On that wheel turning round
yes, our house is a very, very, very, fine house
I’m sitting in the living room with my spouse Janyce and our dog. I’m fresh from the shower, just back from the gym, and munching an apple while contemplating the rest of the day laid out before me. I’m uneasy, though. This is the way I get on winter Sundays when noontime rolls around and I know we only have a few hours of daylight left. Before we know it, it will be Sunday night. And then Monday morning, and another week will be starting. Then the week will be over and we’ll start the whole thing again. Another wheel turning round. I’m thinking about David Crosby’s song “DejaVu” but I know this isn’t quite what he meant.
The television blares out a segment about an AI that writes your English papers. I catch a snippet of the commentator’s voice-over. It is now banned on some college campuses.
“Remember that animated movie a while back called Wall E where we were all just blobs on scooters?” says Janyce.
“It’s the end of the human race,” I say.
I’m sorry we turned on the television. I usually like the CBS Morning Show but lately I’m itchy for something more long form. I have homework to finish today for my magazine writing class which started, ironically, right at the same time as I began to worry about my over consumption of magazines in all their latest forms: “human interest” stories like this television show, podcasts I constantly play in the car, and the many newsletters filling up my email. But really, I am so hungry lately to simply devour a real book— carefree and cover-to-cover in one sitting—the way I remember doing as a teenager, lying on the floor of my bedroom for an entire day, my arm outstretched toward the ceiling holding the pages open with one hand. Instead, I enrolled myself into a graduate class further filling my Sundays all winter with more work.
“Take a look at these commercials,” I say. The latest trend in commercials, apparently, is to repeat them.
“You’ve put your dreams on hold but with Vanguard your investments are on track… you got this, so now go do what you love.”
After the third time, Janyce loses it beside me on the couch. “This is maddening,” she says. “Do they have to fit so many in during the hour? Is this why they are repeated back-to-back like this?”
“I think maybe they want to maximize the message?” I say.
No marketer needs to maximize the message for me, though. I didn’t need to hear it four times in a row. I got it fully after one listen. I’m the target market. This is exactly what is on my mind. On my to-do list, even. The second bullet point is to call Paul— my parents’ trusted financial advisor. We let our guy go recently after too many times at the close of our zoom meeting when we’d turn to each other and say, Wait what? What are are we supposed to do? Are we even on track?
An antibiotic pill in a wrestling outfit stands in its corner of the boxing ring, facing the screen and talking directly to us. I’m chuckling because the animation is cute and I’m happy to be laughing right now and not further sinking into my existential Sunday angst. The sky outside is pure white, foreboding snow and we’re at that part in the program where they run down a list of all the people we have lost in the past week. This time it’s David Crosby’s turn. We watch the tribute to him and then switch it off with the remote control.
“You want to play the Deja Vu album on Spotify?” says Janyce.
“I’d love that, yes.” I say.
“I’ll light the fire… while you put the ketchup on the meatloaf that you bought… today hey hey,” she says, singing along to the music.
“You think you’re funny, don’t you?” I say.