December 20, 2025
I spent a day in slightly giddy imagining of a new car. How fun it would be, not to mention peace of mind with a newer vehicle.
“Don’t put any more money into your Saturn,” advised one of the mechanics at my longtime repair shop. “It’ll cost more to get the timing belt done than the car is worth. Trade it in and get something newer and more reliable.”
Opting for a newer vehicle sounded really smart, until I woke up early this morning with an etheric head slap. What were you thinking? You’d have to borrow money! Fuggedaboutit.
Reval, oh, Reval, where are you?
*****
I’m a bit miffed at falling into the clutches of the manufacturing industry’s planned obsolescence business model. When I called the Chevy dealership to schedule the timing belt, the service rep regretfully informed me that the timing belt is no longer manufactured.
That’s the third time my 2000 Saturn has needed a part which is no longer available. With the turn signal, it wasn’t a big deal, since they MacGyvered the mechanism with some kind of secret mechanics’ glue; and I’ll just manage without using the front passenger-side window. But a new timing belt is not optional.
The helpful Chevy guy tracked down a timing belt and related mystery objects (tensioner, serpentine belt), also no longer manufactured, securing them from other dealerships’ stockpiles at extortionate prices. Obsolescence is costly when we refuse to bow to it.
*****
Another disturbing aspect of “throw-it-away-it’s-old” is the notion that old items, simply because of age, are worthless.
Old people. Venerable customs. Decrepit pets. One former friend had their elderly dog euthanized before she and her new husband took an extended trip so her adult son wouldn’t have to “deal with” the dog and its end-of-life ailments.
There’s a very thin line between compassion and convenience. When we have a cavalier attitude (we call it “practical”) toward so-called possessions, including pets, it’s easy to demote them rather than honor them as entities in their own right.
I can hear some long-ago writing teacher chastising: Don’t anthropomorphize objects. Or animals. Don’t ascribe feelings to them. They are NOT human.
If you say so, Teach. Me – I believe that my Saturn wagon embodies consciousness on some level. I believe it made it 8000 miles past the timing belt due date safely…because in some unfathomable way, it has a care for the human who has a care for it.
*****
The Saturn wagon rests quietly in the garage. I won’t drive it until it’s time to take it to the Chevrolet dealer for its rejuvenating spa treatment. Meantime, I’m patting myself on the back for keeping my mother’s 1995 Taurus up and running. I figured a day would come when the Saturn would need something big and it might be time to retire it to that vast heavenly dealership in the sky… or, in this case, wait a few weeks for parts.
Until the Reval and med beds and Ascension-related magic arrive, such decisions on the 3D level will need to be made. For those of us who are as sure as can be that such problems will be moot post–Solar Flare, there’s a peculiar agony in the process.
Maybe if I wait a week, the solar flare will change everything? Or the Reval will arrive and I can get that new car?
Sometimes it’s easier to be ignorant. To think there’s nothing coming down the pike that will render current reality obsolete. But I am aware. So I’ll take a page from Fox Mulder’s playbook: I want to believe…and Mulder’s belief, at least in the realm of The X-Files, was rewarded with the confirmation of alien presence, although it took nine seasons and a couple of movies to get there.
If fictional Mulder can hang on that long, I can hang on for the much brighter unfolding that’s in store for us. And in the meantime, take care of what is in my purview as best I can, with the resources I have. In a homely, quiet way, that choice feels like a kind of enlightenment in itself, long before the shooting-star glory of Ascension bursts into being.
