Anyway, after a long trek across Tucson to f*ckall woebegone, I found the only Cox store in town, waited in line, paid a $50.00 deposit, and was granted the privilege of renting a cheap plastic modem to take home and self-install.
If you know me, you know that any word with self in front of it makes me quail.
“Will I be able to figure this out?” I asked the rep who took my money and handed me a white box with a handy built-in plastic handle.
She stared at me over her mask. I could see her mentally shift gears. She opened the box and quickly described the attachment process. I felt like one of those cartoon dogs listening to their owner, where the dialog balloon is nothing but bla bla bla bacon bla bla walk bla bla, except minus the cue words bacon and walk.
I went outside with my little box. I put the box gently on the seat and took a minute to pour a dinky bottle of mechanic-in-a-can into my car’s gas tank. The beast threw a shoe, I mean, a code, that morning. Ding, the familiar check engine light came on, indicating a problem in the exhaust system. Anything from a bad gas cap to an expensive oxygen sensor problem or an even more expensive catalytic converter fail. The light does not identify the exact problem. It’s like when your property manager texts you there’s a gas leak in the building, get out now. It helps to have specifics, like, which apartment do I really live in? So now I have the fun job of trying to discern whether the check engine light problem stems from the work that I had the dealer do on May 19. It’s unlikely that their work is under warranty but it would be stupid not to ask. If they say bring it in, I know what will happen. I have some alternative recommendations for car repair places, none of which is within easy walking distance of the Bat Cave.
My father told me never to fall in love with a car. That is still good advice.
Two steps forward, two or three steps back, then one step forward, then fall in a hole for a while. That is my life in Tucson. I finally get an apartment, but can’t get internet. I finally get internet, but the car goes gunnysack. The neighbors with quiet car stereos have loud car engines and vice versa. The property manager returns from a three-week COVID-19 vacation (yay, she lives!) but fails to respond (again) to my emails. Meanwhile, the waves of vertigo in my head are a constant reminder that I control nothing and nobody.
After a while, does it do any good to use the words good or bad to describe what happens? It’s all just life. Maybe the word stupid would be more apropos. I could equally use the word sublime. Ridiculous and rapturous. Absurd and . . . hmm, I’m having trouble coming up with opposites that express my dichotomous brain. I found some fun words, though: cockamamie, dunderheaded, doltish, nutty. Humans have many words to express their displeasure with circumstance. Absurd, ridiculous, and nutty have a lot of company in the thesaurus. Synonyms for triumphant and celebratory are sparse.
As I walked in the hot morning sun today, eyes on the cracked asphalt to avoid stumbles, I had time to think about what it means to be alone. No one depends on me, not a cat, not a mother, not a sibling, not a friend. Nobody really knows where I am. A few people have my street address, but no one could rush to my rescue, or ask me to rush to theirs. I no longer live my life in the context of someone else’s. I’m effectively alone.
I can hear you, you know. You are thinking, oh, no, there she goes again. She’s going to do that off-putting grieving thing. She’s fallen into that sorrow-shaped hole in the sidewalk. Now the whining will begin and it will take meeting another horny lonely eighty-two-year-old to get her mind off it so she can find the humor in her nutty, absurd, confounding, ridiculously sublime existence.
In my defense—do I seem to be writing that phrase more than usual lately? Argh. I’ll let you decide if grief is a defense for wackiness. Everything has happened so fast (she whined). Ten months ago, Mom went and died, setting off a cascade of actions and events that propelled me to another state. Bam, in slow motion, I'm thrown into a new life. Wait, let's be clear: I threw myself.
I went outside with my little box. I put the box gently on the seat and took a minute to pour a dinky bottle of mechanic-in-a-can into my car’s gas tank. The beast threw a shoe, I mean, a code, that morning. Ding, the familiar check engine light came on, indicating a problem in the exhaust system. Anything from a bad gas cap to an expensive oxygen sensor problem or an even more expensive catalytic converter fail. The light does not identify the exact problem. It’s like when your property manager texts you there’s a gas leak in the building, get out now. It helps to have specifics, like, which apartment do I really live in? So now I have the fun job of trying to discern whether the check engine light problem stems from the work that I had the dealer do on May 19. It’s unlikely that their work is under warranty but it would be stupid not to ask. If they say bring it in, I know what will happen. I have some alternative recommendations for car repair places, none of which is within easy walking distance of the Bat Cave.
My father told me never to fall in love with a car. That is still good advice.
Two steps forward, two or three steps back, then one step forward, then fall in a hole for a while. That is my life in Tucson. I finally get an apartment, but can’t get internet. I finally get internet, but the car goes gunnysack. The neighbors with quiet car stereos have loud car engines and vice versa. The property manager returns from a three-week COVID-19 vacation (yay, she lives!) but fails to respond (again) to my emails. Meanwhile, the waves of vertigo in my head are a constant reminder that I control nothing and nobody.
After a while, does it do any good to use the words good or bad to describe what happens? It’s all just life. Maybe the word stupid would be more apropos. I could equally use the word sublime. Ridiculous and rapturous. Absurd and . . . hmm, I’m having trouble coming up with opposites that express my dichotomous brain. I found some fun words, though: cockamamie, dunderheaded, doltish, nutty. Humans have many words to express their displeasure with circumstance. Absurd, ridiculous, and nutty have a lot of company in the thesaurus. Synonyms for triumphant and celebratory are sparse.
As I walked in the hot morning sun today, eyes on the cracked asphalt to avoid stumbles, I had time to think about what it means to be alone. No one depends on me, not a cat, not a mother, not a sibling, not a friend. Nobody really knows where I am. A few people have my street address, but no one could rush to my rescue, or ask me to rush to theirs. I no longer live my life in the context of someone else’s. I’m effectively alone.
I can hear you, you know. You are thinking, oh, no, there she goes again. She’s going to do that off-putting grieving thing. She’s fallen into that sorrow-shaped hole in the sidewalk. Now the whining will begin and it will take meeting another horny lonely eighty-two-year-old to get her mind off it so she can find the humor in her nutty, absurd, confounding, ridiculously sublime existence.
In my defense—do I seem to be writing that phrase more than usual lately? Argh. I’ll let you decide if grief is a defense for wackiness. Everything has happened so fast (she whined). Ten months ago, Mom went and died, setting off a cascade of actions and events that propelled me to another state. Bam, in slow motion, I'm thrown into a new life. Wait, let's be clear: I threw myself.
I wake up at night confused. I don’t know where I am. What bed, what room, what city, what year. I hope it is grief and not early-stage Alzheimer’s. Nothing makes sense except for the veneer of meaning I paint onto my experiences, and my mental paintbrush lags a disturbing two or more seconds behind reality. (Hence my confusion when I opened the Cox box and saw a coaxial cable instead of a DSL phone line.)
One of my favorite Monkees songs (yes, I’m still a fan) has a grammatically incorrect line that resonates: Where my foot steps down is where is home. Every time I go walking, I look at the blue sky and think, oh my god, how gorgeous, is this my home? It’s a real question with as yet no answer. I don’t know if this is home. And yes, the sky is sublime.
One of my favorite Monkees songs (yes, I’m still a fan) has a grammatically incorrect line that resonates: Where my foot steps down is where is home. Every time I go walking, I look at the blue sky and think, oh my god, how gorgeous, is this my home? It’s a real question with as yet no answer. I don’t know if this is home. And yes, the sky is sublime.
