Kites

'You're never happier than when you make plans', says W. 'Why is that?' I like to throw plans out ahead of me, W. notes. I always have. It must be the illusion of control, a game of fort-da like that of Freud's grandchild. But then, too, there's something wild about my plans, something hopelessly unrealistic, W. says, which entail the very opposite of control.

There are never well thought-out tactics, never a careful strategy; I plan like a fugitive, like a maniac on the loose, or a prisoner who's been locked up for 20 years. What can I know of what I am planning for? Won't the future, and the terrible conditions of the future, destroy any plan I could possibly have?

But there is a charm to my planning, despite everything, W. says. There's a charm to the special joy I take in making plans, as if each plan is a kind of kite, that's how W. pictures it, trailing far, far into the future. As if each were dancing in a remote but lovely sky. 

My plan to learn music theory, for example. To read Sanskrit. To master the fundamentals of economics. How fanciful! How impossible, each one of them, as they danced on the end of the string! Better still, my plans for the pair of us, for W. and I. For great collaborative projects. For whole books and series of books written together! For flurries of articles!

What faith I show! In him! In us! In the many things we can supposedly accomplish together! Of course, it's all for nothing, W. says. He knows it and I should know it. Indeed, I do know it. Only something in me knows otherwise. Something that remains in me of an unthwarted faith, and this is the key to my charm.