So romanceless does the expanse of this day seem.

And the world remains indifferent.

I imagine making camp after sunset somewhere in lost mountains and playfully teasing a campfire past flame to orange glowingness which I will then bash with my impromptu walking stick, sending hot embers like fireflies as messengers starward.  *I’m alive!*   *I’m alive!”, they would scream heavenwards. * Come, friend, sit by my fire and share with me a heart-to-heart and we’ll watch the stars spin round, spin round.*

Or I imagine even sharing a cup of coffee in a coffeeshop this morn, chatting this, chatting that, watching many somebodies come and go, with a Xangeroo—who? You!  Which you?  Any you, with an open heart, keen mind, and sense of voyage will do!

I could sit and imagine the day away, leaving lonliness itself dreamily bereft.  Too busy to do anything while seemingly doing nothing, I could sit and imagine so hard you would laugh!

But Trickster Time fills my day with a legion of laborious tasks.   I could detail you of the work I have in the attic, the fix-the-computer this, the enhance-the-communications that,  the grade-and-submit of all of it. But if I could descriptively portray it all, story-it all,  with you by my side, it would probably evolve into some great otherwise--a morphing adventure probing unforeseen mystery, wringing soft pleasurable doom out of stolid routine.

How my heart’s hopes do survive on so many *ifs*.  How my imagination does befriend me during this expanse sans romance.