Stopping in here after work, I often find myself wandering without purpose among the displays of contemporary housewares. I notice that I start to feel almost good.

Something is wrong with me that the painted glasses fix. I start to think of these things as if they could be things in my home. I start to think of my life having things like this in it. I feel better.

What these things do is, they promise to make me happy. If I had these glasses in my cupboard, surely there would be a wife somewhere in the background. If there were a wife, there would soon be children. And if there were children then the agony of every day would be a deliberate and meaningful element in providing care to them so that they might grow and be just like me.

Sometimes I am like that, sometimes I want to inflict myself upon the world.