my only goal

I am a drop out. I have only ever had one true goal, which was conceived of and squashed on the same day in the Spring, or Fall, or an unseasonably warm winter, or a cool summer day, when I was eight or nine years old, or maybe twelve. All goals since then have been short term diversions built on a foundation of disappointment.

I suppose you want to know what that goal was and why it was so important. I suppose you wonder if anything I do matters to me now, or if I am happy. There are pockets of paradox. For example in my incessant busy-ness or my obsessive adoration of results. But these don't count much to me. The world disappointed me that day and I have never really forgiven it. I can only go on, knowing I can not make my dream a reality. Then or ever, until I am dead. And then I won't be able to appreciate it.

It was simple and clear and not much to ask. I don't know where I got the idea but I came home from school with a mission. It must have been Spring, because I remember being hot and taking my shoes and socks off, hurriedly as I headed toward destination: top of hill in yard. I had the sense that this would get me just enough closer to the thing I wanted to not see, that it was important to go to the highest point easily accessible. Peeling off my sweaty socks and throwing down my infeasibly heavy backpack which contained homework that would later make me cry, I scaled the hillside and flopped down on my back. And just like that I failed. I knew within a half of a second that my hypothesis had been bogus. That I had no evidence and now not even a dream. There was sky--blue, and clouds. Wires and birds and treetops. I had been hoping for a glimpse into that vast love of mine, the unnamable void. But all I had gotten was more of the same.