Epic poetry, I think, peaked too soon. It died off as a viable form after being used merely to celebrate noble triumphs and harrowing upsets in such narrow fields of human endevour as dying in battle and stealing livestock.
It would be nice if we had a form of expression to describe our more modern victories and tribulations, like parking.
Yesterday morning I found that someone had parked in a way that blocked my car. In my area, I can take my chances on the blue-and-white (meaning I get a ticket unless I set off before 9:30), or in the parking lot. The parking lot has two rows of parking, arranged like teeth, but then there are the greedy bastards that try to park in the middle, pretending that this way the parked cars can still squeeze out. That morning, this was true for every car but mine. The guy on my left could have gotten out, and the guy on my right could have gotten out, but I couldn’t. To my left a white mini, to my right a dark sedan parked at an awkward lazy slant, and before me that devil-cursed white carcass of a 1987 settler-sticker-festooned Subaru. No way to get out turning left, no way out to the right.
Still, I tried. Then I waited. Then I contended with advice of helpful passer-by. Then I went about the shops, looking for the whore-begotten shite who owned the offending vehicle. Then I called the police. Who told me to call the municipality. Who told me that, because this was a public parking lot, there was nothing they could do, and I should call the police. So I called the police again, gave them the car’s number and asked them to locate the driver.
Then, I waited.
To little avail.
So as I wait, with a chill, growning certainty that I will not easily escape, I try to think out of the box. If I could just get my car on the sidewalk behind it, I think, angle it so it will be able to drive along the pavement despite being inches from concrete flower boxes and a stairway, and despite the way the annoying dark sedan is parked right up to the edge of the curb on my right, if I can swing my car about, navigate past the bench, and squeeze between the lampost and the pylon, I could drive out.
Took me a while, but eventually I did it. Driving in reverse, of course, because that was the only way to swing it.
That this is not considered a deed deserving to be celebrated in song, feted in banquets, toasted in fine mead — well frankly, it saddens me.
(Written yesterday, so that yesterday actually means the day before.)