Cold, Death, Oil...and Poetry?

Fall semester: day forty-five

The subjects of cold, death, and oil consumed most of my week here in Kansas, though not overly so -- they were just the first things on my mind during what amounted to my two-day work week of Wednesday and Thursday after fall break ended.

Having an otherwise unexpected day off from my normal work week throws everything a bit askew, and/or makes everything else during that week feel really rushed and hectic, even if my work is of the same amount (or even lighter) than it usually is. While it's a welcome break, it is a little jarring in general. I was able to get everything I needed to do done, however, as always -- with a little extra free time and/or breathing space thrown in a bit as well. It was welcome space, I'll tell you that. For example, today I woke up at 1:30 PM. Yes, PM. My Friday so far has been a success -- I'm well-rested (almost 12 hours of sleep), and can relax and breathe just a little bit more this weekend -- with just a bit of work to do this weekend, mainly reading and a little critiquing and writing, I can finally enjoy the majority of a real weekend for the first time in a few months. And it's not like I planned it this way, either. A light weekend is an unexpected present/surprise to me.

This week the temperature dipped well below freezing for the first time here in Kansas. Those of you who know me well know that when it's really cold and I'm really sleep-deprived (as I continually am during the work week, easy week or not) also know that when it's cold and I'm really tired, I can't stay warm no matter what I do. I get chills, my teeth chatter, etc. It just happens until I get somewhere warm enough to where my body will regulate itself again, but usually when that happens my body tells me to go to sleep. Yeah, it's not fun. This is why I rely/depend on caffeine and nicotine to get me through the day -- mainly because they don't hold classes between 1 and 4AM, when I'm naturally at my most awake and productive hours. I'm pretty sure that my brain is wired wrong.

Anyway, on Wednesday morning the temperature was 30 in Newton. Below freezing, but not too bad. However, it was about 60 in the house, and I was forced to turn on the furnace for the first time this fall/winter. I let the house warm up to around 72 before I turned it back down to around 64 or so and left for the day.

My question about whether or not my Monte Carlo would like the cold weather or hate it was answered on Wednesday morning upon my drive down to Wichita. Yes, she fired up normally, and when she did, I turned on the heater. The heater works, and works well. This was a plus.

However (because there is always a however), three things happened that let me know that she doesn't necessarily love the cold weather as much as she'd let on:

1.) On my drive down 135 to school, the "Low Oil" light came on.
2.) The window, which I have to leave cracked when I'm in the car in order to be able to get back out of it, began rattling. A lot.
3.) Apparently when it's cold, the car's deteriorating thermostat goes a little wonkier than usual, and drips more coolant than usual from the overflow valve.

Of all of these, the "Low Oil" light was obviously the most troubling. That light's never come on before, and as I checked the oil about a month ago (and it won't be due for an oil change until around or shortly after Thanksgiving), this greatly concerned me. Oil is pretty important, as you know if you've, well, ever owned a car. The car's also never leaked a drop of oil (to my knowledge) since I purchased it in June, so I didn't know if it was truly low on oil for some reason, or if the sensor was just going wonky because of the cold snap.

As we were holding our poetry workshop yet again at the home of one of our friends and colleagues, I stopped him in the halls on Wednesday morning.

"Between here and your house," I asked after telling the story, "is there anywhere you know of, like an auto parts store or someplace, where I could purchase a few quarts of motor oil?"

"I don't think there's an auto place," he said. "There's a Jiffy Lube, and...oh, there's a gas station right there on the corner of 21st. They'll have motor oil; they're a gas station."

And so I made the decision right then that between school and his house, I'd stop and get a few quarts of oil. I didn't want to spend the money, but it's not like I had a choice in the matter -- the car is important, oil is important, and I wasn't about to drive the car any further than I had to without getting some oil in it as long as that light was on.

I'm not sure how much a quart of motor oil is in a normal store, but at a gas station, everything runs on convenience store pricing -- it was $13 for me to get two quarts of oil for the car. Screw it, I thought, I need it.

Of course, until I got back into the car and fired her up to continue the trip to my friend's house, oil in hand, and the "Low Oil" light had gone off. Fuck. Seriously?

I drove the car over there for workshop, told him that part of the story, and decided to wait on the oil addition. If the light went back off, perhaps it was just the sensor going nuts because of the colder weather. On the plus side, I now had two quarts of oil in case it wasn't just a weird sensor issue.

This, of course, was a short-lived fantasy. When I got back into the car at 10PM to drive home for the night, the light kicked back on a few miles into my drive. As it was dark, and therefore wouldn't be able to see what I'd be doing anyway, I had a choice -- I could either find somewhere with enough light to stop and fill the engine with oil, or I could just hope I wouldn't have any problems until I got home and do it then.

If you know I-135, between Wichita and Newton, once one leaves the city limits of Wichita (and to a smaller extent, Park City), it's dark. It's all dark; nothing but corn and wheat fields on all sides for about fifteen miles. There's a rest stop on the interstate, but it's close enough to home (eight miles out, I've checked) to where I could just wait -- so that's what I did. I drove the car back home, slower than usual and more carefully, fighting a horrific headache I'd had since around 8:30 or so, and pulled into my driveway.

When I got home I opened the garage (for the light), turned on the house's lower outside lights, and went inside to not only let the engine cool a bit but to retrieve my big oil funnel and a rag, and to take off my nice wool peacoat so that if there was any splashback, I could avoid getting it on the coat. So, at 10:45PM, in 30-degree weather with wind, I carefully added a quart of oil to the engine with the funnel. It took it all, and probably could've taken more, but I didn't want to overfill it and/or spill it everywhere to have it burn off the next morning when I would drive back to school. I put the other quart of oil, the rag, and funnel in the back seat of the car, and went back inside for the night, knowing that I'd done what I could do to help the car for the night. By this time, it was almost 11PM, and I was exhausted -- and still had to get up at 5AM on Thursday morning.

On Thursday morning, I got back into the car, said a quick nonchalant prayer to the vehicle gods, and started her up. The "Low Oil" light was off. So, apparently, it wasn't a sensor issue and it genuinely needed some oil. Whether or not it needed more than a quart is debatable -- I'll need to check it this weekend -- but the fact remains that it's received at least one quart more than it had previously.

The light never came back on again, and -- to my surprise -- the drives down to Wichita and back yesterday were two of the smoothest drives I've ever had in that car, a car that usually runs fairly rough. Apparently it needed oil more than it let on; with a new quart of oil in a now well-lubed engine, even with some bad spark plugs and a misfire, the car ran really smooth and fairly quietly (at least for my car, anyhow). This was also surprising because it was 27 in Newton yesterday morning. Hard freeze weather, and colder than Wednesday. The thermostat on the car may still be wonky, but at least I don't have oil issues anymore. At least for the moment. The extra quart, funnel, and rag still remain in the backseat of the car just in case.

"Older cars like that, even ones in good condition, will slowly start to burn off a little oil after a while between oil changes," one of my colleagues told me. "It can't really be helped much, it just happens."

"Yeah, and especially when I put 150 miles on the car every week," I replied.

Said colleague has a '98 Lumina back home, a car built on the same body/platform as my 1996 Monte Carlo, with many of the same parts/electronics/belts, etc. The Lumina has over 310,000 miles on it and is still running with no major problems. This gives me hope that the Monte Carlo will last me a while as long as I take care of it (and have the money to do so). I can't really complain about it too much; after all, it was a $500 car with 216,000 miles on it when I bought it. It has about 218,100 on it now.

It does need new tires, though -- something I won't be able to replace until I get the money to do so, which may be a way off.

The rest of the week fell under the pall of death; one of my close friends had a death in his family, so he had to leave town unexpectedly for a few days. And, of course, yesterday all everyone was talking about was the overthrow/death of Gadhafi in Libya. Even my newest poem -- written about a kid bored and daydreaming while his grandmother is doing needlepoint -- apparently sounded like a metaphor for death according to Suri, due to the imagery of rain soaking through the ceiling within the poem.

"It's depressing," she said. "It has all these overtones of death."

"It's about a boy watching his grandmother do needlepoint and getting bored, so he's daydreaming that the water stains on the ceiling are screaming faces," I said. "That's it. It's pretty straightforward."

I almost wish I'd chosen to workshop that one now. I didn't realize until after I'd written it how many interpretations there could be of the scene at hand. It figures that the poems I write without intending multiple interpretations generate them, and the ones which I want multiple interpretations of, fellow writers see as something completely straightforward. Ah, the joys of workshop.

Still, there wasn't any death intended in it.

My poetry is taking some strange turns lately; I'm still experimenting with different subject matter, different line lengths, different structures. I've never been big on form or setting limitations on myself, and most of the time actively try to avoid it, as all it does is tend to hinder my writing process. When I'm writing poetry all I'm trying to do with it is express an idea on paper. Form, meter, etc. -- those are all the last things on my mind. In workshop this week I had a hard time expressing that idea when asked about my writing style. To some extent I think I surprised my classmates (some of them anyway), and from others it seems that my mindset was met with veiled disapproval, most notably from our instructor.

One of my mantras of being a poet is that everything can be made into a poem. A sentence, a passage, a conversation, an image. Anything can be made to be poetic or at least sound poetic -- if the poet has the talent to make it so, anyhow. The ordinary can become thought-provoking or open to multiple interpretations depending on how words are arranged on a page. Those are the basics of poetry, at least to me.

Anyway.

None of us have yet received our scores for our Asian/Middle Eastern Lit midterm. It will also be another week or so before I receive a grade for either of the papers I wrote last weekend as well, as even though I got them finished early, they weren't even due until Wednesday and last night, respectively. As I mentioned before, I have a light weekend of work this time; I'll read the next novel for the aforementioned Asian/Middle Eastern class (about 200 pages or so), and I'll do my best to finish Crime and Punishment, which I was able to read the first 215 pages of on Wednesday morning in my office -- no small task, I assure you, but still surmountable. As for around-the-house stuff, I have the normal amount of dishes, laundry, and cleaning to take care of as I would during any other weekend. I'll have to go to Walmart again for a short trip on Sunday or Monday for a few things, but other than that I'll be sticking around the house and trying to relax somewhat, if not preparing for the next month's worth of classes I'll be attending as well as teaching.