Am I not done mourning?

Oh, mother.

I've had nearly forty years of nothing else. What have I been playing at?

Well what, then?

Oh a fake, certainly a fake, please god, yes.

But a buffoon I am not and yet, this morning, after a few songs by the hearty, if oververrated, Wolkenstein, I was ready to go to work and extinquish Gareth with an indifference that was so complete it was almost, in fact, religious. And yet, barely on the perimeter of the park, I felt a hot, oily ache. Initially, it reminded me of a certain insane lust, yet quickly I felt the need for the ground, for earth. The hot ache, like a ball, was roiling around my chest and I yearned for a place to lie down and clutch, or comfort myself. Quickly, the sobbing came. I imagined myself returning home and breaking down in front of the Nude Maja. It felt a vain and stupid thing to do and, rebuking myself, I was then distracted sufficiently to swallow the sobbing. So, having made no scene in my local, public park and, finally, pretending I had lost something, I made an exasperated, sweeping gesture and continued on my way. The charade, as ever, was entirely accurate for I had, indeed, lost something. If only the grief I have so long coveted. And so it was, I entered work in a broken and, it occured to me, a very modern state, desperate, as I was, to process something that not yet happened. And aware, too, of Gareth's voice in the kitchen.