planning to fail is obviously not failing to plan

I wish it wasn't cold because the field across the street looks very inviting in the late morning sunshine.

I used to walk to this part of town from the northern side of midtown all the time. I did it bymyself. I would nearly always offer an invitation to melissa to join me and also try very hard to make it convenient for her but I believe there were really only a few times I made the really beautiful walk with my partner. I wish I had had a dog during those times to walk with me and I know that sounds much worse than I mean it but much like my adoring cat, Jenny Any Dots, a dog loves her kind friend without reservation and with foolish abandon. There is a journal drawn by Nikki McClure called "Things to Make and Do." It has divisions based on different verbs such as dream, create, hope, and the like. On the first page of the plan section she wrote "Make a mistake." I pondered that for an exceedingly long time before I began to understand the nature of regret and failure in light of that phrase. Especially being under the heading of "plan." To be sure I never, ever planned for my life to end up how it is now. The most intriguing aspect of the last five years of my life is that for the first time when something catastrophic (or nearly so in some cases) has happened to me I can't trace events back to one or several dimwitted decisions I made. I am out of control and I washed up on what appears to be a God-forsaken bank that is more stone than sand and there is no place to lay my head and rest.


Certainly no one is an island but I feel as though I have been stranded on one wishing rather to actually be one than on one. For what can an island be but and island and therefore has supreme ability to be content. But what of the lonely inhabitant who has no claims and has no identity? What of him? What of me?