Attack Of The Snow Rollers

There are times I wonder if the entire universe is, in fact, a simulation around me, if I am the only truly real being in it. If everything that supposedly "happens" in this world is simply for the purpose of eliciting a particular response for me, if I am a brain in a jar somewhere or a trillion lines of code executing in a wetware computer of what I think of as the distant future but, in truth, would be the actual present.

How else to explain the fact that, the moment I was injured, the world around me came to a halt, and the snow rollers began to arrive? There are dozens of perfect ones in my neighborhood. Other places have them, but ours are the best and so they are photographed all day by random people, mostly men, in random cars. I can see them from where I sit during the days in my family room. It seems highly unlikely that they should exist at all, much less in these quantities.

The polar vortex arrived when I was injured. All around me, the world slowed to a halt. Pipes froze at hospitals, planes were grounded, work and school were canceled. It's been zero degrees for days now and the machines are protesting. The garbage can screams as I wheel it out. The engine in my rental car moans as I crank it. Out in public, I hear cars go by making eerie keening sounds. The abilities of oils and greases and certain Teflon-impregnated bearing surfaces have been exceeded, the spec sheets are insufficient for conditions.

Nobody is doing anything. Restaurants are closing early, they are understaffed, the already abysmal Burger King in my neighborhood has become a roulette wheel of mismade meal choices. I'm sorry, Sir, you asked for a Whopper and we gave you a chicken sandwich. But if it's any consolation, we charged you for chicken nuggets. Please accept this and pull forward. There are snow rollers in the field across the street, if you need consolation.

I keep expecting people to steal my neighborhood's snow rollers. Not that you could do anything with them, except take them home and put them in your own front yard. Perhaps I should take the rollers from out front near the entrance and put them in my own yard, to keep them safe. But part of the mystery is the fact that they have no traces around them, usually.

At least a week more of this weather, a week more of the grinding starter, the absurd effort required to go anywhere, the additional and thoroughly unwanted snow. I have some paperwork from my employer. I'm told that I need to fax it immediately lest I lose my chance at returning to my job. I confessed via email that I had literally no idea how to go about faxing something to them. Any place I could imagine that would have a fax would probably be a longer drive than the office.

"You can't come into the office," was the response. So tomorrow perhaps I'll drive past the office and look for fax machines. Or --- imagine it! --- I could put on my mechanic's coveralls and walk into the office, wearing a hat.

"I'm from the fax machine," I'd say, "and these are the documents." Certainly I've social-engineered myself into less likely situations. I'm from the fax machine. What could you say to that? Fax machines are becoming rarer and eventually there will only be one left.

My cane is coming on Friday. It's a brilliant cane. You will all see it. My fear is that by the time it arrives I'll have hyper-rehabilitated myself past the need for it. My second fear is that I will need it until the day I die.

Tomorrow I need to ship a guitar to a friend. It's for his birthday. I hope he enjoys it and that he finds the music in it that I never did. I bought it on a whim, a long time ago, guitar-shopping with someone I loved for the very first time. But once I had it at home I didn't want to play it. The same thing, I think, could be said about my relationship with that person. The difference is that guitars have no feelings and they can be laid aside without causing permanent damage. If I had a time machine, I'd have never asked for her trust or her love. But if I had a time machine, what I would really do is go back and fix this car accident, or go farther back and fix something else. Or go all the way back to my childhood and set my life in a different direction. Go into the machine that has me at its center and set the simulation backwards, to a different choice point, to 1982, to 1984, to 1986.

You would find me today, a radiation oncologist perhaps, or a retired-at-forty fellow from Microsoft. A gentle soul, living on the coast, somewhere near Monterey. No broken bones, no broken lives, no victims, no tragedies. I'd be interested in new restaurants and international travel. I'd be gently tanned and I would maintain low body fat thanks to a strict macrobiotic diet. My primary concern would be my investments and my charitable work. Tonight, I'd take a brief look at the LA Times website and see a story about snow rollers. Something happening in Ohio, where the "polar vortex" has frozen and stopped the world. How interesting. Another world. And so lucky, that I escaped it.