What would it be like to live alone?

I really don't know. It's been a long time. And a four-day weekend by myself is not about to show me in any real way what living alone would be like, although it does prompt the question, and it's a question worth asking. Not that I'm planning on living alone any time soon, like in the next 30 years, but eventually almost everybody lives alone.

I've done it a couple of times. I grew up in a moderately big family - five kids, two parents. Even then I spent a good bit of time alone, but I never ALONE - existentially alone - because I was always surrounded by my family. Then I had roommates for two years in one dorm, Apple Hall in Kent, and one year in two apartments in Ann Arbor. Those were good times and good places, and I enjoyed the company, mostly.

Then I came back from a trip to Europe and got a room by myself in a rooming house for a year. Nice quiet street, come and go as I please; friends would come over. It was okay. It was better than okay, it was great, but it didn't last very long. I moved out and moved on, living in other people's places for a couple of years - a spare room here, a spare room there, Lower Peninsula, Upper Peninsula - in a house, a cabin, a tent, and finally moved south and found a roommate who eventually became a wife.

Of course that changed everything. For the next 33 years I managed to find time by myself, and over the years I have gotten better at making space for myself within the shared space of apartments and houses. Even with kids, it has always been possible to find time alone and create a space for being alone. But that ongoing balancing act is not the same as living alone, which makes the occasional four-day weekend a useful and revealing experiment while Gven Golly takes part in a sisters-and-cousins reunion in scenic Helen, Georgia.

One makes one's own coffee in the morning; walks the dog in the morning and evening, feeds the dog, and makes sure the dog has water in her bowl. This is not part of my routine normally, so it's a new and different part of my day that would take a serious decision to commit the kind of time a dog requires, that is, if it was just me and the dog. For now, since it is just me and the dog, it's still a major responsibility, as the dog needs and expects my full attention, at least a couple of times every day. Now if she would just learn to heel instead of yanking the leash - and my shoulder - this way and that.

One makes bean soup and arranges lumber in the shed. One watches tennis and football on TV. One reads a story in McSweeney's and articles in the New York Times. One goes for a longish bike ride out Dustin Road to 3Bs&K Road. Have you ever been out that way? West of the interstate, east of Alum Creek Lake, a quiet rural part of Delaware County, quite lovely if you have the time.

I've had an surprisingly active social life this weekend, aside from all that time with the dog. Saturday night I went to a gallery opening - Gven's friend Evangelia's gallery with Gven's work in the show - where I ran into a few people I knew - friends of Gven. Sunday I went to the temple and meditated, stayed for the teaching, went out for coffee, and drummed with the regular Clinton-Como drum circle in the park, where I ran into several people I knew - independently of Gven. She has her circle, I have my circle, and our circles overlap like a classic...Gvenn diagram. Sorry.

One finds things exactly where one put them, cleans up one's messes, and eats what one cooks. There is an increased sense of control, inhabiting a house by oneself. Everything is right where I put it. Nothing gets done if I don't do it myself. There will be no chicken dinner on Sunday. Nobody's going to clean up those dishes but me. Who am I gonna blame when something goes wrong? Why are we are out of coffee? Who left all this stuff lying around? Oh, yeah, that would be me.

I don't know how long it would take for all this glorious solitude to get old, but it would get old. There is no one there in the evening to unload all the day's baggage of disappointments, misdeeds, unmet deadlines, and crises du jour. And there is no one occupying the couch and the TV the entire evening with inane hospital shows and sitcoms, so I can catch every update on every ballgame on SportsCenter if I feel like it. Or not. It's mixed.

On realignment

If the Big Ten is going to expand, and they are, let's do it right. If that sounds like I have skin in the game, maybe I do and maybe I don't. When you've grown up breathing the air and hearing the language of midwestern college sports, it feels like it all matters deeply, because it does. Herewith some gut responses.

1. Keep the name. The 'Big Ten' brand transcends the actual number of universities in the conference, so don't get hung up on 11, 12, 14, or whatever the business arrangement becomes. It's the Big Ten, and it shall remain the Big Ten.

2. Screw Notre Dame. It would be like marrying the biggest prima donna in the senior class. Better off without her.

3. Organize the expanded conference into divisions based on geography AND history AND economics AND mob psychology. What is this, social studies? Yes, as a matter of fact, it is.

Now make a graphic organizer comparing the market size, football bowl appearances, basketball tournament record, academic research funding, and level of alumni fanaticism in each of the following:

East: Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State, Indiana, Purdue.

West: Northwestern, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska.

4. While you're at it, add Missouri and Kansas. Not right away, because the Big Ten doesn't make impulsive decisions like those other, lesser, mercenary enterprises to the East, West, and South that lack our sense of history, decorum, stodginess. Hrmph. Give the current configuration 20 or 30 years to make sure its a prudent move, then see if Missouri and Kansas are worthy. By that time, the Big Pac WAC Tex Mex 18 will have morphed into any number of Frankenleagues.

Come to think of it, that recent interloper Michigan State, which joined just the other day in the 1950s, is really still on probation, and the jury is definitely still out on this new outfit from State College.

5. Not Pittsburgh, not Syracuse, not West Virginia. Not Connecticut, not Rutgers! Let's not get carried away. Okay, maybe Pittsburgh and/or Syracuse, at least they're not coastal, but wait until some time in midcentury. Or Kentucky! Why is Kentucky in the SEC anyway? But no.

Of birds and bees

It's a Saturday morning, already warm but not yet hot, as I enjoy my coffee at a steel and tile table on the terra cotta patio. About a dozen bees move from flower to flower on a sprawling old multi-stemmed salvia. When they latch onto a flower and feed, the weight of a bee shakes the whole stem, and when the bee moves on to another flower, the stem rebounds like a spring. The mass of a bee's body hanging on the salvia stem must be like boys climbing trees in an orchard to pick apples, going out on a limb to grab the good stuff.

It's my idea of a good time just to sit out here and watch the yard come alive.

Last weekend I was sitting right here enjoying a quiet morning, and I heard a big bird swoop in past my left shoulder and land under a rose bush right beside me. All I could see was its black and white tail feathers for the minute that it rested under the roses. Then it took off and in two seconds was in the middle branches of a maple tree in the corner of the yard. I could just barely see the tail twitching under the branch that obscured its body. When I walked closer to get a better look, the hawk flew away, and for a second I could see its white belly shooting across the parking lot to another maple. Not a red tailed hawk, maybe a sparrow hawk, and whatever you are, you can see me a lot better than I can see you, so thanks for stopping by.

When Jessi was here in July working on the house, he made a number of trips to the hardware store to get tools and materials. A drill bit here, a section of PVC pipe there. On one of those trips down the bike trail from Summit to State Street, he was riding past the South High School baseball field, and he saw a hawk caught in the netting of the batting cage on the far end of the field. The big bird must have randomly flown in one end of this long, narrow net and gotten tangled up trying to find its way out of the 65-foot tunnel of rope.

Jessi being Jessi, he got off the bike and into the cage, trying to shake the net to free the bird. It took some doing, but finally the hawk got unsnagged from the net and flew out the open end.