Car Repair Purgatory

I got to the dealership ten minutes early.  None of the mechanics, valets, and managers wore masks, so I sat on an outside bench in the shade.  I read a mystery while waiting for an oil change.  After I got tired of the plot twists, I took a walk and passed men wearing green vests and facemasks. They sprayed the weeds and bushes in front of the dealership. I went beyond the Wawa and took a cut-off to a medical building lot.  A man wearing a grimy coat sat on the ground near a rusty grocery cart.  A cluster of palms hid him from view from the road.  He said hello as I passed by.  “Morning,” I replied. 

I returned to the dealership, took a spot on a different bench, and tried to read.  I felt a sharp pinch on my calf, looked down, and flicked a green bug off my leg.  A red welt swelled on my forearm.  Chiggers?  The sprayers must have missed a spot.  I scampered to another bench.

After I saw several cars drive off, I went inside to find Drew, my repair manager.  Before I opened my mouth he said, “I just checked on your car.  There are two or three ahead of you.”  I answered, “It’s been an hour and a half.”

I took a walk in the opposite direction.  When I returned hot and sweaty, I found all benches occupied.

I finished the book while standing in a shadow alongside the showroom wall.  The heat had risen into the nineties.  I felt lightheaded.  A shaded bench opened, so I sat and slumped.  At the three-hour mark, a message appeared on my phone.  My car was ready.  I went inside to pay, but they wrote off the charge.  Drew said, “You shouldn’t have to wait that long…We had a couple mechanics call in sick…Covid.”

I felt punchy on the drive home.  I needed lunch and a cool drink.  When I pulled into my driveway, I checked the oil life reading.  It hadn’t changed to 100% as expected.  It was as if nothing had been done.

I told Judy not to talk to me.  After I cooled down, I explained what had happened.  Then I called the repair department.  A receptionist said, “They didn’t reset it?!  Go to “settings” on the main screen.  Follow the prompts.  If you can’t change it, bring it in.”  “Will I have to wait?” I whined.  “No,” she said, “We’ll take care of it right away.”

The car interior had heated up to about 100 degrees.  I opened two doors for a cross-breeze and followed the receptionist’s directions. But “settings” didn’t offer the right options.  I fished the manual out of the glove compartment and found different instructions.  After two tries, I reset the oil life reading.

After recovering from heat exhaustion, I considered raking leaves and mowing the lawn.  Judy said, “No!”  I took a nap instead.

Long Waits

Judy and I had an outdoor, masked get-together with longtime friends on Monday. The last time we’d seen them in the flesh was in October 2020. Coronavirus spikes and other complications had postponed other attempts to meet. We caught up on family news and planned an outing to Leu Gardens.

On Tuesday, a repairman from our internet service visited to root out the cause of a weeklong outage. He couldn’t find anything wrong with our router or phone line. He discovered that we hadn’t been included in a restart after a system wide shut down. He used an app on his phone to reconnect us. He wore a mask, answered questions patiently, and told us that long waits and problems communicating with customer service were the new norm.

I took Judy to a doctor’s appointment on Thursday and parked in a place I hoped would put distance between me and a spot where coronavirus test takers gather outside a pharmacy. (I stay in the car to avoid prolonged waiting room exposure.)

On that day, groups of three, five, and seven milled around outside a pharmacy during my forty-minute wait. I had my window down to keep the temperature comfortable and kept hearing two women speak a language that sounded like French. A few more arrived, and they too conversed in “French”. After a while, I decided that Portuguese was the likelier language with its soft consonants and bouncy rhythms. But I still couldn’t figure out why everyone waiting there spoke it. Orlando doesn’t have many transplants from Brazil or Portugal. I discussed the mystery with Judy after she returned, and she proposed that the test takers had stopped on their way to the airport. That made sense for two reasons: the pharmacy’s location is twenty minutes from OIA; some countries require tests before take-offs during the recent spike in Omicron cases.

Another workman arrived at our house early Friday morning. Our air conditioner had persisted for three months in dripping water from the coils onto the filter. Three previous service visits had failed to solve the problem. The tech diagnosed dirty coils. Cleaning them required a removal of the unit from our hall closet.

I offered him a mask before he entered. He grumped that wearing one would make his job harder, but I cut him off by saying, “I wear a mask when I teach.” Brian grumped some more, refused the mask still held in my hand, and said, “I’ve got my own.” Three hours later, he had checked gas pressures, cut through a metal pipe with an acetylene torch, wrestled coils out of a tight space, thoroughly hosed them down in our driveway, wrestled the coils back, reattached everything, and stuck his head in a space below the unit as it ran. No water dripped on his forehead or the filter. Sweet success. Gladness and light radiated from him as I signed the invoice and paid.

But Brian had frequently vented frustrations whenever the job gave him unexpected difficulties. His running commentary reminded me of working beside my father, so I understood his need to work through problems and relieve pressure by vocalizing. And his language showed a lot more restraint than Dad’s. But I had to take a break from him about halfway through the job. I went outside, took off my mask, stood at the curb watching a breeze sift through the neighbor’s trees, and sipped coffee from a mug.

While Waiting

Edinburgh and Lakemont, colored pencil, 6×4″

I took Judy to a doctor’s appointment a few weeks back. The facility required masks and didn’t allow visitors to wait inside. I brought along a sketchbook and some colored pencils. I looked around the parking lot for a subject and chose a view of a road snaking toward an intersection. I outlined with lightly applied red pencil, fused some shapes together. I returned to the car and began to play with color.

A light breeze blew and kept me cool as I worked. Judy returned more quickly than I had expected, so I didn’t finish the sketch. I worked on it off and on for a week and noticed halfway through that the colors had gotten too bright. I began to mute colors in some areas by adding complementary colors. The drawing remained rather cheery, however, probably reflecting the sense of ease felt while working outdoors.

I haven’t worked directly from a landscape for several months due to allergies. Pollen levels have remained high even after several recent rains. I look forward to getting out again soon.

It’s Getting Kind of Weird

Last week I watched the news and followed the ongoing disaster in Texas.  I didn’t really know what it felt like to be there, but I’ve been through several hurricanes since I moved to Orlando in 1991.  Last year a major storm ran up the length of the east coast and sent tropical storm force winds our way.  A tree branch fell on our power line.  I removed it while the wind still gusted in the 50s as the line bent down several feet and looked ready to break.  I didn’t want my wife to suffer through several powerless days.

Now I’m waking up early to look at the latest forecasts for Irma.  Yesterday the spaghetti models tracked the hurricane to the northwest edge of Cuba.  After that the paths diverged, but a lot of them sent the storm straight up the peninsula.  My stomach flipped.  We’re probably going to get hit.  My daughter and her husband live in Miami, and they’re in the target zone too.

This morning I checked again and saw no improvement.  I knew that drifts and shifts can still occur in Irma’s path, but my sense of dread deepened.  I flipped to other sites and turned on the local news, but nothing gave me any real reassurance.  I gave up when I heard a garbage truck lumbering around a curve in our neighborhood.  I had been lazy the night before–the kitchen bin was still full.

I hauled a can to the curb and saw butterflies flitting around flowering bushes in our front yard.  Two grasshoppers mated in the driveway.  Nature seemed intent on going about its business regardless of impending doom.

I decided to do the same.  I washed dishes, got breakfast and read from Terry Pratchett’s, Hogfather.  Then I went outside and raked magnolia seed pods and twigs off the front lawn.  In back I picked up dead branches fallen near the east fence.  I climbed on the roof and pull more branches off the roof.  I came inside, took a shower, and got lunch ready.  All fairly normal activities for a Tuesday morning.

My daughter called at noon, and we cancelled her upcoming visit.  She told me about her hurricane preparations in Miami, and we wished each other good luck.  I passed the phone to my wife and went about my business.  Time to run errands and get ready to teach a class tonight.  Such an average day.

Publix was a mixed bag.  A man in the parking lot gave me his empty cart and said, “Better take it, man.  There’s none left in the store.”  The aisles were crowded, and I grew impatient when shoppers parked their carts, stood next to them in the middle, and blocked traffic while they contemplated the selection of can goods left on the shelves. Some were so intent on studying their lists that near collisions were a constant threat.  Two woman slowly pushed their carts side by side in the main aisle leading to the cash registers.  They engaged in a leisurely conversation as I silently walked behind them, but one finally stopped and stood aside to let me by.  She said sarcastically, “There, now you can pass me.”  And when I did with some difficulty (her cart still partially blocked my way) she called after me, “Have a nice day!”  A Publix worker stood with her arms crossed in front of the egg shelves.  She surveyed the crowds of customers weaving from aisle to aisle with a look of grim disdain.  I gingerly picked a carton off the shelf behind her as I wasn’t sure if she was there to guard them.  Another employee came up and said, “There was this lady who filled her cart with water, and then another one next to her got the bright idea and started to do the same…”

The weatherman in the latest forecast hopes that a cold front will arrive in time to push Irma off the east coast.  His expression looks a bit desperate, and I take no comfort.

But for now my kitchen garden is blooming, the butterflies are darting around the blue porter weed in the backyard, the bee balm attracts bees near my front porch, and the grasshoppers are mating.  Judy is listening to an audio book, and I’m writing this post.  A relatively ordinary day.

But it’s getting kind of weird.

We See What We Expect to See

Portrait Bust

When I first learned to drive I was worried that I might hit a pedestrian. My neighborhood had narrow, car lined streets, and I anticipated a moment when a little kid might run out between two parked cars. A few years went by without an accident or incident, and I began to relax. One night I drove home from work at about two in the morning after a busy, hectic shift at Godfather’s Pizza. I was aware that the bar patrons were headed home after closing time and kept an eye out for drunks along the curb. I saw a hulking form in dim light in the distance that looked like a large man standing by the road. I slowed down when I approached him, and the half-lit shape turned out to be a mail box.

Years later, I attended my nephew’s wedding near Cleveland. My daughter Annie and son Alan came along for the trip. My daughter has similar hair and skin color to her mother, but is 33 years younger. On two occasions Annie was mistakenly greeted as my wife by relatives who saw her standing near me. My uncle was about three feet away when he asked her about her teaching (my wife was a professor). My daughter, of course, was mortified to be misidentified as my spouse, but that wasn’t the end of it. At the wedding she wore a dress that bloused out at the waist.  That inspired a drunk woman at the reception to spread a pregnancy rumor. The tipsy matron’s family had had its share of forced marriages over the years.  The inebriate was on the look out for distended bellies among the young women at the gathering, and she saw what she expected to see.

I’ve spent years teaching beginning drawing to students with little or no background in fine art. Most are graphic communications majors and prefer their computers to a stick of charcoal. I teach them the basics of perspective as best I can, and have said “Parallel lines appear to converge as they move away from you,” on countless occasions. I explain that the side edges of a table appear to converge so that the back edge looks smaller than the front edge, that an illusion of depth can be created by following this rule when drawing the table on a two dimensional piece of paper. But many students insist on drawing the side edges so that the back edge of the table is exactly the same width as the front edge. They know conceptually that the front and back measure the same and draw them accordingly. When I follow up and show them that they’ve lost the illusion of depth, these students often look at me in disbelief. Some challenge me. One women told me that I must see things differently than she did.

And perhaps I do. Observing colors, tones and lines in still lives, landscapes, portraits and figures has taught me to doubt my assumptions. What I think I see and what is actually there are two separate things. Painting and drawing realistically can be an investigation into What Is. As an oil progresses in several layers I begin to notice colors I hadn’t seen at the beginning and details that appear to emerge from nowhere. I get the impression, after working on a subject for an extended period of time, that the visual world is nearly infinite, that more and more can be observed if I am willing to put in the time.

But I am mainly aware of the open possibilities of experience when I am painting. I still make assumptions in social situations about another person’s character and intentions based on my past experience. I interpret behavior and assign motives without waiting for an individual to fully reveal their qualities. I do this out of self-protection and a need to prepare myself for all eventualities. But this narrows my experience down to seeing what I expect to see.

And there have been times when my expectations have been fulfilled and my suspicions have been confirmed. But at others I’ve been surprised by unforeseen depths in a person I had assumed was shallow, by kindness hidden beneath a rough exterior, and by playfulness in a man who appeared to have no humor and imagination.

I believe that the world can open up and reveal immense vistas if we simply wait, watch, and observe without judgment. Then a girl with a bloused out dress isn’t pregnant, a mailbox is simply a mailbox, and the back edge of a table appears to be smaller than the front edge. And the student who appears to be fairly thick says something insightful and intelligent. And the light on a curve of my wife’s temple reveals her beauty to me once more. And the neighbor who appears to be a heartless and cold reveals his gentle nature when talking to his dog. There’s more out there to be heard, seen, felt than we can ever fully take in, more abundance than we can ever appreciate.

I have a cold this morning that has been lingering for several days. My joints ache a bit and my head feels like it has been stuffed with cotton. But the sun is bright today and the trees outside my window are swaying gently in a breeze. The red pick-up truck parked on Chilean Dr. adds an exclamation point to the surrounding green. A man in a white hoody walks past with quick, determined steps as two garbage men clad in fluorescent green safety vests collect the garbage at the end of the driveway. A car passes by in a blur and I briefly see a sixty year old man with a fringe of white hair speed past in a silver sedan.

The world looks strangely beautiful, even though I’ve seen this view before, and I feel a sense of happiness until my nose begins to run and a cough begins to collect at the back of my throat. I get trapped in the mental loop of wishing that I felt better. But then I listen to my exhalation of disgust, to the click of the keys on my laptop, to my wife stirring in the living room and to the garbage truck rumbling in the distance. And in this particular moment it feels good to be alive.