I can appreciate those moments, but they're not the ones I seek out. And I'd chew off my own leg to escape a job where I had to punch a clock every day and warm a chair. Time is the only thing of real value I have, and I have so precious little of it. Too little of it to burn behind a desk doing work that doesn't capture my interest. So, rather than seeing a job as safety and security, I see it as a trap, depriving a naturally free spirit of its prime resource, a resource better spent on things like play and creative endeavors. And the safety seems false, since it doesn't save one from death in the end anyway. I'd rather see E chasing her dreams. I'd love to be sitting behind my computer screen, in my Colorado house, and look over to see E curled up in a chair, writing -- weaving metaphors with language as a painter crafts images with pigment. E's talent is as a writer -- that's her love -- and so, it seems to me, she should be writing. But, to her, that's a trap -- to spend the time writing and not building a career. To end up five years down the line without financial security, still working as a waitress to get by, with nothing but a pile of words going nowhere to explain where the time went. So, that dream, of E as a writer, is perhaps more mine for her than it is hers, and it's an unjustifiable risk for her.

And who am I to say what is the inside and what is the outside of the cage? In my own way, as a wandering surf bum and physicist errant, I'm trapped by the lack of effort I've put into making money. How do I know I won't look back and regret it, with nothing to show for my time but stacks of physics notes and papers that led nowhere? I'm happy with the choices I've made, I think they've been the right ones for me. But I shouldn't impose those choices on E. Maybe, for her, I should just be this odd fellow who shows up on her doorstep to visit every now and then, for a while, when she's not at work.