There's something fractured in the air tonight. It's hanging in the air like an odor that you can't quite place.

Barker is dancing around my legs deftly avoiding my legs as I trudge through the slush. He can't sense it but it just goes to figure because he's currently smelling his butt. I stand in the slush feeling my shoes slowly absorbing the cold and I realize that I could be anyone right now. Somewhere a rich man is probably freezing his ass off like me, standing with a dog sniffing itself and wondering if they hadn't missed something along the way.

And somehow that makes me feel a little better. I think somewhere deep down I know I'm not always chasing after the right things, but that's okay because at least I know I'm meandering from the path. I know that when I get to the anti-climax portion of my existence I'll at least have seen the road signs on the way.

When Barker is finished we keep walking. I went to high school with a girl who became a model. Our little newspaper put a story about her and how she was going to be in some magazine. Now we both work at the same place. I never really talk with her but it seems kind of sad. She talks about what has happened in her life and how she's on her way back to the modeling world and all of that, but at the end of the day we still work in the same dead end job. The difference it seems is that she needs to work and I'm there for dental benefits until my next novel is picked up.

In other words, we're both pathetic, but for me the bar is much lower. I'm still I can still reasonably believe that I've got something more on the horizon. Everything I've gotten is something I've worked for. There's been luck, but I haven't been given any breaks. That's where I see the difference. And now I'm getting preachy.

I think maybe Barker's got it figured out. It doesn't seem to me that he compares himself to Lassie or Benji or Scooby Doo or anything. But then again, it wouldn't be much fun if I based my life on how I think a dog goes from day to day.

It's tit cold now. My feet are freezing. Barker doesn't seem to want to head back yet, but he's done all he's going to do tonight. It seems like I should be smoking now. I haven't had a cigarette in three years but the craving is nostalgia. Strange thing about it is I wasn't better off when I smoked, but somewhere hidden in there is a little glimmer of something. I start to trudge home. Barker would like to go wander some more, but after a brief pause he's on my heels.

Oh well. No need to dwell on any of this. Isn't going to get me anywhere either way and it's not like I believe half the shit I tell myself anyway. I steal a quick pat behind Barker's ears and then keep moving. The sound of slushy splashes under my feet and the ginger squish of it under Barker's seems to drown out my thoughts. God my feet are cold.