GLASS PALACE

Sitting on the couch, listening to Brad Sucks
2024-01-09-tue

Today, sometime in the afternoon, I noticed the sound of water flowing heavily, though none of the taps nor the toilet were running. I stuck my head out the door, and sure enough we had water pouring from a burst pipe. For context, we had a week or so of steady temps at or below freezing, and last night was the coldest yet. It took most of the day to burst, which fooled me. It ended up breaking during the warmest part of the day, when it actually got above freezing temps. But, of course, the pipes are in shadow, so it's not like they got all that warm. Anyway, I hopped to it, and shut off the water to the house, then called a plumber. As one can imagine, this is their busy season, dealing with people in the same situation as we are, so we have to wait until at least tomorrow before they can get anyone out here. And yes, I called several plumbers in the area; they're all swamped.

So right now, as I write this, we have no water to the house. After arranging for the plumber, and informing Mrs. Bronx of the situation (she was at work), I ran out to get a few gallons of water, as well as some sawdust.

Sawdust, you ask? Though we do have a normal flush toilet in the house, we also have a sawdust toilet. We haven't used it in a very long time, but the idea with it is that there's a bucket under a toilet seat. You do your business into the bucket, then sprinkle a layer of sawdust over it. This keeps it from stinking. Insofar as that goes, it works rather well. Insofar as emptying the bucket goes, well, that's a bit more complicated. You can look up the details of composting human biowaste, which is not all that common, but actually quite well-studied and startlingly effective. Of course, it's the middle of winter, with below-freezing temps, so that makes it a bit more interesting, but, well...no questions, please.

I was thinking about my father just yesterday. He was a complicated man, in a lot of ways, but specifically, I remembered how, in his later years, he became kind of easily rattled by things that interfered with his ease and comfort. He'd created and destroyed his own comfort and equilibrium several times in his life, but by the time he was an elderly man, he'd built up a better life than he'd even had before. That's when the fear became evident.

Recalling this, I said to myself that he'd built himself a //glass palace//. Not to be confused with the novel of the same name by Amitav Ghosh, nor glass houses that you shouldn't throw stones around. As I define it, a glass palace is a scenario or situation where the security you've built is normally quite adequate for the basic, common concerns of life, such as food, clothing, and shelter. You can be safe from the elements and predators, and relax. It's comfortable, safe, and deeply satisfying to be in this place you've created, that is exactly to your own specifications. It's your fortress, your palace.

But his was made of glass, because to his mind, the security of it was fragile. Any blow or shock could damage it. Bad news could shatter it to the ground. That's how he acted. Shift his routine, and it was a potential disaster. Throw the unexpected in his path, and you'd get a semi-panicked swerve. Maybe when you've blown up your own life more than once, you become very conscious of the sorts of things that can do that to you. Whatever the case, he was a calm, even jovial old man, until he wasn't. Maybe we're all like that, old or not, but the point of all this is that I find myself falling into the same scenario, with my own elder years just around the corner.

My glass palace teeters. Certainly it did today. I was in near-panic over the broken pipe, even though I've been through this exact same thing in the past, and got through it just fine. My equilibrium was disturbed, and I became a shaky old man. I became my father. One rock in the air, and it all can come down in a keening clatter. I //can't// save us, if it ever comes down to that.

Weak. A weak, shaky old man. I didn't wake up and find myself this way one day, no, it was a gradual thing. Day-by-day, my powers of self-possession have faded.

So, how long before I do?