I was in retreat all weekend.  I worked an unprecedented forty hour week last week, covering for a colleague, and spent most of the weekend trying to recover my delicate equilibrium.  By all outward appearances, it was just an ordinary work-week.  Unfortunately, I've developed an adolescent expectation of coming and going all day as I please, watching a little porn whenever the mood strikes, popping into the gym, cat-napping every couple of hours, chatting with friends and neighbors whenever the need arises, taking a stroll or a bike ride on a whim.  So being chained to a desk for eight hours, confined to my office all day makes me feel a little like Rilke's panther —

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

It's not all that bad, of course.  But some decadent little part of me still rebels against the very idea of the forty-hour work-week.  But, to be perfectly honest, when I think about it, I don't really mind so much that other people have to do it.  I mean, can you imagine if everyone just kept whatever hours they wanted?  That, my friends, is a recipe for anarchy.

Most people have obligations — family and debt mainly — that limit their choices and make it more or less impossible to work more flexible hours.  And, of course, it takes discipline and an iron will to get anything done when you're setting your own deadlines.  That's why my personal deadlines are fairly flexible.  But then the most pressing ones, I'd say, are sort of spiritual... ish (I will be talking like this much more in preparation for Black Friday, July 10th, 2009 — the day I turn forty — so get used to it).

My lifestyle, which has included actual work in the distant past — no, really!  I worked for years as a foreman in a New Hampshire orchard! —  has made an accidental Taoist of me.  Which is why, aside from my various creative endeavors, which are their own rewards (they'd have to be, now, wouldn't they?), I draw my steady paycheck from The Bureaucracy.  Bureaucracies allow for some level of Taoism — especially the practice of wu-wei, or "non-action". 

By Friday, I'm pretty much wu-weied out, though, I've got to say.  I mean, I never claimed to be a master.  So Friday night I was toast by nine.  And then Saturday, the rain gave me an excuse to laze around and watch the last of the season two episodes of Dexter I had left before the third-season premiere Sunday night. 

In fact, Dexter was not just the highlight of my weekend, it became more or less my raison d'etre.  When I wasn't watching the Showtime series I was reading The Age of Agony: The Art of Healing c. 1700-1800 (chapter one: blood letting — chapter two: the perils of pregnancy — chapter three: child mortality — you get the picture), and listening to the delightful soundtrack to Cannibal! The Musical...



I'm not sure if I should be worried, or not.  It just all seemed the thing to do to cap off my forty-hour work week.

The funny thing is, I got my next to last Dexter disc from Netflix Saturday, watched the four episodes on it back-to-back, and panicked.  There was one episode left to watch before the premiere on Sunday.  And I didn't have it!  I ran out to the local movie rental place in the rain, and as luck would have it, someone had just dropped it off. 

Whew.  That was close.  I don't know if Harry's Code would have allowed me to revenge myself on the clerk had it not been.  I'm glad neither of us had to find out.

One of my housemates had interrupted my Dexter marathon earlier to ask me to come downstairs and meet her little sis, who was in town for the weekend.  I was like, "sorry, it'll have to wait."

She's like: "Dexter?"

The whole house knows. 

That was Saturday.  Then I had all of Sunday to while away until nine, when the third season premiere was to air.  I had made arrangements to reserve the TV downstairs for it.  I had invited the house, and offered to mix the bloody marys myself, although I had never shared Dexter with anyone else and wasn't sure how that would turn out. 

Actually, it turned out I didn't have to.  The orphanage, which had been buzzing with activity and multiple weekend guests, was ghostly deserted by the time nine rolled around.  I settled in with my steak tartare and bloody marys.  I enjoyed the first fifty minutes in perfect peace, and then, just as the episode's hook was about to come, enter my housemate with the sister I'd sort of blown off all weekend.

What to do? 

Well, I can tell you I was not about to take my eyes off the TV. 

It was a little awkward.  And of course I feel like a heel about it today.  I would have gotten this week's surprise ending in next week's "last week on Dexter" segment anyway.  The civil thing would have been to switch off the trifling bit of television entertainment I'd elaborately constructed my whole weekend around, and chat with my housemate's sister, whom I'd likely never see again. 

Instead, I shook hands with her without raising myself from the sofa or taking my eyes off the TV.  She and my housemate both sat down on the other sofa, and then, a moment later, got up and awkwardly exited the room.  I thought I heard one of them say, "hide the knives." 

This morning, I ran into my housemate on her way out the door.  I apologized for my behavior last night.  I don't know what got into me.  It must've been that forty-hour work week, yuh know?  She assured me it was no big deal and rushed out. 

OK.  So can somebody please tell me:  where are all the knives?