July 7th, 2008
Is it appropriate to mourn one’s vehicle? After months of foot-dragging and avoidance I finally sold my Audi TT this morning to a nice, recently-retired couple from the center of the state.
As they live a couple of hundred miles away, they had not laid eyes on the car itself, nor met us. Yet they were willing to commit to the decision based on my avowals of the TT’s condition.
They drove into Portland this morning, a special trip to pick up the car. When I met them at the bank, the gentleman was already there, waving a receipt.
“I already paid [the loan] off for you,” he was saying, before he even shook my hand. That is a beautiful trust. Some might say it’s foolish–to pay six (err) five figures off without having met the selling party nor even having seen or examined the merchandise–but I find it sweet and uplifting. It meshed well with my own commercial desires. I wish them the best and feel personally accountable that the car behave as well as I know it can.
Godspeed.
Tags: audi, car, LibraryThing Tuesday Thingers, sad
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June 9th, 2008
*shamelessly lifted from LibraryThing forums*
I don’t think I’m a particularly weep-weep reader. I don’t have a sense of the last time I cried while reading. Not that I don’t get involved. I just haven’t been of the waterworks persuasion of late.
What books have made you softly (or hackingly) weep? The one that sticks out in my head is Plainsong by Kent Haruf. At the time (2001?) it seemed vastly profound; now I wonder if it was a bit saccharine–I mean, heck, it was converted into a made-for-TV movie. But it was the right thing at the right time.
I also remember getting choked up reading the climax of Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon on the MAX coming into Goose Hollow when I was still in college.
Seems like there should be more. I read maniacally and I’m not made of stone.
Tags: cry, sad
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May 29th, 2008
Some people feel it necessary to brush their hair a hundred strokes before bed. Or lock the deadbolt three times. Or only eat eggs in multiples of two so as not to leave an odd number in the carton. My particular OCD tendencies are mostly centered around my books. My dream life has a lot of bookcases, maps and dimly-lit studies in it. I spend a lot of time reorganizing my books. And then there’s the categorization of them.
Which means it’s not uncommon for me to reconsider my favorite books. And as such it’s not surprising that I suddenly realized that of the 32 books I have rated as 5 stars (the highest) in my library, 20 of them were read when I was either traveling (8) or depressed/intense (12). Did I really pick better books then or was my heart open to what they had to tell me?
Almost 100% of the books that I can think of that I have an honest emotional reaction to when I think of them were read when I myself was an emotional event horizon. It almost makes me want to be sad again. Oh wait. No.
Tags: emotional, sad, traveling
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May 16th, 2008
Last night, I was sitting with a group of friends (full disclosure: watching Lost) and there was some wine. Also good cheese and a cornucopia of rice crackers–like four years’ supply of the little cheesy kind–but that’s a story for another day.
Somehow the topic of “grimmest book ever” came up. Sean asserted that the grimmest book he’d ever read was The Kite Runner. I tend to disagree, but realize that I can’t come up with a good alternative for the prize.
The first book that leaps to my mind is Blindness by Jose Saramago. It involves humans getting eaten by dogs. Squalor and rape. Et cetera. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is not exactly sweetness and light, either. But both of those books are so good that they have their own sort of redemption.
Come to think of it, I had some potent misery and quivering nights reading Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. In fact, I’m going to stop here: that was the harshest book I read in the past year or so. Oh, wait, Andres Dubus’ House of Sand and Fog. That, too. But different.
You?
Tags: Books, depressing, reading, sad
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April 3rd, 2008
I found out today that a) someone I care about very much has cancer and b) the girlfriend of someone I care deeply for has cancer.
Seriously. WTF. That’s terrible.
Godspeed, everyone.
Tags: cancer, sad, sick
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July 7th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Six figures? Really?
July 7th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Durrr. Updated. I cannot count.
July 7th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
I can definitely relate to your experience. Sad to be giving up a dream car, happy that is going to good people, wistful whenever you see another of its ilk zoom by.
July 7th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Condolences. I cried, er, sobbed when I was finally forced to sell datsy. Good on ye.
July 9th, 2008 at 6:41 am
I tend to spend 3 figures on rust-buckets which may or may not make it from the sellers house to mine. Therefore I very rarely feel the need to mourn the loss of a car which has just fallen to pieces on the motorway leaving me standing in the rain for an hour waiting for an RAC truck to arrive.
July 10th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
I did the same thing recently, I sold my BMW 750il that I had for the last ten years, basically since I moved here (sniff). Anyway, I used the vflyer site you turned us onto back when you were selling your house. It generated all the html/css for craigslist which is pretty sweet. It sold surprisingly fast too, especially for a V12 given today’s fuel prices. 11 city, 17 highway. (not proud of that either). Thanks for the vflyer tip. http://jimh999.vflyer.com/4/index.html