I'm sitting outside on my patio, and through the backyards I can see into someone's bay window.  The sun is kind of fading, and the family seems to be sitting around a table doing something, backlit by the lights in their living room.  There's a kid out in the street playing catch with his dad in the street in front of their house, and I can tell they're chatting it up about something, even though I can't hear them.  It's like a fucking Norman Rockwell moving picture.  Meanwhile, I'm over here sitting at an empty table with my computer.  No one is home; they all have their other things going on.  One's eating at a lovely Japanese steakhouse.  One is at a raucous slumber party.  One is on her own, living life in a different house.  And one is ... well, who cares where that one is.

The cicadas are droning and my Tibetan prayer flags are barely swaying in the breeze.  If Norman Rockwell is to my right, to my left is some kind of suburban ghetto house:  busted-up deck that has to be some kind of housing violation, blue tarp over a hole in the roof that has somehow survived several years of weather, trash littering the yard, and four shitty, rusted grills in various disorder.

Yes, I am so lonely and bored that I am describing my view.  I don't know what else to do.  What does a person who is moderately old and has no love- or social life do?  Go to a bar by myself?  (No thanks.)  Treat myself to dinner?  (Sad.)  Wander the neighborhood hoping to find someone else bored enough to talk to?  (I hate small talk.)  Have a cocktail?  (Check, that's the one thing I have.)

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After about 10 minutes of spacing out, I looked over at the Rockwell family again, and no one has moved.  Maybe it's all an illusion, and those people I see are just cardboard cutouts put there to create a vision of family.  That would actually make more sense, because I can't seem to figure out why everyone seems to have an engaging life except me.  I talked to a kid who's going to a prestigious, pretentious college this fall, and he admitted that he just sat around playing his instrument and watching netflix and going for insanely long walks every day this summer.  Maybe that sort of reality is more commonplace for people who dislike pretending to care about the mundanity of everyday life.

As disgustingly hippie-ish as it sounds, I think I'd be better off in a commune, where like-minded people come and go, and are free to interact (or not) with their chosen community.  If I had any money, I'd start one.  It would be awfully hard to get me to accept your "friend request" for that commune, but once we were in, it'd be pretty great, I think.

For now, I'll have to just sit here and watch these prayer flags flutter, and hope that one day this purgatory will end.