We're moving in about a month, and our new place doesn't have a garage. I would love to say that I'm abandoning this project out of necessity, that I'm altruistically sacrificing my dreams for the good of my family. Even my considerable tendency towards self-delusion has its limits, though.
The truth is that this grand experiment - my metamorphosis from mechanically useless literary junkie to engineering guru - has been an abject failure. Apparently, I'm quite good at taking things apart. The fact that entropy comes naturally to me is hardly noteworthy, however, and I would just as soon ignore my tendencies towards destruction and decay. The creative impulse, the drive to take the sterile and barren stuff of the earth and form it into a living, fire-breathing mess, is the drum that beats in all of our hearts, be we shapers of clay, metal, numbers, or sound. I had hoped that my skill with words would translate into an aptitude for pistons and gaskets, that I would be as adept with crankcases as I am with clauses. Alas, it was not to be.
Tomorrow a man named Joel is going to come to my house. He is going to give me $400 and I am going to give him my motorcycle. Like I said before, I'm of two minds about this transaction.
On one hand, it has practical appeal. I have neither time nor space for a project of this magnitude. My dissertation is gathering dust in a corner of my hard drive. It's time for me to let go and move on.
And yet, on the other hand...
Antony Reed, in Ben Bova's stellar (pun intended) novel "Mars," serves as the flight surgeon for the first manned mission to the red planet. Tony's medical skills and latent sociopathy, combined with the cold vastness of interstellar travel, drive him to the brink of insanity. With god-complex in full swing, he dispenses much needed vitamin tablets and protein gels as if they were the host. Mars, he figures, is in desperate need of a deity, and with a clear view of Mt. Olympus out his window, Tony settles in, pharmacological thunderbolts in hand.
Only things don't go as planned. Though he has granted himself extraordinary omnipotence (including control over the creative act itself by slipping libido suppressants into the crews' food), he is, to his utter amazement, unable to diagnose and treat the growing flu-like symptoms of the expedition team. As his teammates' health deteriorates, Tony fumbles for answers, finding none. Eventually, he is forced to call for help from the orbiting back-up crew, a decidedly un-godlike act of desperation.
When the mystery malady is finally identified as scurvy, Tony's failure is complete. Dr. Antony Reed, self-proclaimed sovereign of the skies, master of the meteor, is defeated by, of all things, a simple lack of vitamin c. Once the condition is diagnosed, and once it becomes clear that Tony himself is the unwitting cause (he's been unknowingly distributing tainted supplements), he scrambles to his teammates' aid. They're eventually saved, of course, and all's well that ends well: the team has discovered microbial life on Mars, and they return to Earth as conquering heroes. Everyone except Tony, that is.
The political powers back on Earth are clamoring for a scapegoat. "Scurvygate" is big news, and the finger-pointing begins even before the team leaves Mars orbit for the long trek home. The rest of the team initially tries to defend Tony, but surprisingly, Tony himself is eager to face the proverbial music. His experience on Mars was not what he expected it to be, and although he feels unjustly accused on one hand, he's secretly relieved. The accusation of incompetence lets him off the hook. Banned from subsequent Mars missions, Tony need not explain his reluctance to return to the stars, to the place where he tried to be a god and failed.
This is kind of how I feel about the move.
When friends and family ask how the motorcycle's coming along, I can shake my head and sigh a weighty sigh. "I wanted to finish," I can say. "I really did." I can explain how the logistics of the the move and the needs of my family forced me to abandon ship, how circumstances prevented me from following through on my grand and glorious mission. And the only person who needs to know how glad I am to wipe my hands of the entire process is me.
So on one hand, I'm going to miss it. But on the other hand, I'm looking forward to tomorrow afternoon when Joel comes and hauls away the greasy reminders of my failure, just as Icarus was glad to see the last of his feathers stripped away by the wind, right before he slammed into the wine dark sea.
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