what does it mean when your soles itch and crack and erode like patches of earth in a vacant lot unnurtured. am i missing something or do i have something extra, a passenger, an ill lodger in my soles. i take for granted these, and i have done things not gentle to these that carry me. i often think i'm missing something or carrying something i can't let go of. some ill education. i think maybe i'm just too crazy, but i'm crazy in a way that doesn't quite represent me. it's outside me, an outside me. something i carry, something that happened to me. i remember in the book something happened how he repeats the phrase so often it becomes meaningless, a mantra of discomfort, and ultimately the realization, that nothing happened, really, it was a phrase to keep things from happening. and it worked, it kept things from happening, while things happened around him, life, he observed in the phrase his life unlived. it went on anyway. without him in a way. obscurely led by him. this life called something happened. it could be like that with me. when karin died and my turmoil with r. subsided i felt an easement, i thought, i may have sustained damage, i may have damaged myself, but the word sustained is telling, what sustained me was soul, my sanity, and god knows the sanity of honey girl, and mister, and a host of dog friends on the way. and then i say to myself, and in here, you're not really crazy, you experience some crazy shit in this crazy paradigm, and you wend your way sometimes wobbly, sometimes clashing, sometimes in grace. yet deep down you know. you are sane.