Crashing into the wreckage of the future

 

Here we are again. I used this image in a previous blogpost, probably in 2016. I'm sure I wrote a gloomy doomy post, bemoaning the demise of democracy. Past me could have no idea that future me would be having similar feelings in 2024, times a billion. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I survived 2016, which was just a amateur dress rehearsal for 2020 and early 2021. After a relatively calm four years, I guess we are ready to take the cold plunge into insanity once again. We don't learn from recent history—well, any history, actually. Such arrogance. 

My friend would caution me to stay out of the wreckage of the future. I confess to a feeling of impending doom, but it's not based on anything I've actually experienced. Nobody knows what will happen. Just because a gazillion red flags have been flying all over the field for the past decade doesn't mean bad things will happen. Right?

I mean, just because a person says they plan to be a jerk the moment they can doesn't mean they really will follow through, right? I remember my mom threatening to pull the car over when my siblings and I got too rambunctious in the back seat. "I'll give you something to cry about!" she yelled. But she never stopped the car, and we never got a whupping when we got to wherever we were going. 

What comes next? Should I march on Washington, D.C.? I have little to lose. I could do another road trip, park near the White House, and set myself on fire. After contacting the media, of course. I don't want to waste my effort, not to mention it's a long drive. However, there's a chance there will only be one news outlet by the time I get there, and they will turn my sacrifice into a taunting joke. Hm. Maybe it would be better to stay under the radar, grow my own food, and wait out the hard times. Well, soon we'll all be growing our own food. And picking apples and strawberries before they rot in the fields. Supermarket shelves will be empty, so I guess we'll all be getting a lot more exercise if we want to eat.

Oh, wait, not everyone will be out there picking beans and berries, sweating in the polluted air drinking polluting water. A friend told me someone told her that millionaires have safe havens in other countries. I guess if you have the money, you can just bail on the whole thing. But don't you want to experience the imminent looting of Dollar Trees and Dollar Generals? So exciting.

Think what you will, I'm just going to come right out and say it: I'm in favor of mandatory abortion. I probably mused on this topic before, but now I'm doubling-down on my position. Humans are too stupid to live and should not be allowed to procreate.  

I will not regret the future

To avoid living in the present, which is fraught with fear to the point of frantic dissociation, I am employing a technique known as visioning (which is basically a hallucination based on wishful thinking) to imagine a brave and hopeful future for myself after I've survived my personal version of freefall. My role model for this visioning process is Tom Hanks. No, I don't mean Forest Gump, although the temptation of saying eff it all and running across the midwestern plains has a certain appeal. No, the Tom Hanks character I am going to emulate is whatever the guy's name was in Castaway.

If you saw the movie, you remember he started out as a somewhat chunky normal guy. Then the plane crashed and he ended up castaway on a deserted island. He had to perform his own oral surgery. I don't plan to emulate that part. The memorable moment is what happens between the moment he conjures fire and the cut to the god-like creature he morphed into after a few years of surviving on fish and coconuts. 

I don't plan to start eating fish or coconuts. However, I do plan to morph into a god-like creature. God-dess. Whatever. Something other than what I am now. 

I can use my time on the road as an opportunity to reinvent myself. I can be someone different. Like, really different. You might not even recognize me in two years, that's how different I could be. Minus the plane crash (or in my case, I hope, the car crash that always seems imminent), I'm envisioning myself as the svelte survivor I will be if we fastforward a couple years. 

I will be thin. I will be smarter, somehow (not sure how that would happen, but I can hope). I will be able to get up from a chair without grimacing or grunting. My nose hairs will magically recede (but not back to my legs). I will be able to eat what normal people eat without getting sick, fat, or poor. Lactose intolerance will cease to be my nemesis. My cataracts will fade, my heart will settle into a steady rhythm, my bones will firm up, and this freight train in my head will roar off into the sunset, taking the typewriter tinnitus with it, never to be seen or heard again. I might even start to wear something other than black pajamas. Hey, as long as we're dreaming.

I don't expect all this to happen without my participation. First, of course, I will join a gym, because that is what people who want to reinvent themselves do. I might even go once in a while. Next, I will become a master of butane stove cuisine. I expect to be limited somewhat by lack of refrigeration, but if the planets align properly, I'll be able to get another power station to run my tiny portable camping fridge, currently languishing in my storage unit. There's nothing like powdered eggs cooked on a skillet in the frigid morning air. Nothing like it. I'm not sure what I will do about the hair migration problem. Even goddesses are allowed to shave their upper lips once in a while, right? I'm pretty sure. 

The only hitch in my vision might be the three caped and hooded horseriders of my personal apocalypse: my health, my teeth, and my car. These three dudes siphoned a lot of money out of my bank account the past couple years. Copays and a colonoscopy, crowns and root canals, and new tires and front end work all ganged up to just about kill me. I don't expect these nasty dudes to back off entirely, but maybe if I figure out what sacrifices to perform to placate their supervisor, I might make it through another year without running out of cash. I can hope. I am totally future tripping these days, because that is where hope is. The past is out of reach. The present is far too uncertain and painful. So what else is there? I'm running forward, not looking back.

Dragged into the future

Do you ever wish you could freeze time? Shut off the clock, silence the calendar, you know, take a vacation from the daily detritus of life for a while? Before things get worse? I know it isn't possible. I'm just frustrated at stumbling over an endless stream of stupid obstacles. I want things to be easier. Or at least, not any worse. I realize life isn't so great now for most people on this planet. Life is precarious for all but a handful of humans. I'm not one of them, but still, I know I'm lucky. Born in the right place, right epoch, right skin color. Wrong gender, but I cope. My complaints are luxury problems, compared to what some people are facing. Recognizing that fact doesn't stop me from complaining, but it does put my trivial concerns into perspective. 

What are you complaining about this week, Carol? I'm so glad you asked. Some of my recent challenges are easing up a bit. For example, I've just about got the problem with the street address debacle straightened out. No one was making mistakes with malicious intent. It's good to remember, most humans just bumble along doing the best they can in any given moment, which means in the case of the site manager here at the apartment, little snafus like COVID can put a crimp in performance. That's understandable. No point in getting angry.

Another little snafu. My former landlord sent me some mail from Portland, consisting of three pieces of junk mail (Medicare, Carol, the sky will fall if you don't take action!) and two pieces from the IRS addressed to my mother. The IRS letters were duplicates sent a month apart. For some reason, the good people at the IRS thought they needed to tell me twice that they needed more time to figure out how to respond to the letter I sent them in January. Looking back at my files, I believe the letter I sent them was to inform them of her death. Maybe their computers are locked up trying to parse the impossible task of communicating with a dead person. I don't know what their issue is. I communicate with my mother all the time. I told her the IRS is after her. She didn't seem to care, not enough to respond, anyway.

Now the next thing pulling at me is the horrible prospect of upgrading to Windows 11. I still remember the trauma of upgrading to Windows 10. I had to get help from some professionals, who augmented my old computer so it could receive the gift of new operating system software. This time, Windows Update informed me my computer would not be able to handle an upgrade to Windows 11. They weren't particularly gentle about giving me the news. They have no idea the pain they are potentially unleashing in my technological life. I will dig in my heels for as long as I can. Eventually I will need to get a new computer. It seems like I get one problem ironed out and a new wrinkle appears. I really hate to iron.

Last week I took my car in to a repair shop recommended to me by a Tucson friend I trust. The mechanics at this shop are really nice, which somehow made it hurt a little less when they handed me the estimate. I won't tell you how much I paid to get the fuel injectors cleaned out. Apparently this car was ridden hard and put away wet, not once, but many times. I should have sold it to the Dodge dealer when they offered to buy it from me, but then I would be carless. I've been carless before. I can do it, but it seriously dents my self-esteem. It's one thing to say I'm poor by choice, you know, that old saying about we are volunteers, not victims. After a while, though, it's hard to stave off the waves of self-pity.

All that to say, I'm all in on this car. It's a touchy, sensitive beast, but it's my touchy, sensitive beast. I'll keep throwing money at it and when the money is gone, I'll park it somewhere and live in it. No worries. That was always going to be my backup plan if things here in Tucson go gunnysack. I'm the queen of contingency plans.

In other good news, I'm getting ready to publish my second novel. Too bad I can't tell you what it is, this being an anonymous blog and all. In other bad news, I saw my second adult-sized cockroach in my apartment today. Welcome to Tucson. In other bad news, the vertigo continues to pound my head into a sloshy pulp. In other good news, Medicare!

After a while, it's obvious nothing is all good or all bad. It's just life, dragging me into the future, one day at a time.