Grand Complications

Cold rain… a chilled reminder of winter slowly soaking everything in view.  I’m sit here in a darkened corner looking out in to a world of lost worlds, spaceships, servos, transistors and motherboards.  I currently work for a company that use to have a video arcade and pinball machines in the 80s. The arcade and pinballs have long been retired from service but from my vantage point I can see their dusty silhouettes lined up like terracotta soldiers–waiting for the “call” that will never come.  As my gaze swings around I can see the wall of parts and pieces….pieces and parts.  Boxes of triacs  and condensers, bumper rubbers and solenoids.  If I was building a watch these would be called the Grand Complications.  The meaning derived from all the little gears and counterweights that go inside a watch case—- the complications.  I’ve always liked the pairing of those words.   It always seemed sorta ominous— ” We cant just go barging in! They have the Grand Complications in there!”

I guess if you think about it people are very much the same way.  Ultimately filled with grand complications that define how they work and function. Unfortunately people aren’t easily fixed when things go awry.  There is no big rack of parts to put ones psyche back together…to  mend a broken heart…..to fix a fractured soul.   We use other complications to do that–those being just as bad or even worse than the original.  That is life, figuring out how this all goes together to make the cogs turn, the gears spin…the hands swing and the feet move.   I hope some of you know that it is the inward struggle that is the worst. The unseen maintenance that is mandatory to keep all the complications in check and functioning harmoniously.  The daily grind to grind it daily.