Parked

Chicago, IL

In the past few days I’ve unpacked a thousand boxes and have just as many to go. My new place is coming together. I moved a week before going to Minneapolis to pick up my car and hoped to be settled into my apartment by the time I hit the road so I’d have one less thing on my mind. That’s looking less and less likely. I need to take care of some routine car maintenance before I go: I’ll have the air conditioner check out. Can’t remember if we converted the valves from R12 to 134 for modern coolant charging. Apparently the molecule size is different so to charge the system may require new hoses or the new coolant leaks out. I’d rather not poison the world any more than necessary (a little poison is inevitable…there’s always a little bad sprinkled in with every good).

At noon I take Cherry out to run some errands and she stalls on the way to the home improvement center. In the middle of the intersection. I was warned before I moved here by the locals that Chicago drivers cut you no slack, so I decide to retune the carburetor. Maybe the fuel mixture is too thin. My new window regulator will arrive tomorrow so I expect that by Saturday Cherry will be trip-worthy.

Digging through my boxes (I used to fantasize about tossing all my worldly possessions into my old blue Escort and moving anywhere I felt like on moment’s notice, now I’d need a school bus) I’m a completely present witness to mix of feelings: twitters of sentimentality as I unpack long lost treasures combine with the frustration of not being able to find a clean bowl or a box cutter; thoughts flow into “I didn’t notice this closet light was broken.” incorporating the familiar with the new is…I guess it’s new and familiar all at once. Being in Minneapolis felt that way after the spectacle of the I-35 West bridge collapse: a newly destroyed site in a familiar backdrop. Visiting dad as he gets ready to sell the house Karen and he have been in for twenty years I notice new details in that familiar old house with a buyer’s eye that passed my awareness for decades. Madison has new bus shelters and route numbers, a massive new art gallery and theater; but the same Espresso Royale coffee shops and the same gritty old Union pub.

Change doesn’t happen faster or slower or more profoundly just because I’m not paying attention. But I notice the huge revisions like new buildings or the little details like new sandwich shop lettering. They disrupt my attention. Change itself doesn’t much care to advertise its progress to me: change just is. The universe keeps evolving regardless of my opinion of it. What takes some time to catch up is my recollection (and my appreciation) of it. And maybe my assessment of all the novelty? After all, the familiar seemed so…familiar. That’s the mythic aspect of nostalgia: as I remember, things were better before. Always true, whenever stated.

Change, particularly the continuous march of progress and innovation, is a funny creature. It doesn’t seem all that concerned our opinion of it. Not, at least, our collective opinion. Maybe that’s because progress and innovation consist not of middle-road activities, but of odd experiments that move in fit-and-start and stand as outliers to normal, everyday routines. It may be that public opinion constrains or influences aspects of the process but does not determine the outcome. A mad scientist (note the pejorative label “mad” meaning evil) wants to clone a cow or a dog or a human baby, she will figure out how. A land developer gets half off on farm country along a commuter train corridor, he makes himself a town. Russians send sukhoi fighters to the British border and diplomatic tensions mount. It’s the buzz of all these events, these exceptional events, which when taken together cumulate into and editorial notion of “newsworthy” or pass below the radar of scrutiny and awareness. Then I find myself surprised by science, industry, or politics (or by grandpa’s newfound interest in skydiving, whatever) because that was the last thing I was expecting. “Now as I recall,…”

I wonder how I ever got it into my head that things in the world should conform to my expectations of them.

Late in the afternoon I get a text message from Jean apologizing for losing her temper. It's thoughtful of her to say so. I text her back there are no hard feelings, which is true. I’m still not sure how to interact without creating unnecessary drama. And maybe I can’t. Maybe our relationship is destined to be rife with unnecessary drama.

Next stop: Social Engineering