A dog named Regrette.

Regret is something that burns itself into you when you spend time in prison. It's all you can do to try to focus on moving forward, on the future. The past is a black hole, a succubus. A dead-end street. You can't change the past. You can only move forward.

I think of this as I ride around for the dogs.These shelter dogs are trapped in situations, but they didn't do anything. Do they somehow feel regret, do they think that this is their fault that they are stuck living in kennels? The only time they spend outside is spent fighting the urge to leap at an old man on a bicycle? If they are like me, they are looking back on every kernel in their past, wondering how things could be different. If they didn't so like the taste of adhesive that they hadn't always eaten the important mail. If they could just resist busting past that ghetto fence that was expected to keep them in for ten hours at a time. So many things, but instincts are instincts, and our nature is our nature. How are we to assign blame?

At times in my life, I have tried to give myself up to other things, when in reality I have not really been able even to take care of myself. It is hard to live in this world, to take care of things in this world. I regret that I have not been a better man. I have always wanted to be a better man. It is little things that I have been able to manage, and perhaps for this reason, it is little things that have brought me joy.

Butter is big, and small. Butter is there when I need it, and asks nothing of me when I don't. Butter is beautiful, and versatile, and giving. She freezes well, and is slow to spoil unlike so many of her dairy brothers and sisters. She is salty and full of fat, and you have to get your salt and fat from somewhere.

But what if my marriage to butter is a marriage of convenience? What if I love her because she is easy--if there is something out there that would offer both greater challenges and greater rewards? What if my time with butter is just the next line item on a massive receipt of regrets?

I had a dog named Regrette.

I have been thinking about me, and butter. And I've asked myself, if I were to stop making butter tomorrow, how sad would I be? In the abstract, I am not sure that I would be that sad. I have tied up a bit of my identity in butter, but that is not something I should feel the need to stubbornly cling to, right? There are other things out there.

And it is okay to feel sad. It is okay to change. And it is okay to dream.