Looking for windows

It’s that brisk or biting time of year again, after a good snowing, all is piled high by the plows and banked and in some places blackened with car grease and road exhaust. Everyone is responsible for his little patch of snow in front of his house or shop. But that leaves little blinding mountains between these shops which no owner owns and therefore does not tread. So one does little mincing and hopping movements like an insect or circumnavigates and as New Paltz has no pedestrian rights, no honking is necessary before the innocent are plowed down.

Now.

Should one opt for a sedan-type car or a four wheel drive SUV-type car. One should only care so much about a car, after which one is simply being childish. There is little romance in cars today, despite the flashy sweeps of the designers dream, by the time they hit the road they all look the same. As a suddenly carless person, I am looking at the roads and parking lots as veritable window shopping. I think one factor is serviceability nearby. And perhaps snow. How snow capable does a vehicle really need to be. Seems there might be a conceit here I can easily bypass. So.

A Lamborghini might need to be driven for an hour or two to find a computer that will read its ills. I am just thinking. But a Honda can probably pop into the nearest Speedy or Midas or Jiffy where the parts are in a drawer or on a shelf. This is obviously not an area of expertise for me. Gas mileage should be quite good but not to be politically correct, one must be careful to make it relevant purely for rational reasons, an attempt at being frugal or responsible. Or not bother about that fact at all. If people want to drive huge trucks that get six miles to the gallon I see no problem. European cars can be a joy to drive and a pain to own in the US. Pity we cannot include Peugeot and Citroen and Fiat  and Alfa Romeo in our window shopping. Fantastic cars, and we have to be content with copies by Toyota or Nissan and Honda. I hear Subaru’s are very good cars. Pity they are among the ugliest cars on the road. Big Ford 150’s are great. Utterly American. I just don’t need one. What will I put in the back? Japanese cars lack just about everything that might appeal to the heart but they do appear to be improving stylistically and are apparently reliable. Aren’t most cars cars reliable today? The Lamborghini is possibly quite unreliable, a racehorse that is always catching a cold. So it’s walking and window shopping. In the north east in december. What do I own?

Someone just wrote that everything is a rental for the space we take up here whilst we live on earth. I don’t, therefore, own anything.  Maybe I own my dogs, because without me or my wife, they could not live. Sure someone else could feed them, but that’s theory. We are a pack, Gayle, me, DOON and Willow. Gayle and I are responsible for them because they care that we are their owners. This much they tell us. Can’t say that about a car or computer. One might own children to a point, I don’t know. A twelve year old can work, it has happened in the past, it has. If one fills a blank journal with writing, does one own it? If not, to whom does it belong? Once filled no-one can use it. Unless they publish it of course. That is not ownership, that’s commerce. Sometimes one is surprised at how temporary our belongings are.

They don’t even belong to us. Just the thought, itself, is temporary.