HUMAN WRECKAGE

Invisible Loads

Funny. You don’t realize what weighs you down until it doesn’t weigh on you any longer. This is a very different feeling from coming to finally appreciate someone or something only after they’ve been irretrievably lost. New knowledge is always enlightening, but in the latter case you’re reminded that some things are best left undiscovered. Relief always beats regret.

I often stand and stare out the window of our back door. If I’m not there, I’m likely standing on our front porch smoking a cigarette. From time to time Ann will come up behind me, place a hand between my shoulder blades and her other on my chest and then abruptly adjust my posture. One of those invisible loads again.

Late last fall, during a fortuitous break in the weather, we had our furnace replaced. The essential consumer durable had aged long beyond its limited warranty. It didn’t run on natural gas so much as repairs and prayers. Has it always shaken the Crooked 9 as it gamely tries to fire itself up? Has it always rattled like that? Eventually you come around to the conclusion that your furnace shouldn’t sound like a V2 rocket launch. With our new unit quietly humming along through Edmonton’s current covid-extreme cold snap, I now realize how much our old one oppressed me with worry. At the time, that was just the way things were, I didn’t want to know any better. I denied mounting evidence of a potential catastrophic problem although Ann and I bought a space heater just in case because we had learned the hard way that we were ill-equipped to cope with our previous catastrophic (and expensive) problem. These days I only think about our new furnace on the first of the month when it’s time to change the filter.

Another one of my psychic weights has been alleviated too. I’ve ceased fretting about the neighbouring elephant thrashing about south of 49. The politics of the United States of America are off my radar. That only took five years. Another country’s business isn’t mine, but things went a little haywire next door. Now what? Oh, the aggravating assaults of the weekly Economist, the morning Globe and Mail and the blue screen news apps. I’m sure neither Ann nor I fully grasped how deeply der Trumpenfuhrer’s tentacles of illiterate tyranny had invaded the Crooked 9. What now? The gauche, odious vulgarian has since gone the way of his commuter airline, his university, his vodka and his frozen meat. My only worry now (and I can easily manage this one) is if that orange buffoon goes to jail, is he too obese to safely hang himself without damaging his cell's gilded fixtures? I’d like to know as it’d be another load off my mind.             

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of musings since 2013. My novella Of Course You Did is coming in 2021. Sign up for e-mail alerts from the Crooked 9, use that thingy on the right. The second wave along with its more virulent cousin is here and so is winter; you’ll need a distraction.