The alternator is dead, Jim

Call it karma, poetic justice, the Vulcan nerve pinch… Whatever it is, it’s out there, Scully.

I mean that force in the universe (no, not The Force) that sneaks up when you start to feel a little cocky and beats you over the head with your own powerlessness.

Just when the job and living arrangements seem to fall into place, suddenly my car’s alternator must explode in the middle of the intersection of 15th and H streets. During the Sunday evening D.C. traffic hustle. With all my worldly possessions crammed in the back.

Last night, the window got stuck down when the last of the juice slurped out of the battery and I was partially blocking a lane so I was stuck, getting increasingly cold and irate, while the boorish urbanites honked, cursed and threw ungentlemanly hand gestures.

You see, a stricken expression and four-way blinkers are an obvious sign of a Klingon ruse and not of a damsel in distress. The final indignation was ripping my coat, chasing down the tow truck when it finally showed two hours later, only to blow past me up 15th street.

Like I always say, some days you’re the Death Star. And some days you’re the planet of Alderaan…

But the tow truck driver was gregarious and the cab was cozy, so I was cheered by the time my friends Rob and Sheri rescued me from the Jeep dealership in Arlington and medicated me with a turkey reuben and the new Star Trek movie… which should explain the flair-up of nerdery.

I took a Sci Fi lit class in college where we discussed often how futuristic works follow the conventional hero’s journey cycle, as written about by mythologist Joseph Campbell in Hero with a Thousand Faces. They’re like the classics, but with cool phasers and timewarps.

Right now, I’m in the first part of the hero’s cycle, called to cross the threshold of my world and seek adventure in another, facing tests and hardships along the way. Campbell describes this stage:

“The hero is covertly aided by the advice, amulets, and secret agents of the supernatural helper whom he met before his entrance into this region. Or it may be that he here discovers for the first time that there is a benign power everywhere supporting him in his superhuman passage. The original departure into the land of trials represented only the beginning of the long and really perilous path of initiatory conquests and moments of illumination.”

It’s my inclination to play the antihero, the Han Solo, in my own adventures. I’m the pragmatic, loner type who prefers to mire through problems on my own rather than ask for help, even when it’s offered. I hate causing inconvenience, putting people out, feeling beholden.

It’s all I’ve been doing lately– begging friends for couches and rides and job leads. But, even in my bad luck, I feel really lucky to have so many people giving me a hero’s welcome.

This adventure is off to a rocky start, but with collision comes transformation. So I’m taking a tip from my friends in the future: “Go boldly…”

This entry was posted on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 1:51 pm and is filed under wisdom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.