Those stems!

I saw it and I knew I was in trouble. It wasn't exactly a malevolent presence but it evoked the same feelings. It was sitting there, lurking in the shadows. It's lines were awe-inspiring. A deeper black than seemed possible. Sitting on eighteen inches, it had all the menace of mafia hitman with the mercy of a sledgehammer. Even before it rumbled to life, it loomed mightily with intent.

 

At that moment, with the blood rushing like the Mighty North Atlantic in the middle of a winter storm, all I could think of was, Why the fuck had I chosen this road? Why had I plaid it this way? Was this a message from the Universe that I had made the wrong choices, that I was destined from those illegitimate poseurs from Japan or Korea? I don't know. But at that moment, all I wanted was to punch the wall I was banging my head against.

 

Those Germans know a thing or two about engineering. Weren't they the ones who sorted out internal combustion? Weren't they ones who understood that it is not enough to go and stop, but that every now and then one had to take a corner at a less than safe velocity? Since the first one rolled off the assembly line in 1964, this is what we were all made to desire.

 

So I stared at it, its malevolence and power, in awe and I almost shat my pants that it was there at all. Instead, I went and found her and spent a piddly amount on battered fish and chips. And a Heineken to remind me that maybe, just maybe, one day taking corners at unsafe velocities will be a fact. Just like the rising of the sun, the blueness of the sky and those stems that seem to go on forever. You know the ones, don't you?