Engines/Environment

I took this picture in Seoul, South Korea a few years ago. It's a roof hanging over the courtyard of a shopping mall. Tonight, it captures the pervasive, seemingly inescapable presence of rain that is wearying me. Moisture hangs in the air, thick like a veil I can't ever completely brush aside.

Entropy came to visit us this weekend, moving toward us through the rain. I didn't see the horses for managing wreckage.

One of our cars died. The '91 Pathfinder so beloved to H.G. died on the eve of his 60th birthday. He's 60. How? We've been together 20 years, but I never dreamed one day he'd be 60. "Gold bullet, silver bullet," our mechanic said. "Which do you want?" I thought of a car I'd seen in London long years ago, way before it showed up in the States. Ah, well... After taking a few hours for the shock to settle, I found something to borrow so H.G. could use my decaying Pathfinder.

In other words.

A trend soon emerged. Our newish coffee maker went, followed moments later by my hated (despised, really) cell phone. We can always live without the cell phone -- oh, I prefer to, but coffee supplies core nutrients to our armature. Like junkies, we drove in a jittery panic to replace the coffee maker. Resentfully, I bought the cheapest cell phone I could find, reminding myself that really, the only reason I have it is so H.G. and I can talk to each other when he steps out of his office to take the requisite lunch break. Or when I call him to tell him I'll be home from the barn by, oh, 7:30. I'm always wrong. I always take longer with the horses than I mean to. I guess I take as long with them as I need to. They supply core nutrients to me.

I saw this picture in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago, maybe in an archived review of Warhorse, a play that premiered in London a while ago to great critical acclaim. I think I see it inside out. It reminds me of how I puzzle over horses, try to figure them out, try to imagine what it must be to be one of them. But in the end, they are a thing that drives me, claims me. Their engineering keeps me going when things are breaking.