mister soul on ice. i chose to stay here with r. and mister today and therefore i fear i am again the pariah dog i seem to always revert to. for a good long while there you could take me anywhere as long as there were spirits to imbibe, but i was still that kind of dog, the outsider. i drank myself peripheral. that's neither here nor there and i can mix well now with good people, but still at heart i remain a pariah dog. i went to school for it. it was, if not in some gipsy gene i chance inherited, imbued by my harsh and sentimental education.i envy the true pariah dog in a way, assuming he is free of holiday guilt, but his life is no doubt hard and harder than mine. my pariahdom is touched by romance. 
though the pariah dog be an outcast, he is naturally selected. there's a bit of paradox in his nature. 
in human society opting out of the select holiday needs to be honored, at least by me, in my essential nature. people have different ways of coping, surviving, and being in relation to others. the outcast is part of it all, if taken to heart or walking the periphery. 
what is choice and what design. is choice design? or is design choice. from kindergarten i was a pariah dog, out of fear. fear described me, before i described myself. confidence is slow learning, from the place of fear, on the margins of society. 
really i don't want to burden this holy day with my cogitations. i'm out there somewhere with the coyote spirit, slinking through the snowy commons.