The Gods of Small Things

 

“When we win, it’s with small things and the triumph itself makes us small.”

                                                            Rainer Marie Rilke

 

This line is from Rilke's poem The Man Watching, that goes on to suggest that we instead should choose to fight the unbeatable forces worthy of our efforts. The poem ends: 

 

This is how he grows; by being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings.

 

The perfect description of me playing Bach or Chopin on the piano, of trying to stay above water in the swirling sea of a masterful jazz quintet, of trying to affect change while the wolves of Wall Street run wild without restraint. You get the idea.

 

But sometimes it feels GREAT to win with small things. Like wrestling with the techno-demon of online UPS payment and hitting the walls of the voice-mail maze trying to get help on phone. I finally called one of the 22 UPS stores in San Francisco and pleaded for help, but of course, it’s not their department. However, an angel named Anthony said that if I wanted to come down, he would see if he could help me. 

 

So today our errands found us in that corner of town, searching for a new spout for our leaky kitchen sink. On the slim chance that Anthony would actually be working and would have time and inclination to help me, I popped in. And there he was and off we went to the computer while he accomplished what I could not. No logical reason why it should work at that moment since I had done many of the same steps many times over, but I think the techno-gods were too embarrassed to not work for a UPS employee. And so after literally hours of my thwarted attempts, I successfully paid the $25 bill. Ah, sweet victory! You would have thought I scored the Super Bowl touchdown and clinched the NBA championship with my last-second three-pointer!

 

And so I continued to hang with the god of small things. Figured out my non-functional left hearing aid simply needed the little cap and dot replaced— and it worked! Looked at sink fixtures at one place and had another angelic soul tell us we could get the same or better for 1/4^th the price at Costco. Bit the bullet and entered that extraordinary land—only the second time I’ve ever crossed its threshold. (I'm sure a post will follow soon about that!)

But shopping there meant becoming a Costco member, which was as easy as signing a little paper form and paying them some money. NOT!!!!! Of course, we had to download the app, make a password, enter the code, do it again, and then again, listen to the spiel of the deal where Karen’s brother would get $40 off if we did it this way instead of that way, back to the app and the maze of prompts and by the end, exhausted, we finally walked out with our membership card and a new (and much cheaper, but good quality) sink fixture. 

 

Then off to the automatic car wash and another drama that is too trivial to even go into, but suffice it to say, it involved driving home and discovering the car had not been cleaned, driving back, getting the manager to let me go through again without paying and finally emerging with the “small thing trophy”—a clean car! 

 

Tonight is the ultimate test as our usually trustworthy TV suddenly won’t open Apple TV (while I just got a notice that the monthly bill will be going up), Prime kept refusing to download the movie we chose, Brittbox has a little circle that stops the actions every 3 minutes and then starts again and then stops and then starts and then…  Small things all, but enough to derail the human nervous system and get us shouting at machines. So tonight, o gods, in keeping with the victories of the day, let me win!

 

Then tomorrow back to the greater Gods of Bach and Chopin.