Cold days are cocoon days. Thinking days. Running away days. If only in my mind.I found the right airfare, dates and venues I wanted to visit but, the actual call was never made. It took hours to figure out on the Internet. Tomorrow the fares and schedules will change. Maybe so will my mind. Then again maybe not. Maybe I will be ok just being home. Tending to the dogs who jump up every time I get up and follow me to the kitchen thinking I will give them food or that I will be leaving the house and them. I've heard that dogs don't have a sense of time. Maybe that means that every time I leave even for an hour they think of it as day's. So if it's a month it feels the same as a day. Or so I tell myself as I plan my get away which involves getting a caretaker for the dogs and a lot of anxiety. I marvel that sometimes we do anything given all the restraints we put on ourselves. The fear of taking charge of our life. When and why this starts has eluded me. I only know that at this point it is as strong and as real as iron manacles? A sense of bondage that steals the life and hope from our soul. Not unlike a dog chained to a post on a hot dusty day with an empty overturned dog dish, surrounded by excrement and nary a sliver of shade to fend off the elements. Vulnerable, dependent and broken in spirit. It is not a wonder that those dogs bite and jump and lunge at every passers by. Even if it chokes and cuts their neck as they strain against their collar. It must give a momentary diversion from the life theyve been relegated to. To feel something other than despair. To feel the fury while staring you down with gnashing teeth and foaming mouth, all the while tasting what it feels like to bury teeth into a human any human, because they have all become the face of evil. I have walked by those dogs in fear and pity. I know they would hurt me even if I tried to free them. They are bitter and past the point of help. They've been pushed past the point of ever being able to trust or to be trusted. They will turn on you with out provocation and when least expected. The saddest beast of all. The streets of my childhood were hot. You could see the mirage ahead of you as the heat bounced off the asphalt. The trickery of the eye for once being more real then what could be tangibly held in ones hands. Why does it look so filmy,like gasoline had been dumped on the asphalt and the sun had lit an invisible fire that rose without flames but moved the air into a thick liquid curtain that enclosed the town. My feet were black from the railroad beams I walked on for miles. The smell of creasote smelled good like the fumes from the gas pump that I liked to breath in. The rail road beams were hot to my skin as I sat to pull out severel thorns from my feet. Tender wounds sometimes bled as the thickest thorns were yanked out. Smoothed over with hot saliva to take away the sting. I noted how black my feet were and how hot to the touch the skin fe