"INDIAN GIVER" goes the old phrase, laden with incorrect connotations in this modern day and only suitable for the dustbin. Yet if I could take back some of what I'd given I would, if only to give it anew.

FALLING IN LOVE changes you. Some part of you forever after will still love that person, and soon you find yourself schizoid, multiple incarnations of self warring over emotional attachments and who gets to pluck the heartstrings.

IS THERE A FINITE QUANTITY, and can you create more? If you can't let go of what you've already offered, are you doomed to be forever entwined in unreceived obligations, the office of the heart filled with dead letters unmailed or worse, unanswered?

MAKING A CHRISTMAS GIFT LIST, all of them are on there, names from the days of deeds regretted or cherished still. Why can't I cross them off the list?

NEW TRAVELERS who fail to receive the best and truest gift I could make. What is wrong with me, and how do I fix it?

RAGGED CLAWS scattered across the ocean floor. Perhaps there is a better fate still to be found, a corner still to be turned. There is no great claim to wisdom as of this age and much of life is yet to live.

MINUS ONE, MINUS TWO seems so easy but the ropes are fastened tight. Shelves in a narrow cabinet, bedecked with curios and no room at the end for a sparkling treasure newly uncovered. Why bother to shop? The catalog is brittle and each new edition only offers the same old goods.

WHY CAN'T THE LOVING STOP?

WERE IT POSSIBLE they would flutter from my palms and alight into empty air. I would wish them well, thank them for their company, and draw a breath, refreshed.

INSTEAD they cluster tight, butterflies in my stomach when I think of them, and I wonder: is it the shopping trip, the articles I admire, or my own consumer instinct that is at fault? I want to move on but I only make circles, cold mute angels in the snow.