photo by LaTur
Thanks to Kim for passing on and thanks to OP for permission to post this brilliance here. Ed. Note: I also love how it concludes with ‘Pardon the brevity. Written on my iPhone’.
“Don’t call me Ishmael. I have never wanted to go to sea, to face the elemental nature of this world that we vainly seek to diminish with that mass delusion we call “civilization.” Yet, foolish though may be to embrace the fantasy that humanity has its own realm over and apart from the primordial chaos, I choose to stay on this side of the shore. And while one may be able to envision such a division between the wild and the orderly, I now know that it is truly blind to imagine it possible to eschew any true danger, limiting my adventures to commenting on a contentious listserv debates on bicycle usage or property development. (At least, in theory. Having never actually hit send, I do imagine I possess the fortitude to share my thoughtful, balanced, compassionate, and logically airtight exposition of some excellent theories on green transportation and parking space policies.)
And yet, dear reader, the brutal vicissitudes of our terrestrial mistress made themselves known in my French drain this week, allowing the contents of the tidal basin admittance up through the once-formidable steel grate on my patio, in a perverse disregard of gravity, decency, and my personal feelings in the subject.
Without my consent, dear reader, I was thrust from the relative comfort of the classic romance Ever After (starring an effervescent Drew Barrymore and brilliant Angelica Houston), and into a depth of water I knew at once to be potentially deadly.
You may wonder how such knowledge of drowning was so close at hand for one so avoidant of peril. The fact was written plainly before me—a warning against “as little as three inches of water”. But instead of these sage words being scrawled by divine hand, as they were for King Belshazzar on that fateful day the Lord sent a message of doom for Babylon, my prophecy was on the side of a bucket from Ace Hardware, which I had received at Glover Park day some years prior, and had providentially kept for just this moment of need. I tore off the lid of the bucket to begin my grim watery work, and was met with the stench of death. A portent of things to come? No! Forgotten birdseed, years-rotted. Abundance wasted, never to be enjoyed. Another sign of the disordered relation of nature and man, which now mocked me as the water rose ever-higher and the rain beat down in sheets.
I was not able to despair, however, being met with my stalwart spouse and two girls, hale and hearty and carrying pots and a large trash can. Together we faced the deluge and the bubbling brine. Beating it back to oblivion, we bailed until our backs ached and our bellies growled. Bucket after bucket was brought to the back alley and dumped.
Lightning roared all around, and above the din my daughter began to sing, belting a shanty as we toiled. Despite all my hopes and delusions, the sea had come to me. Water all around, unconstrained, as if we were malapropos set down in Creation on the Second Day.
But no Jobish complaint escaped my lips. Only a hearty song as we strove. To by surprise, I was no aquatic Sisyphus, toiling to no end, but perhaps slightly possessed by the spirit of Odysseus, ensorcelled by the siren call of the wild. Was I mad? Had disaster taken my senses as swiftly as it had carried off my doormat? We laughed and sang as we fought. No Ishmael, but Ahab was I! For me, the beast was the sea, and I sought to conquer it.
Fool I began, and fool I ended, as the rain subsided and the drain was no longer overwhelmed. We cheered exhausted, imagining that we had pushed back the tide, saying, “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.” Celebrating and soaked, we found ourselves ensconced once again in our cinematic escape.
Yet, as the days passed, even the shadow of a cloud brought my sore muscles to quaking, remembering the weight of so many drops accumulated. So now do I seek out a way to fortify myself against future attack, ironically by ensuring that there is an aperture on my property large and cleared enough for proper drainage.
And so, dear reader, I appeal to you as I once appealed to the Almighty, seeking the name of a quality drain and gutter expert. If you have such a one, I entreat you to connect me to them at your convenience. Pity a one such as I, who was food to try to escape nature’s wrath, and then was fool enough to try to defeat it.
-Pardon the brevity. Written on my iPhone.”