, but that's Old Philosophy. This is New, and different. Better? I suppose that's the toughest sell of all; maybe the differences are all in my mind, and none of it ever mattered in the first place. That's a terrifying thought. We aren't there yet.

So I've got my back turned to all those fickle little squirrels, and it's terribly difficult, and I'll look back a time or two, I know I will. This is where I push on, consummate biologist, looking for a new way to see life. I've got the hat to prove it.