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Zen and the Art of Cringing at the Washee Quickee

It’s a beautiful, clear autumnal morning, a morning so bright with sunlight and particulate-free air that I can immediately spot one of the horrors of Fall…my filthy automobile.

Yep, the ol’ Sable is solid white, meaning that if I wear my contact lens and gaze objectively at the car’s metal surface, I come to realize that nobody else knows that this vehicle is white. Layers of grime and dust create a new color that is not only indescribable but probably unpatentable.

Every few years I treat myself to a Cleansing of the Station Wagon—about the same length of time it takes to rev up enough gumption to cross the street in front of my shop and get a shoe shine at the Goodyear Shoe Hospital.

So, I gird my courage and head for the Washee Quickee Car Wash, hoping that the scrawny, grouchy old man isn’t on duty like last time.

Jumpstarting my Time Machine I quickly adjust the year-o-meter and glide back to the experience of my last visit to Washee Quickee, which has been in business since the 1950′s. I can only recall being repelled by Mr. Grouchy, who, while dabbing at spots here and there on the car, lets out a constant stream of profanity and scatalogical references that might insult a millionaire rapper. He seems mad, angry, mean-spirited and ready to strangle anybody who gets close, so I slink away and hide at the front office till the car is paroled back into my care.

This guy failed to show up for the Washee Quickee public relations seminar.

Anyhow, being basically an optimist, today I decide to risk a car wash, hoping that the facility has changed hands or that there’s been some kind of turnover in personnel.

There’s no simple way to determine the System at Washee Quickee on the first visit—you just have to figure it out. The entrance is complicated and umarked and the staff rolls its collective eyes when you don’t know the rules.

“Turn off the engine! Roll up the windows! Put it in neutral. Leave the keys! Get out!”

These are the barked instructions, only they roll rapidly off the tongue and overlap each other so that you have to have them repeated once or twice to make sure you are following the rules. When you turn your car over to a stranger for 15 minutes, you want to get it back—you don’t want to lose it on a technicality.

Even though the quality of gruffness is still at its usual high level, at least the grouchy old man is nowhere to be seen, so you count your blessings and abandon your vehicle.

Up front, in the moldy-fragranced waiting area, there’s a TV blaring, a couple of men are staring at the tube, where people are shouting profanities and punching each other—stand-ins for the grouchy old man.

I look at the clerk window and see that no-one is on duty. I peer around to find somebody who will take my money. A woman is sitting in the back of the office with her back to me, gazing at a computer screen. I wait a minute or two, give up, and head for a chair, at which point the woman yells, “This is where you pay!” Like my elementary school teachers, she has rear-view vision.

I pay and plop myself down with a copy of a three-year-old ESPN magazine. The employees wandering in and out are cordial, as are the waiting customers. I can get through this!

Out front of Washee Quickee, once my car is delivered in whitened condition, I notice a long streak of grime that hasn’t been touched. The employee quickly makes it disappear, explaining, “Them guys (the ones within the car wash) don’t notice nothin’.”

I thank him profusely and tip him, grateful for having survived another trip to the nether world of car washery.

“Your car is clean!” Liz notices with delight that night. She is relieved that her embarrassment level will be reduced a few points next time she rides with me.

And, for a few days, I drive around feeling like I’ve just had a great shoe shine

© 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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The autumn light of the October country sculpts everything in this sunny room and re-creates it in its own image.

Right now, I am at the Ruffner Mountain Nature Center meeting room, immersed in the tiny vibrant world of poetry and poets.

Those who are present reflect the autumn light with their smiles. We’re all here because we want to be here. We’re all here because They don’t know we’re here, They don’t know we’re having a good time, and what They don’t know won’t allow Them to get at us.

Poet Jerri Beck is reading from her new collection TRIBAL MARKINGS, and we the present-and-accounted-for are sharing her creative outpouring and imagining our own lives contrasted to hers.

It occurs to me that in my innards I am the sum total of just Three Things: the writings of others, my own writings, and the experiences I survive. When you find me not experiencing or reading or writing, you can be sure that I am There, not Here.

Bits and pieces of Wisdom and Warning and Wishing float through the imagination and excitedly raise their hands to get attention. Just now, a quote that has resided within for decades waves at me:

“In the city of the insane, the sane are kept behind bars.” 

–Erich Fromm

Being an emotive scholar-observer (perhaps known today as merely a Nerd), it is easy to accept such thoughts as normal. While others are nestled all snug in their beds with visions of smartphones and football and chainsaw films and recreational pharmaceuticals prancing through their heads, my own skull experiences philosophical ponderings and why-nots and what-ifs and how-could-theys and why-is-this’s.

Since it’s the only way to be Me that I know about, I can only hope that it is the Right Way—the Right Way being the way that doesn’t hurt anybody, causes the least amount of collateral damage, makes things easier to endure. On a good day that’s where I am.

So…when I notice that the society around me seems insane at times, those are the times that I search for the sane folks, the folks who aren’t doing crazy or acting crazy or being crazy.

That explains today, the day I get to spend an hour with poets—some of whom don’t know they are poets, others of whom practice poetry and love it. An afternoon like this lends its own comfort to me—the comfort that assures me that, just for a moment, the insane world can have its way without even missing me. If there’s no roll call, I can get away with being peaceful, pleasant, creative, gentle, standing next to other people who just for a moment are also being peaceful, pleasant, creative, gentle.

The autumn light of this October country doesn’t notice us at all. It just is.

And since the insane generally don’t pay much attention to invisible beings like us, we usually get away with being sane. Don’t tell them about us. They’ll try to recruit us with a sales pitch but they’ll be thinking all the time about the bars we could be behind

© 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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.

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The Woman of a Certain Age walks calmly and deliberately down the middle of 17th Street South. She stares straight ahead and straight through the Man with the Big Old Station Wagon, who is exiting his vehicle carrying in one hand a large plastic drink cup.

The Man with the Big Old Station Wagon first wonders whether the Woman of a Certain Age is someone he knows, or someone he should know, but he cannot tell. Then, he wonders whether she is approaching him to panhandle, which would not be an uncommon act in these here parts these days.

The closer she gets, the more it becomes apparent that she is indeed not someone he knows, that she is also not preparing to panhandle him. Not knowing what else to do, and fearing she might stop and capture his time through conversation, he pretends not to notice her, closes the door and walks around the car away from her, as if he never noted her presence.

The Woman of a Certain Age walks on by, still in the center of the street, and he guesses that perhaps she’s in the center of the street in order to avoid the sidewalk potholes and cracks that abound on Southside Birmingham. Or maybe she feels safer in the street, since this places some distance between her and strangers and yapping dogs and unwanted familiarities. He would understand fully, were this the case.

He is relieved because this is his day off. During the week, a happy prisoner of his own shop, he is obliged to face and deal with any and all manner of humanity, much as a bartender, trapped behind a bar, listens to an incredible array of stories and demands and jokes and rants. He enjoys all those stories and demands and jokes and rants because they are sure material for the writings and commentaries he produces regularly for his own entertainment and for his followers. But, on his day off, he finds relief and solace in dealing solely with people of his own choosing. During the week, there is no choice. Furthermore, his day off is the day he recovers and rejuvenates from the energy it takes to deal with all those stories and demands and jokes and rants.

He silently thanks the Woman of a Certain Age for passing on by. Should she enter his shop next week, he will give her his full attention, he will be happy to listen to all those stories and demands and jokes and rants, because that is what good store-owners should do.

The Man in the Big Old Station Wagon walks up the stairs of his front porch, unlocks the front door, closes it behind him, and breathes more easily, anticipating an afternoon of peace and quiet.

He goes upstairs, activates the computer, and writes this love note to you

© 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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