A) My bike's "tune-up" is still not complete. They've had it since Thursday. I've been inventing versions of what might be taking so long. These are some of my favorites:
- It died in the bike shop's care. Its jankiness was terminal, and it passed on. They hoped I'd forget about it, but I called today, and now they have until tomorrow to find another bike exactly like mine and hope I won't notice. BIKE SHOP GUYS, I WILL TOTALLY NOTICE. The mostly non-functional right shifter's numbering is worn away in a very specific fashion, right at the point where the shifter, as I discovered, basically becomes a chain-disengaging sponge. Bike-shop-guys will only see a reason to put it in a woodchipper. I see distinguishing scars.
- It's actually sentient and has been carefully self-destructing in small, mostly innocuous ways so that I would let it go. It has left the bike shop and found a metal-smelting shop. It has lowered itself slowly into a pool of molten metal because it's the only way to destroy itself before it can be used as a weapon against its own fight for good.
- They took the bike to a ranch where it could hobble about with rusted Huffys and the bikes that had never been put together properly by department store summer temps. But misfit bike had learned to love its new home, and now the misfit bike, and its new friends, are slowly making their way back across the prairie to return home.
- Misfit bike hates all of these movies and is insulted by this nonsense and it refuses to come home ever.
Or, more likely, none of the bike shop guys (because they are all guys, and they're all about twenty-four, it seems, with the exception of the owner) can bring himself to touch the thing long enough to fix it.
B) I said this was a series with elegiac flavor. Instead of just inventing farewells and returns for my misfit bicycle, I also got to say goodbye to a really vexing plot hole in the novel. I wrote about it on my Tumblr, here. (I've been hanging out on Tumblr tonight because Roxane Gay rocks my world.) It was also a reconnection with some things I know about my writing process, and knowing things--what works and what doesn't and how to effectively manage that--is the much longer, possibly less ridiculous post I'm working on.
Aaah. Your bike scenarios. <3
ReplyDeleteWith regards to "C" over on your Tumblr: THAT. I have been fighting that for a couple of weeks. (It's always been true, but, luckily, I am not always miserable. Though verklempt is probably more accurate just now.) I go back and forth on whether this is bull-shit excuse-making or legitimate understanding of how I work. I don't suppose you have a magic fix?
Dude, don't encourage those behaviors.
ReplyDeleteRe: C--Next post is kind of about that. But the short version for me is to stop doing things I know make me miserable. The first step is to write. The writing is the single largest factor in my day in terms of me determining my worth as a human being (this appears to be a daily thing and clearly, not the best of all possible worlds, but it is apparently part of my make-up and I'm done fighting it). If not-writing = me feeling miserable and useless, clearly, I must write. There also other things (working out) that factor in on the daily basis, and a lot of self-care aspects that should be evident to someone with this many degrees, but are clearly revelations every year or so (eating actual food, not procrastinating on various things, etc.). Trying to preempt the misery where possible. So...no magic. It's all hard.