On Problems (July 18th, 2023)
As becomes the focus of any grim day (some painfully more so than others), I had a great deal of errands to do, and yet finished it (as one would finish a bottle of fine liquor—dazed and breathless at its mysterious and yet completely obvious disappearance) having not completed a single one. Instead, I was presented with an equal number of “problems,” those being of course the alternative type of errand that inserts itself into one’s day quite unexpectedly, and with a bit of fanfare that we are all fortunately or unfortunately—depending on one's disposition towards these sorts of ordeals, along with one’s resting heart rate I suppose—accustomed to hearing from time to time.
A “problem” of this type only masquerades as such with such a devious title because of a certain reluctance of all things to accept their origins in the mind, instead creating for itself such high and solid partitions with titles such as “problem” or “distraction.” And so with a quick turn of the chin and a peripheral gaze, what once was an objective or necessary task disguises itself as a roadblock, one with edges as blurry as a Magic-eye book (although my lazy right eye made sure that I was never privy to such indelible secrets) but nevertheless as convincing as the real thing.
Still these “problems” are composed of two chief components, firstly, their unexpectedness, and secondly, as they are often wont to do, their tendency to stir deep within us a sense of fear and anxiety.
For me, this anxiety began the moment I arose from bed, at a much later hour and substantially (or, noticeably, rather, as one can only help but notice the substance of one’s own mind) groggier than usual. This was, if we are counting, my first problem of the day, as it was both unexpected and quite anxiety provoking (although I’m not sure how one is to anticipate the quality of their consciousness before waking, other than to assume it will be somewhat similar to that of when we fall asleep. It is a greater surprise to me, however, that the odd quality of dreams doesn’t usually interfere much with our waking state). Luckily for me, and most other Americans, caffeinated coffee exists in ample enough quantities to relegate the word ‘groggy’ to nothing more than a mere artifact of modern life.
Today I was supposed to set off a camping trip to either Main or Pennsylvania, the indecision being one of the most exciting aspects of the whole excursion until the moment I climb into my Jeep, open the state atlas—which still functions as a map, as opposed to GPS, which takes on more so the character of a vending machine than anything else, shuttling you around via mechanical arm as if you were a candy bar—and decide upon my route, figuring that I will end up wherever the road is the most direct, and traverses through the most green-shaded area, much as a small snake would do through the forest floor. Unfortunately for me (already and unknowingly so we have inserted the verbiage of our disguised culprit, sneaking her way around my memory silently and quickly) my plans took an immediate turn, as the driver’s seat was soaking wet. It must have rained overnight. As this was not the first time I had encountered this issue, I knew it needed to be fixed before I set out. The sunroof was leaky, and running my hand along the inside rim of the window (a very enjoyable addition to the vehicle, I may add, but in times like these, a no doubt superfluous one as well) and the whole strip of fabric was wet. The “problem” here, as it were, was not so much unexpected as it was unwelcome—I had put off fixing this broken seal for a while now, and whether it is due to my laziness or high sufferance (the car had, after leaking through every successive rainstorm for the past who-knows-how-long, acquired an off-putting smell of mildew and wet dog) it felt, for the aforementioned reason, necessary to fix immediately.
So I set about fixing it, procured myself a rag and some WD40, and stood on the dashboard of the car, trying not to accidentally kick myself into neutral, and with my torsos out the roof, began to clean the edges, taking special attention for any cracks or holes through which rainwater could have been leaking. Somewhere in the middle of my cleaning however, the task seemed to me less so of a problem and more so of a project—it became simply the current object of my attention, and ceasing to either be unexpected or unpleasant, began to give up, at first quite subtly, and then all at once, its disguise to me. I was all of a sudden no longer “burdened” by this leaky window, and insofar as my itinerary was concerned, I had forgotten about my camping trip altogether, or had at least resigned it to a lesser importance for now.
When I was finished, having not found any defects and hoping that my quick cleaning would somehow do the trick, it was too late to set out; I had not even begun packing and the sky was once again growing dark and heavy with rain—instead of worrying about my trip, however, I instead was hoping my sunroof would hold. My leaky “problem” had knocked me completely off center.
Without my trip ahead of me, I was free to work on a story I had started a few days ago. Keeping my eyes on the clouds and my car (which sat lonely on the street like a lobotomized rat waiting patiently and dumbly for the next phase of the scientist’s experiment) from my bedroom window, set down to write. This was my new day’s “intention,” and anything that sought to capture my attention would have to wait.
Fortunately for my Burmese cat Jojo, she has quite a way with words, and at this stage in her life (twelve years my younger in cat years, forty years my senior in human years) she is more than accustomed to not waiting for anyone, and getting what she wants. This, as it turns out, is more often than not a pestering combination. With her human-like yell, so began the second “road-block” of my day. It would have been as simple as feeding her, but when she got down to eating, I noticed that her ear infection, which has plagued her for the past two months or so, and which was largely unresponsive to the course of antibiotics which the veterinarian had prescribed her (a course, of which if you know anything about giving cats medication, was obviously neither tolerated by Jojo nor my forearms) had gotten acutely worse it seemed, and since having run out of medicine, has taken on the seriousness and character of a final illness. Every so often it needs cleaning, as there is a thick layer of rancid buildup, and although she appreciates a wet, soapy rag in her ear about as much as anyone, quite desperately needed it at this moment. It’s true I could have put it off, but as a living creature, more specifically one who has been my companion for approximately half of my time on this earth, she deserved more attention than the blank sheet of paper lying limply on my desk.
I will spare you the details (which, to un-spare you a bit, included a fair amount of yelling and crying. Although there was no scratching of any kind—Jojo is too old and distinguished for that), but I cleaned her ear, and put her back in her bed, which happens also to be the center of our family couch—she commandeered it long ago—and sat back down at my desk. By then of course it had begun raining, the serious, white kind of rain that falls in thick and continuous waves, and my mind became “preoccupied” by Jojo’s ear, and how this sickness would likely be her last. (I was also thinking about my sunroof and the efficiency of my cleaning job, but to a much lesser extent). My day now revolved around this one, sad, reality, and as the rain grew in intensity, so too did this line of thought.
Here I’d like to distinguish a separate kind of “problem,” one that is neither unexpected nor anxiety inducing. These sorts of problems are obvious to all who witness them. They are not sudden in appearance, but rather slow and gradual; they occupy space in one’s soul in proportion to the total amount of time one has to think for himself. The more space it can be afforded, the larger it grows. These problems may be referred to instead as crises or predicaments, and given enough space and time to gather steam, can foray into the diagnosable realm of depression and generalized anxiety. There is no stirring of something deeper, rather the predicament becomes itself the stirring and the deep, and for some can neither be un-stirred nor floated out of. They cannot, by definition, be unexpected, because they do not arise out of something else, having taken the character of one’s entire sense of experience and for which all other thoughts or sensations arise within. Jojo’s illness, and the questions of my own mortality that naturally followed, as such that enter into the mind of every human sooner or later, I would describe as exactly this sort of predicament.
There I sat, trying to write about life and thinking about death, when my dad called me on the phone, asking what should do about a fishhook lodged through this hand. At this point in the day I had resigned all prospects of having a “plan,” and told him promptly what to do. I was now committed to the idea of going along with whatever appeared to me, no matter my plan or type of “distraction.” I gave up on writing my story, and began to write this short letter instead. Suddenly the rain stopped as if it too had gotten a phone call (maybe from mother nature).
Shortly after my father returned home, I cleaned and dressed his wound, and sat down next to Jojo, who was purring away, deeply unaware of the multitude of definitions my day had been concerned with, and instead busy with the mysterious and far-off substance of a cat’s dreams.
Later I realized that I had forgotten all about my own mortality, Jojo’s ear, my car, or even my camping trip. These things had competed for my attention in the only way that things can (and I use the term “things” very broadly here), and one after another had pulled me “off course” to somewhere un-centered and shapeless, without a floor or ceiling, and yet all the more comfortable. There only exists the encountering of these things, and yet they are best encountered through an abandonment of one’s sense of direction. Inasmuch as they even exist, only then can one face (or at all hope to solve, even) one’s “problems.”
I went outside that night after remembering my leaky sunroof, and although the sky had cleared up and I could see the full of the deep blue night sky through the closed window, the seats were soaked through and through. I smiled, and the next day brought her in to the mechanic.