Maintaining the Maintenance

In 1964 I saved up my coins I earned from my job as an assistant cable splicer for Bell Telephone in New York City, and purchased a transistor radio.  Back then to have mobile music, to be able to listen to Dean Martin belt out his hit Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime while walking up Sixth Avenue was a big deal. Granted, what music I listened to was limited to what my favorite radio station played. That transistor radio was the first non-hand-me-down electronic device that I owned. On my first day of ownership I pored through the instruction manual, especially the part about maintenance. I was required by the warranty to keep the radio clean and free from crime and dirt. This was difficult since I worked in a job performed often under the streets of New York City. It would be like asking Ed Norton to keep his vest sparkling clean and dry while he worked in the sewer.

I did my best. One of the instructions cautioned “Remove batteries if you do not use the device for a long period of time.”  What was a long period of time? A week?  A month?  A year? Eventually the transistor radio went the way of all toys.  I failed at my first maintenance responsibility and did not remove the batteries and the contacts were corroded.  My defense is that at the time of my transistor radio’s death, I was in college, and maintenance of owned things was not a priority. But it seems that everything I have purchased since my collegiate years requires my attention.

One of the items that almost every family needs to maintain is a car.  During my youth I changed the oil, rotated the tires, replaced the wipers, and washed and waxed the car repeatedly.  Now my car sends me an email telling me what maintenance is due—five point engine checkup, fluid replenishment, and ash tray emptying.  But the smaller items also require periodic checkups.  And these maintenance instructions have become more authoritarian, more threatening than ever.  “Probably need to clean the keyboard more often than the rest of the PC.  Dust and debris [like shrapnel?] can collect between the keys and can affect their functioning.  The surface of the keyboard and keys can be wiped over with a cloth lightly dampened with warm non-soapy water.  You must avoid getting the keyboard wet as it may cause damage to the keyboard circuits.”  Isn’t non-soapy water wet?

All our electronic devices must be plugged in and periodically charged, itself a consumption of energy and time.  Maintaining them requires special care. “Dampen the corner of a soft microfiber cloth with a trickle of water. Never apply water or cleaning solutions directly to your iPhone. With the damp corner, gently wipe the iPhone, paying special attention to the touch screen, but avoid wiping the ports. If your screen is especially dirty, you should attempt to remove surface dirt with a soft brush or compressed air first.”   I never imagined I would have to take my phone down to the local gas station to use its compressed air.

Even when built in obsolescence has run its course, and I have to replace my phone, I can’t simply use my trash can.  “iPhone must be disposed of separately from household waste. When iPhone reaches its end of life, contact local authorities to learn about disposal and recycling options.”  “Hello, Sheriff, I have an expired phone here. You wanna come pick it up, or do you want me to bring it to the coroner?”

And a significant portion of my life is devoted to maintaining non-electronic devices.  “To keep your knives sharp at home, use a Chicago Cutlery honing steel; Use a cleanser made specifically for metal. Dampen a soft cloth and sprinkle some of the cleanser on it. Rub the stainless steel with the grain.”  And, “For concealer and foundation brushes, clean at least once a week to prevent a buildup of product. And because these brushes are used on your face, the cleaner, the better. Brushes that are used around the eyes should be cleaned at least twice a month, while all others can be washed once a month.”  Some of the maintenance instructions demand we only use exotic items to clean our devices: “Use specialized cleaning solutions to clean your coffee maker.”  Like soap?   “After going over the entire sink with the cleanser, rinse off the excess by using a feather from a Peruvian condor.”  Okay, I made the last one up.  But I am glad I do not live in a log home. “The best preservative family for house logs are the borates. They are less toxic to humans than table salt, they don’t change the color of the wood, they have no smell and they poison the wood as a food supply to just about every wood destroying organism known to man, including decay fungi, beetles, and termites. However, there are limitations. Wood needs to be retreated about every 5 years when it is in contact with the ground. The wood needs to have some moisture to allow for proper diffusion and you must apply and maintain a water repellent finish over the borate treated wood to keep them from leaching out.”

Devices I associate with simple removal require my attention. “Once a month empty a tray of ice cubes into the sink and turn on the garbage disposal to grind up the ice cubes.”  Another maintenance hint.  “Do keep your garbage disposal clean. Pour a little dish soap inside and let the garbage disposal run for a minute or so with some cold water after washing dishes.”

I could spend every waking moment taking care of the things I own.  Henry David Thoreau, writing in the mid-nineteenth century, cautioned, “We do not ride upon the railroad; it rides upon us.”

The older I become, the more I time I seem to spend on maintenance, especially the maintenance of my body and my health.  When young every movement, every jump or hop was thoughtless, was conducted free of thought.  Now every physical action demands thought, each twist and turn requiring my full attention.  Even before the Parkinson’s, I awoke in the morning and performed triage—-checking the inventory of all ailments and testing the joints still working.  Then there is the morning, mid-afternoon, during supper and before bed pill scheduling, a ritual that causes some consternation during vacations.

I try to maintain this flesh and blood frame by periodic visits to a variety of specialized physicians all of whom have their own instructions about diet and exercise (I have an exercise regimen tailored to the Parkinson’s and cardiac conditions which I include as part of my maintenance).   Every day the newspaper or online information warns me about the avoidance of a food or drink and the ingestion of a miracle fruit/vegetable/herb that would contribute to a superb maintenance of my not-so-superb body.  And during those few moments not spent maintaining the things I own (including my body), I reflect on the whyness of it all.  Basically I get tired of all the “shoulds.”  The “shoulds,” especially compared to the “coulds,” are often more time consumptive, boring, and occasionally painful. Another philosopher theorized that if we spent our time contemplating meaning and purpose we would go crazy so we focus on the mundane.  Thoreau also observed “Our life is frittered away by detail.”

I realize that I have to maintain my maintenance.  At what point do I decide that enough maintenance is enough? Am I living to maintain?    When do I remind myself that the reason for the maintenance is so that, ostensibly, I could live.  Where does life come in among the care for the car and the mobile phone and the garbage disposal unit?  How do I build into my maintenance routine time to enjoy a food that is not healthy for me, that won’t lower my hdl or cleanse my internal system.  How do I reserve time to curl on the couch and watch an old Barbara Stanwyck film noir, or to sit amongst the trees in my backyard allowing life to wash over me?   Obviously each of us has to work out that balance.  Despite all the physical maintenance, the eventuality is still the same, and the meaning of my existence becomes more important than that finality. My maintenance is not going to provide eternal life.

“Sitting is the new smoking,” so goes modern conventional advice.  But I enjoy spending time in contemplation and observation.  Einstein’s famous quote echoes through my mind. “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” I would much rather spend what time I have left imagining than lifting weights or using cleanser to rub the stainless steel sink with the grain.

P.S. I just spent four hours on the phone with tech support to correct a computer glitch.  I love it when I spend time on my time saving devices which allow me to spend time on my other  time saving devices.