At first I felt a loss of control, a strong dose of panic, as if falling. My life was being shifted by events I had not chosen. Indeed, my life was being altered permanently by another life. This was not part of the plan.

When water flows downhill to the sea, does it have a plan? I guess not. Yet by trickling, flowing, seeping, or evaporating and falling as rain, it eventually makes it to the sea.

It is humbling and enlightening to realize that life has its own agenda, and that my plans are very small and brief when compared to the cycles of life and death on this planet.

So here I am. Unplanned.

An animal. A mammal. Flesh and blood.

A skin barely containing a bit of the sea.

Water walking on land.