A Karmic Lychee @ rah-kun.net

Several months ago, I concocted a thought concerning my car. Several of you out there know my car fairly well, so can imagine what kind of “thinking” I was engaging in. For those of you who don’t know my car – well, here’s a quick… laundry list.

• The brakes never worked well, always loose and spongy.
• Said brakes would commonly cease to work every x or so times I used them. So, once out of every, say 340 or, perhaps, 12 times I braked, the pedal would fly to the floor and my car would do little more than giggle in its own, “I’m going to kill you” sort of way.
• Said brakes were involved with a minor collision for with a fire truck. Minor for the car and the truck, ironically lifesaving for myself and the (at the time) driver.
• The above is peppered with a number of random things, such as a rear passenger door falling apart randomly in the parking lot of an organic grocery store, the window of that same door ceasing to work of its own accord moments after it had started raining (it’s now propped up by a bit of wood), and the lovely “suicide door” that is not only bare metal on the inside, but once flew open on a busy road, leaving Will (not wearing his seatbelt, like a genius) nearly dangling out of my car).

That’s the nutshell.

Anyways, back to my thought from a month or two ago. I’ve had this car since my senior year of high school. In that time (evinced by the above), we’ve endured a great deal together. Physical trials, that sort of thing. I’ve had strange, shamanistic dreams involving my car juxaposed in slightly out of context, Jungian-symbolic forms. Once I found out I was going to China for 7.5 months and, thereafter, resolved that, upon my eventual return to the US, it would be to a suitably metropolitan area that would otherwise negate the need for a car, I thought:

“How fitting would it be for my car to absolutely burst into flames or fall apart the moment I leave it.” As if my life were a Miyazaki movie.

Between then and now, my car snapped its serpentine belt while I was up in Vermont – this highlighted that previous thought of a syncronic car-death with a bright pink permanent marker in my head. A scary thought at the time, a month before my scheduled departure and in the middle of my employment as a substitute teacher. Building up a savings was an absolute prerequisite for traveling abroad, and my car was the prerequisite to employment.

(those of you who know southern Connecticut can all join me in a collective sigh as we bemoan the complete lack of anything resembling public transportation in that section of the state)

So, inflicting what will I had on the fabric of spacetime and causality, I willed that my car last me until the day I left for Chicago.

I leave for Chicago tomorrow. My sister, having returned home shortly this week with a cracked radiator, decided to take my car up to New Paltz in lieu of her own. Knowing how shitty my brakes are, she decided to tag along with me on a few errands in order to drive home with me in the car with her.

She was less than a minute into driving before the brake-line burst, every press of the pedal spraying a stream of brake fluid all over the ground under the car. Right now, my car sits in repose on the driveway, gradually leaking out its vital fluid.

So yeah – don’t tempt the Fates. As it turns out, they’re pretty bored.