The Tercel, August 1985-February 2014

And so the car has.

It's running very rough, they said. They said they had no problem with shifting, so that might be clutch issues. They replaced a spark plug and found it made no difference. They suspect the chugging/choking on acceleration may mean it needs new carburettor parts, but they can't get parts for it now. Nor even a new carburettor. There's [something] going on with the right rear throttle, it's been leaking gas, that's why the spark plug was all gunked and carbonned up; it needs a new engine, Even then they couldn't say how long it would run –

And so the small & faithful car.

It was a piece of the Pilbara, imported whole from Japan in 1985 when Lang Hancock was selling the haematite percentage of whatever he looked at. I drove it to work and the laundromat and wherever we needed to go: the years we lived in L.A. it took both cats to the vet every time they had to go, took us to Dangerous Visions and A Change of Hobbit on Saturday afternoons, to San Diego to SF conventions, to LosCon every Thanksgiving; here it's taken the cats to the vet, my husband to hospital and home again –

Some asshole of an off-duty sheriff collided with it in 1987; the paint under the window from that repair started to peel, in layers, a couple of winters ago. I've been trying to keep the mould from settling into those jagged, layered edges. It's supposed to rain again over the next few days. I was hoping the rain would dissolve the goose-droppings that appeared on the roof and windows last week.

Moving up to Portland. At the border the road-surface changed: much rougher. My first gig was in Beaverton & surrounds, a set of jobs so miserable I considered a small twist of the wheel from the top course of the Marquam Bridge. Except I couldn't do that to the faithful blue. It was its faithfulness that was heartbreaking.

Because I was using the so-called Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway a family of rattles came to live in the hatch-back door. They stayed while I drove to Lake Oswego for one job and to Fairview for another. They're there still, along with the scattered star-pits from stones hitting the windshield.

A kindly mechanic recommended slightly larger tyres. The window- and door-seals opened. The inside got wet in rain, and then car-washes, designed to deal with vast SUVs, became too brutal for it. I took to washing it by hand, once or twice a year. By then a little gentle pot-scrubber was needed to restore its cheerful heart. The petrol-gauge stopped working; I've run and filled it on the trip-meter since 1997; the heater/cooler fan only runs on settings 3 and 4. But the heater worked well, breathing a cave of clarity at the window-line so I could crouch behind the wheel and peer above the dash-board on winter nights (ice, snow) just enough to start the interminable commute again... The hydraulics for the hatch-back stopped working; the lining of the interior roof sagged; the interior plastic moulding above the window became brittle and broke and dropped unexpectedly; over the last two years I put small pieces of the car into the rubbish-bin on my way through the garage when I got in of an evening.

In its old age our commute shrank to 6 miles. It was the parking lot that was the danger – a long stave of scrapes down the driver's door – clearly from an SUV, the scrape clearly from a bumper-bar, that high... I was horrified and frightened and furious; the door would start rusting this winter. So, because the street was clearly, actually safer, I parked there. Someone must have left some sort of metal container on the hood at some point, waiting to drag it into the trunk of the vehicle parked in front of me; they scored the paint when they dragged the metal thing away. The street was also where the car acquired the goose-droppings.

I'm meeting friends for lunch, and there's some urgent mail for the Post Office. There's no other way to get to lunch and the Post Office easily and now.

On the way to the garage on Wednesday the car choked a couple of times while semi-trailers bore down on us from several directions. That was a very vivid experience.

I'll drive it to work today. I'll come home and take the 2003 Thomas Guide out of the pocket in the seat-cover that looks as though goats have been at it – we bought those in 2002, the day of the Gobshite launch at Looking Glass Books, when Looking Glass was still downtown, at Taylor and 3rd, opposite the lot that hosted Daniel Duford's vandalized sculpture a couple of weeks later.

I'll take the hand-drawn maps out of the glove-box, (Ann's house, Barbara's, Grace's). I'll call the insurance company and take the keys off the key-rings: the spare, my husband's, and then mine.

There was some samurai wisdom I read somewhere or other once, which said, approximately: when one is confronted by an overwhelming force, one will be overwhelmed.

The universe is an overwhelming force.

Update: June 8:
But it sold well at auction, much better than I'd hoped. So instead of wondering if it felt abandoned, cut off from its people for no reason, cast out among strangers (carefully not thinking of a cube of scrap metal on its way cross the sea, the splintering, the crunching, tinkling/shattering/grinding), now I can smile because it will be refurbished, restored, re-created by someone who appreciates its stout heart, its patience, its loyalty.