Z’s words were ringing in my head: advice on two subjects.
- Better take your passport, and
- Just drop the bike off at the shop and have them fix it for you.
But I didn’t want to admit I didn’t really know where my passport was exactly (yes, bad news when exiting the premises quickly: synthetic thyroid hormone, toothbrush, cat, family photo album– god almighty where is my passport?). He would certainly be disappointed, but then, reassured that I was rather consistently, characteristically, dependably absent-minded. Count on me.
So I moved to the bike thing, which included the balancing of home repair v. professional servicing, the ponderous math required to estimate the value of my time, and the compound math of having to figure the value of conducting the ponderous math. In the meantime I picked up a paperback at the store for a dollar, which struck me as so fair, so reasonable, so packed with human kindness that I wanted it somehow to appear in the equation, despite it’s complete unrelation. Math is ready for the introduction of proximal events, surely. Math is bigger than I think, right?
Dark times, yet the book is a dollar.
I looked for a long time at the bike while holding the book.
Then I put the bike upside down on the floor, just in case I wanted to work on it.
It’s not just math it’s space and time. How exactly, if I drive the bike to the store, do I get the bike home. By driving? How will I know whether it’s a good repair if I don’t immediately launch into the waters, get distracted by a new sound around my feet, veer into traffic and get clipped by a passing automobile (they are horrified!), stare at the xray with the physician seven hours later and realize now, no really, everything, and I mean everything from the knee down, has changed. I will have lost my innocence.
So I start looking for my passport. It’s not in the shrine. It’s likely in the top drawer of the file cabinet, but what would I have filed it under? Pointless Software Registration? A very thick folder but it doesn’t hold the passport. I set down near the bike and start to, get this, polish the chrome of the wheel rim. Is this cleaning before the maid arrives? And why =wouldn’t= I put the passport under Pointless Software Registration. Isn’t that =really= what passports are all about?
Days go by (endlessly into the future). I find it under Agreements: Infidelity, which is filed directly behind Agreements: Fidelity. Alphabetical, upon reflection. I set the document on the eticket next to the card I used to purchase the fare, nudging each piece until they are all equidistant from eachother.
Z uncharacteristically leaves two messages from his landing pad in NY. I am instructed twice to purchase the day’s paper so as to capture the Barry Bonds special edition, which his NY friend cannot obtain from his vantage point in Stuyvesant Town. The paper has 4″ headlines about another matter altogether, calling to me with such shrill intensity that I close my eyes before reaching in the box. Surely my issue comes with an angry coiled snake.
Not so. I nudge it so that it is equidistant from the other papers.
The bike is a sculpture now.
I think I’ll read.