goals and measuring risk.

For a truth, one cannot fail if he never set a goal.  So often in life, the goals are imposed upon us by others, from learning institutions we remember well a litany of judgments and standards to be met....

Does it seem to be wonder if all goals melt away without some form of enforcement?

And here we are, rating ourselves against others.

What if we come-up wanting?

What if John Cheever wanted to be John Morrell?  What if there were no comparisons on which to set a frame of reference, such that one thought, pulling out his shirt tail, that he had come up sufficiently to the mark?

John Cakeworth was making a documentary, and here in high school graduation season, entrepreneur that he is, on the deflowerings, the stipples of blood on white enamel, subsequent footprints on the tile--footprints set with baby powder--and not water-based anti-friction, but petroleum jelly--concubines of a Herod, wives and neices, hotel rooms with cars hidden safely behind the building.

One that had never contested, had never known either failure or the thrill of any kind of appreciable risk;  indeed, No Risk makes for No Reward.

She begged on the community yard sale board for food, even as she perversely posted pictures of herself getting several new tattoos, several as more than one.

And that with nothing whatsoever to eat, and the beesting of fresh ink insisting on her.  John Cheever had his bowl and John Morrell had fallen asleep after munching some old scraps of carpeting.

To have never contested, to have never put forth the propositions of either gain or loss, with no possibility of advantage.