Last week my brand new vacuum cleaner stopped working. It was the second time I had used it. Let me reword this so you get the full impact of my statement: I had used the vacuum cleaner one other time before it stopped working.
I am minimizing the issue. The vacuum did not stop working. The vacuum broke. Homer (from The Iliad, not from The Simpsons) might say, "the vacuum received no small injury."
This is the third vacuum cleaner I have owned since moving into this apartment three years ago. The carpet in my apartment is a vacuum murderer. Shoddily installed (and cheap to begin with), it frays into long, thick fibers which become instantly tangled in the rotating mechanism of the vacuum, revving the motor to impossibly high temperatures, and burning it out in a matter a seconds. Despite my care to avoid the areas of the carpet where this fraying occurs, one moment of distraction or forgetfulness is all it takes.
Now, the challenge: relate this saga to life. This is what a writer does.
Am I the vacuum cleaner, going about my life, doing my job, fulfilling my destiny, caught off guard by something trivial, and sidelined indefinitely? Do I appear to be strong and sturdy, but am really weak and easily dismantled?
Or am I the ragged and frayed carpet, inferior in quality and bitter about it, raging in ways almost undetectable, yet potent enough to bring down anyone who tries to improve me, anyone whose life is more complete, anyone who risks getting too close? Do I seem to be the kind who allows, even invites others to walk all over me, but in reality I lure them into my vengeance?
Maybe I am neither. Maybe I am simply the woman vacuuming a crappy carpet with a crappy vacuum cleaner, and I really need to watch where I'm going.
