2007porscheboxster

have to keep reminding myself that a car payment isn’t going to kill me.

It’s the economy that will kill me. I mean, maybe it wasn’t such a grand idea to buy a porsche at the tale end of 2011. But I wanted to feel like I had some control over the uncontrollable. The world is rumored to end. Iran will have nuclear weapons, the Euro will tank, Canada and Mexico will ignore the euro tanked and will want to share currency, someone will get elected to white house and it might change everything or nothing…someday soon radioactive waste from Japan will show up on my beach, and then you know there is always the earthquake… It did seem like the worst time in the world to buy a porsche. But, isn’t it this kind of irrational thinking what makes us american?  Yes, I can afford it.  Today I can afford it. But tomorrow, who knows what we’ll be able to afford tomorrow.  Will there be a tomorrow? Is this car my commitment to a better tomorrow? Then why am I so fearful?

So, I get in my Porsche and try and move past fear…no, it doesn’t really work. I need a porsche to drive my soul around and obviously spiritual sides don’t need things. Or do they? Can we pretend they do?  Can I pretend when things get too much, when the deadlines change for no reason, when irrational people ask me to deliver irrational things, when people say this is happening because its all my fault, can’t I pretend, that thing deep within me that is the keeper of the light…can’t I put that light in a spiritual porsche boxster where the mirrors adjust in reverse and bose stereo blocks out the noise. Can’t I?

You bet I can. Zoom zoom world.

We went for a drive yesterday on Highway One.

We saw the dolphins from the car.

Or maybe they saw us.

Writing is taking a walk. No, it’s taking a stroll when you want to run. It’s a 26 mile marathon that you’re forbidden to run. It takes a long time to warm up your thoughts. To weave them. To destroy them. To kill them. And then to bring them back to life. It takes all day for one hour. An entire week for one good idea. It doesn’t work on a cold start. Procrastination is writing. Writing bad is procrastination. Writing good is procrastination. It doesn’t go away. There is no finish line. It is a marathon in the shape of a circle. One of Dante’s rings without the fire, but never with the right word, or idea, or need. A circle, a loop through the mental sludge. The pressure of time creating the diamond thought but of varying degrees.

Driving the porsche is not writing. Driving the porsche is freedom. Driving the porsche is sometimes fear.

But it is not writing. It is not writing.

And that’s why I drive.

why add to the stress of it all

But there we were…looking at the first car I test drove…way back in the early fall.  It was still at the dealership

Because it sucked.

No..No…It was still there because it was FAR TOO OVERPRICED

God, but perfect in everyway.

In fact, I never test drove it that first fall weekend. I had the Salesaman drive it with me in the passenger seat. I thought if I drove it, I would automatically head it right for a tree. Revealing once and for all that I was a fraud. I don’t deserve the dream.

That was the only picture in my head. One of complete and utter destruction. Not of the car, but of me. Of the image of me up to that point. I belong in rusty jeeps. Take advantage of me business world, really all I’m worth is a rag top.

But, Here I was, in my DREAM CAR…and I wouldn’t dare drive it. Why wake the dream?

We have a choice to make our dreams come true and here I was shirking away. It made me think about myself. It made me want to run. It was too much. The deer in the headlights…was in the car.  And it was me. And I couldn’t breathe.

One of my former bosses owns a Maserati and a Ferrari.  I used to have to start these cars in the summer while he was away.  If  you didn’t let them run for 30 minutes a week the battery would die. Actually, the battery usually did die on the Ferrari. (battery tenders and all.) anyway, after about a month, the ferrari would die,  that car, wants to go. Of course, I hated even opening the door, sitting in the seat and starting the car.  I thought if I didn’t break it, it was going to break me. I thought somehow I was going to leave my poverty shadow on the car and somehow bring him bad luck. I swear to God. Sitting in the car brought on so many irrational and thoughtless thoughts.  I actually hated it. It was like walking into a huge liability where no matter what I would do, I would leave my mark. The real me would be revealed.

And it wasn’t even mine. I was simply the hired help.

The thing is the car has less than a 1000 miles on it and it’s a 2005. I now know this is very bad for the car. He actually has to get all the belts and stuff fixed because of age and not wear.  I think it’s going to cost him $5K.  You may think he has the money but the truth is, no one likes to spend it. Rich or poor. Not on something like this… Because this is his dream car and he hasn’t driven it, he has PRESERVED it. and now in it’s very preservation it has deterioated. The dream fades regardless of what we do.

Anyway, there is a tendency that when you buy your dream car, you don’t want to drive it. You want hoard it. You want to put in the pumpkin of your garage where the cruel mean world won’t take a bite out of it…or a ding…or a paint chip…you know that the moment you get your dream car…the slick is going to wear off and sooner or later it’s going to take a beating, like the rest of your dreams, the rest of your life.

I think that’s why you can find so many garage queens in California with low miles. Maseratis, Ferraris, Porsches…That may seem like a great thing, but it’s not. I think roadsters don’t do well in their later lives if they don’t run in their earlier lives. Maybe it’s the same for people too.

I didn’t drive my car yesterday. And I have to work all weekend so I doubt I’ll have time to go to Neptune’s net for a sunset…but I will drive this car. I will.

Even though all I really want to do is pour a glass of wine and sit in it. Lights off. In the garage.

I couldn’t f find it anywhere.  It’s thin. I looked in all my pants pockets, all my purses, in the fruit bowl, in the change bowl.  I had a hair appointment so I asked my husband for his. He gave it to me (bonus! got to remember that.)

Check my accounts. All is good.

Needed my wallet today. Didn’t know where I left it.

Then I checked the Porsche.

Yep, it was there in the middle glove box. Hmm. hmm. Harbinger of things to come, I thought.

Oh, I keep calling it in my head, a Ferrari.  Freudian slip. Is the Porsche Boxster S the Ferrari of the lower reaching for middle class…