if i could have the feeling of the water on land, i might be less impaired, less dissonant, less depressed and more happy. but on land my head and belly are full of gravel and gravity. 
tired, i spilled my troubles on s. on such an otherwise beautiful day by the inland sea. we talked of cognitive impairment. how i was muted by my father's quiet anger, or what it felt like to me, his denial, our divorce, and nothing yet adds up, to the shame and failure i feel today. except that i was from a failed school, and i live in a failed state. i decided we all live with cognitive impairment, though that doesn't lessen the pain, or the responsibility.
after s. left gene came, tall, with stiff bearing and a long pine staff, told me right off he had a stroke, and parkinson disease, in his early sixties. cody came and actually swam, and gene walked off, and i looked down the way and he was in the water, so i went to see if he had fallen. he was just exercising. 
i can't figure out what lies beneath, some invisible wreck in me, out there it softens with time and water, it becomes part of the shoal. but on land the wreck in me is crippling, and turns love to hate and allies to adversaries. that's what is so disappointing about me. in the water, with the dogs, in what exists of nature, i can love, the wreck submersed. 
and i think, well maybe i can do therapy, but can therapy aid cognitive impairment? can a dogwalker afford mental health outside of the dogs? is anything enough? 
i don't want to be this damaged egotist, can't seem to dissolve it in the sea, and mea culpa gets me nowhere.