Ya know, sometimes you can spend a lot of time in contemplation, only to later discover that what you were contemplating never really existed. I know, I know, this sounds like a zen riddle. The sound of one hand clapping, unheard trees dropping in the forest, why is man born to suffer and die, who put the wham in the whamalamadingdong, and so on and henceforth. All of these questions have no “why” and no clear conclusive answer.
Such was the case for me today as I formulated my weekend escape from my wife’s girlfriend gab fest at our house. Initially, I had thought that I needed to assemble my plan rapidly, so as to accomplish a weekend of avoidance with a gaggle of giggly college chums. So I quickly formulated a solo fishing trip to Saranac lake at an AirBNB cabin deep in the Adirondack wilderness. Found a cool place right near the water and booked it for a couple of days, only to subsequently discover that it was actually the following weekend that the party was to occur. Tried to change the date, but the cabin was booked. So I cancelled it and immediately discovered that I was going to lose $211.46 on the deal due to AirBnB rules. I contacted the host and they agreed to see what could be done, but gave me no sense that the refund was coming, nor should I get my hopes up. After all, AirBnB is an emotionless corporation whose only goal is to make money for Elon or Bill or Jeff or Donald or whoever the hell holds the reins of power with these nameless overlords of capitalist greed.
in the end, all of my angst was for naught. I wasted the entire day being pissed about the bastards that stole my $211.46, because in the end they refunded the whole mess. But in the mean time I had been stewing for 4 hours and 27 minutes about something that existed only in my mind. Which begs the question … if there’s no evidence of the thing that I was mad about, did it ever really happen? Was there ever actually a cabin in the woods? Was there ever a monetary transaction? I guess there was a refund, but the payment and the refund cancelled each other out.
Like the old question about the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know. Or you could ask Mister Owl, for he is the wisest of us all.
