December 23, 2021

The AT&T workman’s meter said the cable break is twenty feet from the inbox, putting it in the attic. Workman says, “I don’t go into attics.” We’ll see how this comes out. 

Tightness in the chest. . . betting this day ends in the long-awaited heart attack. 

Cleaning lady and technician arrive at the same time. Chat with cleaning lady. She observes that it’s hard to take on new hires these days. I ask her about the petite young woman whom I’ve seen here several time. “Oh, that’s my daughter. Five weeks ago she was in a horrible traffic accident right over on Merrimon. Lady pulls out of Ingles while on her cell phone. My daughter was five months pregnant. She lost the baby. She was on her way to work. Now every time she walks into a house, she remembers, so–.”

Technician says, “I’ll have to replace that whole friggin’ line.” He’s very grumpy. I can’t get past my own rage to feel for his dilemma much below the surface. He crawled into the attic after he said he wouldn’t. He called the original installer to bitch at him for leading the line into the attic. Neither of us at the time of installation could think of an alternative. He blamed squirrels for all six of my failures. “They rub the cable with soy oil and that really attracts the squirrels,” says he. My responses– stop doing that, rub it with something nasty afterward–seem so obvious it would be rude actually to say. You think in this technical age you won’t have to go through this, that there’s always a quick solution. I’m not good with the repetitious nuisance. I said “Can you do without me?” He said, “Yeah, we have so much stuff already I won’t take any of yours.” I drove off to the first overlook toward Pisgah and hiked slightly north on the MTS trail. I found a log to sit on, and there discussed with the Lord my realization that I have not been as kind as I could have been, throughout my life. I have fought for principles, for my own autonomy, for time, against stupidity, but so seldom tempered those battles with mercy–or even proportion– that I had to sit in the wilderness and think about it for a while. When I got back the Internet was on.