"The original monastery house in which I planned to spend the rest of my life is not working out.
The second was a 20-inch window unit with metal paddles and panels on the sides, which I planned to use as an exhaust fan in the kitchen.
I purchased several boxes of chocolates to take to my family in Moscow, which I planned to use to convince them that someday, we should all return.
I did, however, find a pair of soft leather scarlet slippers, decorated with gold, blue and black diamonds, which I planned to wear.
I also brought a Hermes 3000 portable typewriter, at which I planned to sit and write in the heat and moonlight, with cold, sweaty beers.
"Chickens were on sale today for 69 cents a pound," he wrote, "and I decided to buy tomatoes and onions and a 2-pound chicken, which I planned to brown and then stew".
On the other hand, the acute stroke unit to which I planned to look for my own future use – 10 minutes away by car, 20 by public transport – seems to be in doubt.
As a kid, in the sixties, I was awed, amazed, inspired by the seeming gracefulness of the colossal blastoffs from Cape Kennedy, but also understood it as a marvel of science, a realm that aroused my dreams and ambitions and in which I planned to make my career.
So I drove to an office supply store to buy a roll of packing tape ($2.57), then returned home to spend 20 minutes building a box for one of the cargo covers, which I planned to use as a test package.
Among these vibrant records sat a signed copy of Help! by the Beatles which I planned to sell in the future to make my fortune – until I was told it had been signed not by the Fab Four but by my parents under the influence of an unspecified psychotropic substance.
IN a burst of do-it-myself enthusiasm I marched into the Madrid paper store De Papel (Calle Justiniano 7; 34-91-308-0152) recently and bought some beautiful hand-painted paper with which I planned to decoupage a rather lackluster lamp.
