The Plan

The plan was to come down to Laguna for Thanksgiving and spend the following days down here, to get away from the stress of city life and get some writing (P) and painting (E) done. Ah, well, God (if He exists) must be having a good chuckle, if you believe in that old saying, if you want to see God laugh, make a plan. This morning we're on the road again, headed north to Los Angeles to check up on our still hospitalized Sarah. We're hoping to find her better that she sounded yesterday on the telephone, still in severe pain with her kidney infection.

I like an ordered life as much as anyone. I'm comfortable when I know what the schedule is for the day--for the week, for the month... But when things fall out the way they have these past few days, I'm forced to recognize that my sense of order is yet another delusion, and that to become attached to it is simply to cause more suffering. From moment to moment, truth be told, I have no idea about what might happen, still less am able to control it. Predictability is no more than an illusion with which I comfort myself about the uncertainty of the future.

So the plan today is to get in the car a little later in the morning and head for the 5 freeway. The hope is that along the way we do not encounter too many of the crazed post-Thanksgiving bargain-hunters thronging to the malls in their cars. If we do, I'll be confronted once again with the need to find some way to live with my impatience--a not-too-endearing quality that tends to show up with alarming regularity in traffic. Breathe...