Today is the eleventh day of Lent.
It would need to be metal, this thing that I would be an expert at repairing. And completely mechanical. There would be a power source and then one piece moving another piece until the work was done. If you broke it down to its component parts you’d have screws, washers, nuts, bolts, and other metal things.
There would be specialized tools, and they would be well made, all metal and wood. To break this thing down completely would require special moves, but there would be a tool for everything. And I would know every move that might need to be made, so there would be no reason to be afraid or to doubt myself. There would be a finite amount of information needed to master the repair of these things, and I would know all of that information.
I’m imagining this machine disassembled with its parts in a pan. There would be a careful evaluation of each. This one can be cleaned and reused; that one needs to be replaced. When everything is shiny and smelling of solvent, the thing would be reassembled.
It would work again because it would have to work. It would be like math. Don’t you see how beautiful that would be?
I would be a man who fixes these things. I would have a shop that would in time come to smell the way a man’s shop should smell. I would grow old and be happy to be old and smoke a pipe and my hands would be tough and leathery.
And I would know myself and my place in this world. And that knowing would be good. And I would have what I need to have and always wanted to have.
