Misery and me
“He sang again, and although he alone sang, two voices could be heard. He stopped and said: ‘Is it you, Misery, who are singing with me?’ Misery answered: ‘Aye, master, I am singing with you.’ ‘Well, Misery, let us walk together.’ ‘We shall, master. I will never desert you now.’”
-Misery from the Aleksandr Afanas’ev collection of Russian Fairy Tales
I swore I wasn’t going to say a word about my latest car troubles, not one word, not one single word, especially since it was supposed to be a quick, easy fix today.
Only it wasn’t. I was reminded of the story of Misery and the poor peasant, during a wave of self-pity as I stood on the berm of I-395 in the rain and wind at 10 p.m. trying to stretch wet shredded plastic over a wet door-frame and secure it with wet tape while my shoes and car filled with wet water.
Wasn’t 2010 was supposed to be the year that everything came easy, I thought? What happened to finding a cute boy and a dream job and having grand adventures and being so effortlessly fantastic, like I planned back in January?
I was practically begging for things to be extraordinary. But when you go choosing your own adventure, you only get to pick the way things start out and not how they end up, right?
I take a little comfort in how things turned out for the miserable peasant. Misery tricks him out of all his money, his belongings and even the clothes on his back. But he eventually banishes the evil spirit with a little good ol’ fashioned trickery and the tale, appropriately, ends with:
“Misery drowned, and the merchant lived again as of old.”
When misery’s got all your stuff, you’ve got to use the only thing you’ve got left– ingenuity. In my case, that meant tying the strips of wet duct tape into make-shift bungee cords and attaching the plastic to the door handle like a tarp. And yelling, “Oh yeah, is that the worst you’ve got?” into the wind.
Take it all, misery. Take my window and my iPod and my car and my wallet and my bicycle and my innocent ideas about the world being good. Enjoy it now, ’cause it won’t save you from sleepin’ with the fishes.
“You can have my car,
I’ve got legs for running.
You can have my guitar,
I’ve got breath for humming.You can have my television,
As long as I’ve got lips for kissing you.”-Boots Boy by Langhorne Slim
LANGHORNE SLIM “Nobody but You” (dublab VisionVersion) from dublab on Vimeo.
