I used to have some moments when I'd think "What the hell did I do? I can't leave the house, I can't have a conversation, etc." But then I remember what my life was like when my decisions were which stupid pseudo-noir movie to see at the Angelika, and whether to have Indian or Thai food afterward, and it was a lot sillier than this, and repetitive, and sort of just There.

With a kid, you see change every day, you experience great love and joy, you are with a person who feels everything intensely and who is seeing everything that you take for granted for the first time, so you get to see things anew too.

I thought awhile ago that it was almost a kind of meditation, in that, instead of just walking down the street lost in your own pathetic obsessions, you have to explain things like SNOW to someone, and you can spend hours putting two legos together to make a bus in different colors, I mean, you have to Be Here Now with a little kid, that's all they know. There's no sense of time, futurity, with them. It makes you actually experience what's going on Right Now, in the world and in your relationship with them.

And they're not blase, they're not ironic, they actually CARE about stuff.

This can be A Good Thing.

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