Happiness

The elusive state.

The title has nothing to do with the story, I don’t think, unless it’s the story’s entire theme. It’s something I once overheard an older woman say. I was in a city where I didn’t live, having a meeting with a guy with a ton of money who was auditioning people to write about his business and try to make it sound interesting. I failed the audition, in the sense that I was not asked to do the project, which was a relief in a way, because the business was not that interesting. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. (Brief digression: Jonathan Winters was once on Letterman and said that if he ever had his own sitcom, that would be his catch phrase: “That’s neither here nor there.”) Anyway, I was walking around in this city and passed an older woman who was talking to herself. I only heard one thing she said, which was this thing, “Happiness…the elusive state.” Well, maybe the title does have something to do with the story.

*

THE FOUR ASPECTS OF MAN

The first aspect of the man was his location. He was roughly halfway between the large tree and the house, in the dead middle of a circle that had been burned into the lawn. He insisted on dressing in a fashion that blended both: his pants and shirt were the brown of the tree, and his hat and his shoes the yellow of the house. The second aspect of the man was his honesty, such as it was. He stood in the dead middle of the circle and loudly shouted that he was not there. “I am elsewhere!” he would shout. Or: “I am dressed in nothing, lighting a fire!” Or: “I am in the house, up in the bedroom, disporting!” Or, most worryingly: “I am nowhere!” The third aspect of the man was his family. His daughter, a lively nine-year-old who referred to herself as a “thinker in training,” liked to come out onto the lawn and trace the perimeter of the circle surrounding her father, slowly at first, as if marking off paces, then faster and faster, until she told him she was a blur. She was not a blur. She was perfectly in focus. He could see her dress and the pencils in the pocket. He could see her smile and the teeth flashing inside it. He could see her features, faintly his, more overtly an echo of his wife’s, who he had met when she was nineteen, closer to their daughter’s age than to the age that they were now, forty, failing at nearly everything. The only thing they were succeeding at, he had told his wife, was making each other feel alone. “I disagree,” she had said. “I am succeeding okay at a few other things, too.” She caught the beginnings of a laugh, stuffed it back down. She was not out in the yard. She was elsewhere. She was up in the bedroom, disporting. She was dressed in nothing, lighting a fire. With her was either the guy who had mowed the lawn into which the man had burned the circle or the guy who had come out to tend to the tree, pruning it and checking for pests. Usually the man stood stock-still while his daughter circled him. Now and again, when she went back inside, he would start to spin, slowly at first, then faster and faster until the world was a blur. He told himself it was not a blur, right up until the moment he fell down. The fourth aspect of the man was that he had fallen. [©2026 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas]