Riding home from campus, I spy a car stopped up ahead at Mulberry and Howes. Deciding not to wait - traffic backed up from the train - they drive on through the red light. One block later, I come to a stop, and watch the car behind me cruise on through the red, nonchalantly, not hurriedly.
What is wrong with these people?
The same thing that is wrong with me. Impatience. It is a material thing, like the world around me, ubiquitous and coursing through veins, now hindering, now motivating, now hindering. Not having ridden my bike this week, I opt again for the veggie bus. I think the fuel filter or the veggie oil filter needs changing. When attempting to run on Waste Veggie Oil, the engine begins to conk out like a fat crawdad in its boiling pot after about 5 minutes. The pressure gage on the internal oil filter is nowhere near red/yellow, but I've heard they are notorious for lying. We are driving in the infancy of the greasel engine years, of veggie and diesel hybridization, so this is forgivable. So the Veggie Bus, or as Mike the Mechanic calls it, the Danny Bus, is currently just a Diesel Bus. 10 mi/gal of either WVO or diesel petrol, weighing in at 3 tons. 1984 manufacture with a 2002 engine transplant, and it is often the interface between old and new, or veggie and diesel components, where breakdown occurs. It has required time with a true grease monkey every year, usually in binges. I have burned incense in her in an attempt to bless-a-da-bus, but her irritability goes unassuaged. Real, earnest prayer has not been answered, or else it has. Impatience is a virtue that has indeed taken me so far, but I have found myself going down the wrong path time enough. There's that feeling of being tired after hiking back from the summit, legs tired enough that they fall effortlessly into a barely controlled cantor, hop-skipping over some of the rocks, and falling when I apparently needed to fall.
The bus is a going concern whose internal maintenance is indeed as foggy as that which I myself may require. I waylay those needs for a better day, which brings consequences. No time like the present, so clearly foretold in the past. I want to drive up the canyon a bit, peddle the road's edge, dip my heals in the Holy Poudre, then glide back down and start her up again. There were plenty of times when the engine ran like butter, and I never question what makes it so.
It finally occurred to me that the problem lies within, where, according to Cat Stevens, the answer also lies. I merely needed to adjust my attitude to see what may well be fate. The bus is for sale, but I will continue to admire and be vexed by her, fix what I can and be cajoled by her, all, this time, with patience. Tremulous wisps of impatience simply reflect an impatience about something larger, something uncontrollable, I remind myself. I need perhaps a simpler machine to bring about a simpler mindset, else the other way around. I need the free form of peddling to prune the excess offshoots, unproductive and self-serving. I will take in the impatience of others mindfully, and find new paths, or use the frustration productively. I will learn to weld. If I can't ever sell her, if she is not meant to be passed on to the next, then maybe I can weld a VW bus to the top of her, away on some mountain plot, then slowly, slowly build my home around her. She will occupy my earthen living room space, a nice conversation piece, and privately I can look upon her and continue to ponder the inner trappings. I will bring her flowers, paste novel beer labels to her walls after carefully steaming them off the bottles, and perhaps even brew beer on one of her propane burners, her 55 gallon veggie tank now a fine fermenter. In the winter I will kill the heat, save for her diesel-drip marine heater. I'll make fajitas by candelabra - REAL fajitas - drink a bottle of tart Chilean red to her marvelous complexity and temperament, and read William Blake, aloud, or else Wendell Berry.
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