So how do you feel?

Waiting for traffic to move on I found myself thinking of a jellybean composed of pure tension and slapstick with the mass of a planet lodged in my stomach, between my navel chakra and my solar plexus chakra.

So, it sounds like you…

Closer to my navel.

Like a made-up movie called “The End of the World” produced by Jerry Bruckheimer starring Louis De Funes at his most apocaplectic.

What, your wife away on business again?

Japan. Until Sunday. She picked a busy week to go away, but not that much busier than any other week. How does she do it? She can bilocate I think. Unlike me. So while she effortlessly does three things at the same time in three different places, I find myself rushing around.

So you’re frustrated you can’t whine, only suffer.

I find myself, you know, to get papers at the consulate I don’t simply drive to the consulate and get papers, like she would in a similar situation. Or call them and have them send the papers. I find myself turning right at the no-right-turn sign, in front of a streetcar, to find myself not only facing the wrong way down a one-way street, but facing a police car to boot. So I make a quick left, thinking, on the one hand, if they send me a ticket, as Austrian police like to do, my wife will get it, this being her car I’m driving as my father-in-law is trying to get the exhaust fixed on the Dobl