Fixing dysfunctions

Humans and machines

Aside from onions, there are two things in this world that will immediately cause me to break down into tears: people protesting and military jets. But what about death, you say? Of course, that too. But my experience of losing friends, family, pets, is of being stunned first. Maybe even for hours or days. But deep, uncontrolled, emotional and immediate sobbing? Protests and jets.

Our car is an 8-year old electric vehicle that, when we first purchased it, our friend derided it as “an iPhone on wheels.” But to be honest, we liked the ease and simplicity of, yes, an iPhone on wheels. But also like an iPhone, our car suspiciously began to fall apart as though on schedule when warranty after warranty expired, and, as of January 1 of this year, the final warranty was the one covering the battery. Over three subsequent weekends, including one where the car had a catastrophic failure while at a public charger, the screen registering errors before blinking to black, while I imagined it singing, “Daisy, Daisy,” we had to take it in to the dealership for repairs.

The first weekend was innocuous and relatively uneventful. It could have been just like taking the car in for an oil change, although that, of course, isn’t something one does with an electric car.

The second weekend, there were a handful of middle-aged, upper-middle-class folks holding up signs deriding, well you know; we were in a Lyft with left-wing bumper stickers driving past them, the car in its own time, on a flatbed tow truck. We kept our heads down, and I held back tears, not because of the fear of a $30,000 battery replacement or the possibility that we would be given a tank-like SUV made out of “Ultra Hard 30x Cold Rolled stainless steel” as a loaner vehicle, but because of the protestors.

The third weekend, as we waited to check the car in, again, the kind woman in the service department who knew us now, said that they were expecting over 100 protestors that morning. I felt like a scab, but also, the protestors could have been protesting anything — they could have even been just doing a regular “union busting” picket line with a large inflatable rat, and I would have lost it just the same.

The tears that well up when I see people marching are nonpartisan. I suspect that if we were in Sacramento as opposed to deep blue Marin County, I would cry regardless of what they are angry about because of the emotion of it all.

My partner, who is an acolyte of an alternative healing technique that involves muscle testing and tapping on reflexes, says I need to “fix my dysfunctions.” Crying easily and so unreasonably is, in the parlance of this belief system, a reflection of a dysfunctional reflex to a stressor. And this reflex can be reset, like a control-alt-delete. Holistic healing, but for the John Searle/Daniel Dennetts of this world.

As for military jets. It is impossible to avoid the Blue Angels during Fleet Week in San Francisco; I’m always driving over the Golden Gate Bridge when they go screeching by, or avoiding a rooftop watch party. (I also avoid watch parties as I see them as generally for the — forgive me for saying this — red Solo cup crowd. And I outgrew that at 22.)

Equally, Top Gun at slumber parties, Top Gun at the cinema for an air conditioned escape during a heat wave. I’m a wreck during the dog fight scenes.

I have done the work to fix this dysfunction, I insist to my partner. I’ve had a practitioner wave a large raptor feather in front of my face, to help me process the trauma of my father’s death in a military plane crash. EMDR back in the early 90s was still performed by fringe practitioners, unlike now where it has become, as I understand it, part of the standard of care for PTSD.

With that practitioner I would envision, over and over, the banked turn the jet took until — as the report hypothesized — the setting sun blinded the pilot, causing an unrecoverable dive. There was enough time for the pilot (not my father) to eject — but not enough time for the parachute to deploy — so he too fell to the ground. How many seconds? 10? 15? 30? My eyes following the feather the whole time.

I have also done the tapping, I will admit. And yet I still cry.

And I still fly.

I have also done the work to understand how sharp of a banked turn is too sharp, so I can predict my own safety. For commercial airlines, I have read that it’s a maximum of 30-degrees, although more for passenger comfort than airplane stability. It doesn’t matter to me, a rule is a rule, they exist for a reason, especially in this era of doors falling off of planes, planes landing upside down.

I’ve been flying out of John Wayne airport as of late, an airport famous for its short runway, requiring a steep takeoff to a quiet glide over the expensive houses of Newport Beach, and then a hard banked turn over the Pacific Ocean to head north, home. I imagine our machine flying through a God-sized protractor as the sun sets on the horizon.