"No good deed goes unpunished"

After dropping you off, I get lost going the wrong way on Post Rd. I have to
circle around that area another time, which takes another 10 minutes. My
power steering decides to cut out again and I almost get into a huge
accident with at least two other cars. Then I take the wrong 270 exit (did
you know that 270 splits into all four directions in that area?) and I have
to circle all the way back through Dublin another time. That is when I see
the BMW place and call you.

Sorry to hear that.

To add a little more perspective, I feel rotten for dropping you off in the
wrong place. I know you asked me to, but you know me, I'm rather anal about
stuff like that. So I am feeling rotten and I make another wrong turn, but
this one is easier to correct. The air turns a deep royal blue at this
point, and my throat still hurts from all of the shouting. To make a long
story short, I show up to wushu with 30 minutes left to go in practice, but
it is ok. I still get to work on the things I need to, and I do not miss
anything crucial, so there is no harm done there.

Don't feel bad about it at all, I enjoyed the walk. I walked down a Perimeter to Venture road and passed by the Emerald City. There was a long line of trees and from a two dimensional standpoint they were a real life manifestation of Mondrian's early charcoal drawings. I saw a field of geese and my only regret was that I did not have a camera to capture their rhythmic array across the field of snow, a smooth expanse and my fingers tingled with the same reaction I have to a brand new sheaf of Arches print paper (again, from a 2d standpoint, the snow's texture had the same appearance) and they were scattered across the surface, mobile charcoal crumbs gliding about, leaving no trail so that every consecutive moment seemed a completely renewed image...). The sky was a shade I remember mixing out of gouache to use as a wash for a bunny-in-a-box painting, which amused me immensely because I was starting to see the sky fold itself into a box with a comic cartoon rabbit's head, paws and feet jutting out of it.

When you called me I was staring at the cars move in the horizon line beyond a large white expanse and from my standpoint they became multicolored dotted lines, the inversion of a very old cathode ray television set in the "blip" moment it turns off, and after you see a screen full of static (charged with the scrambled chaos of a uncountable unnameable indecipherable images, a decayed digital vesion of a boxed-out section of a trampled snowy sidewalk from a bird's eye view). I was staring out the window in the police car. The snow had crusted into a rippling array on the window and I was thinking simultaneously of Ann Hamilton's Venice Biennale installation and the warm gooey texture of the image seen through the window echoed the policeman's jovial voice. The contrast between the window's frozen sensation and my visual perception telling me it is a perfectly balanced warmth somehow was a reflection of my impassive glasses conversing with the policeman's honest eyes. So I was staring ouside imagining myself to be in Professor Hamilton's installation, on a smaller scale.

He had a cubic videocamera with a 6-button array on it that made it appear a die (he turns the object around and I find myself staring at a videocamera lens that constituted the die's "ONE" face). Suddenly I heard a curmudgeonly straining grunt and felt a massive, hauntingly opaque monochrome block being laboriously pushed towards a cliff edge: I struggled to block out the memory of Tony Smith's Die sculpture, my optimism endowing the Die with a heavier and heavier mass to stall its momentum because the for-bidding minimalist form hovered on the brink of smashing down upon on the delicate fancy of a die who had absentmindedly buttoned only the bottom row of its double-breasted coat (think WilyCoyote's 100 pound ACME iron block, or, as Professor Melville described it, a hulking sweaty man standing too close for your comfort as he gawks at you inside a crowded rush hour subway). Art In 1900's Chapter ___ image strapped a rocket to the grouch's back and down came the Die, I cringed regretting the mass I had added to the Die, because while I rationalized to myself that the weight wouldn't speed its fall, the utter inevitability of a much more painful impact felt unforgiveable... Luckily for me, the policeman's voice drew me back into reality and the little fancy beep-beeped with a lopsided grin harmonizing with the outside traffic, and instantaneously morphed into a different idea: The story of two dots staring at each other across an unbreachable white expanse, and only at the moment near the edge, approximating the landscape in the last chapter of If On A Winter's Night A Traveler (Calvino), they draw ever so slightly closer together, but whether or not they actually reach each other is left to the expanse over the edge of the die, the face I cannot see.

On the way back out to my
car, I slip in slush and pull a muscle near my groin. I have to spend ten
minutes trying to get my car started. - My car is now un-drivable. It won't
idle. - To get it out of the parking place I have to put it in park to start
it then gun the gas hard while it's still in park. I then have to hold down
the break simultaneously with the gas and switch into reverse, release the
break, and sling shot out of the space almost straining my back trying to
move that broken steering wheel quickly with no fluid. These two Chinese
girls parked next to me are watching me the whole time and I am so
embarassed. I finally get my car out, but it dies again in the middle of
the street.

I imagined you struggling with the car and the shudder-jolt it gave each time it turned off seemed, excuse me for the bathroom humor here, but I imagined it expelling a large fart and the frame cringing from the backlash. Just think of your car blasting gas. And as if on cue, a very gassy trumpet tune by Gerry Mulligan just came onto my headphones.

Somehow I managed to get to a gas station, get gas, do my little trick to
get it started and leave to drop off my movie. I should just go home, but I
am determined to get everything done so I stop at North Campus Video. I
take the movie in and when I get back out, the car is even harder to start.
I have to do the same trick, but it is even harder to get out of this space,
and my car dies everytime I have to slow down to keep from sliding into
someone elses car. On the way back to my house, it dies fifteen times (and
that is no exaggeration).


Does it die the same way each time?

Dear Sir,

Our team of expert car-psychology experts have come to the conclusion that your car is struggling with a massive identity crisis with disturbing hints of histrionic personality disorder. We are starting to deduce that your vehicle has a deeply repressed desire to be a video game hero. Its repeated failures indicate that the subject is approximating (to its mechanized capacity), the art of repeatedly dying and resurrecting itself. We suspect that this desire has its origins in a history of mishandling from previous owners. Our data shows that such subjects are naturally driven towards becoming inordinately influenced by NASCAR driving simulations, which, naturally, is a gateway towards virtual-reality fantasy games.
We recommend that you seek immediate help for your car. Left untreated for too long, this problem may amplify itself into a distorted, two-dimensional Pixellated Self-Perception, which we call "d-PSP."

Sincerely yours,

TVS
(The Vehicle Shrink)

I can't believe I actually get it home, but I do. Afterwards, I proceed to
call my dad, who gives me some advice and quotes my Uncle, who is fond of
saying: "No good deed goes unpunished." I cannot help but laugh out loud.
Sure, it's bleak, but this morning it rings true.



P.S. Happy birthday, Ms. Toni Morrison