so this morning the controller asks to speak with me in her office. then i have to sit & wait minutes, intestines clenched, reviewing every gesture & facial expression i'd seen this morning for some clue as to my future (but all the while feeling pretty damn secure for a person in that position, after all, i've survived whole companies falling apart around me since being here, other people may go, but i stay).  so then she comes in and she says, so we're going to change some things around ... let some people go ...

 

and would i mind answering the phones and 'doing whatever they need me to do'? 'of course', i reply, 'whatever you need me to do, i'm there'.  because you know what? i am. i am always here. like, every day, an hour or more before the rest of everyone gets here.  i do not email in sick, i do not catch headaches or food poisoning on friday afternoons (though there are those who do), i just show up, day after day, and do what i'm asked. 

 

so i'm not an underpaid computer programmer, i'm an overpaid secretary. who also programs the website, but hey. other people will be going, but i am staying.

so i went & cracked open the Thing i Could Not Face, the loss(es).  and resurrected the least dead amongst them, the "poems" if you'd call them that. olizard.com is where they live on (if not in infamy, then at least in space).  don't go there, it'll only hurt your eyes.  but it is a start.  next in line for life, the lyrics site & maybe the gallery thingy.  the blog, ah, the blog, well, unfortunately the database is approximately ten times the size allowed in PHPMyAdmin uploads, so i've gotta hack it to pieces in order to put it back together. 

 

baby steps, baby.

it is a damn good thing, dare i say even a fucking good thing, that i am more or less all by my lonesome self here.  back in the day there would be however-many people watching me make a fool out of myself -- oh wait. that's exactly what they were doing, if i remember correctly. but they were always so nice about it, & this is what led me to this unfortunate habit of babbling in public. which is actually a little bit embarrassing. i mean what if someone should someone happen upon this place i leave links to here & there around the interweb, and see me talking to myself for no apparent reason and being thoroughly pathetic in the process?

 

it's kind of like a whiny diary i leave laying around the house, hoping no one reads but disappointed that no one does. also i am a little ashamed i'm using this windows live thing when i have the capability, the urls, the hosting space, and the archives (some assembly required) -- i have real blogs, i really do -- i'm only a few dozen hours or days of struggling to remember what i was thinking when i built the things in the first place, to rebuild them, make them better than new.

 

if only i felt it was worth it. why the hell do i do this?  

i have. i really have.

 

(again).  & as usual, it is a tremendous relief.  or a terrible loss.  

 

perhaps a terrible relief? yes. that's exactly what it is.   

you know if i wasn't in a trailer in oregon hooked up to the interweb on an Edge-enabled (read: non-broadband type wireless data plan), and if i hadn't driven 1,250 miles in the last three days & spent several hours today scampering around various scenic mountain trails & whatnot,  i would so be putting my websites back together. right this very minute, i would. seriously. but as it stands, this is just not the time for that.

 

i've got half a mind to do it anyway.  

either that or i've resigned myself to its knowledge. but since it felt like a revelation i feel comfortable claiming the figuring.

here's the thing: more & more (& _more_) as the days pass for years, i am assailed (yes, assailed) by these overwhelming (meaning, feeling wave on wave moving above me as i slip further from the surface, that sort of overwhelm) anyway. feelings of deja-vu is what i am meaning, and they are quite strong would be what i am adding to that meaning. & here i am living in midtown ventura where the average age of everything is alarmingly close to mine, meaning something around any & every corner may at any time might trigger this / catch me / send me spinning back some twenty or forty years, & this happens more & more & more these days (have i mentioned that?) anyway.

i figured it out. it was in the fragrant shadows of my genuine 40-or-so-year old tiled shower one morning with the early light bursting through the rippled window glass when it hit me. these things which assail me, these vivid spells when my senses echo a perfect facsimile, an identical copy in memory of the exact same everything (except which century) ... and this used to feel just like loss, but what was i thinking feeling that? it's not anything even near the melancholy maudlin thing it (used to seem to be) .. it is almost exactly the opposite of that in fact.

it is a message, a comfort, a continuity flowing through the all of me, not just the matter perched here in this timespace but my whole history laid out in shimmering disarray before & behind & around me, perfect clarity: it is and shall always be this way, this life with these moments with their over & over again (as it was in the beginning it is now & ever shall be world without end amen) amen. though the body that has these sensations & the psyche that sets them in perspective have changed and i mean completely & they continue to, & this has all been a bit disconcerting at least it was until i figured it out.

& with that, & a glass of white wine & some cozy old jeans on i am going to go out into the last of today's sunbreezy ocean air that feels exactly like any number of other afternoons & it will not be a wan wistful thing at all, it will in fact be transcendent if i may be a bit overindulgent in describing it.

and so the mac came to us (because it was in danger of being used to hold doors open) with a monitor, some cables, a tower containing a small hard drive and ... a processor and some memory. that's it. no mouse. no keyboard. no wireless card and no way to get a plug from a router to the network plug in the computer. no internet. computer - keyboard - internet = ... well, = doorstop, basically.

 

so it sat there. all it could do was play chess. so it played a lot of chess, and we turned on that speaking voice feature and it bugged us night and day telling us every. little. stupid. thing it was thinking. like a person, only not as annoying.

 

and the boy wanted the computer on the internet. he wanted the computer to do ... something, and without the internet, computers don't do much for little kids. especially macs, which have only the one game. chess. whatever happened to freakin' solitaire? i ask you. oh and have i mentioned -- macs hate me? so there was that.

 

enter the mac geek from work. "you can put any wireless card in it" he said, "and it will either work, or it won't work, one or the other. but you won't have to mess with drivers!" wow, what a great feature -- it may or may not work and if it doesn't, there's not a chance i can make it work, how ... nice. but it was moot, any point i may have had there, because -- wireless cards cost money. and either work, or don't, and then you've got to take them back, and ... but first you have to buy them, and they cost money. so.

 

finally. month later. "you could probably share your laptop internet connection", he mentions, "and if your computer shares it right, it will just work" (you know, or not work, one or the other, no ifs, ands, or buts).

 

loooooong story short -- we now have a mac (still no keyboard, but a mouse at least) connected to a PC via a cat 5 crossover cable and the PC is connected via USB to a wireless phone (my sweet sweet dash, oh, i love that lil' telephone)  that's connected to the internet. and the mac, is on the internet.

 

and yeah, it just ... worked.

back in the day, i would have been babbling about my damn telephone (and my blog friends would have put up with me) but here? there is really no one but me, so why bother (well unless i'm bubbling over & cannot help it) and that is what i am.

 

bubbling.

 

having just now plugged the dash into the dv9000 and watching win mobile 6 bond with vista 64 ultimate and connect me to the interweb with no effort whatsoever on my part aside from finding the 'internet connection sharing' thingy in the dash's menu. and they connected us at what turns out to be damn near DSL speed. which i now think of as somewhat on the slow side, but still.

 

bubbling.

 

and you know what? it is such a symbiotic relationship. the telephone, with its everywhere internet and its thirst for power when running all manner of networky radio devices, plugged into the gentle current of the usb 2.0, getting charged, giving connectedness. oh god i love this stuff.

ok, no, i know that.

 

i know why. i just don't understand why i feel the need to blather away in utter oblivion. i no longer have the energy or even the inclination to throw my self into the digital social whirl ... i did that already, and i did it well, and i ... faded away anyway.

 

but old habits die hard.

 

so i flit from free space to free space, a little tribe here a little myspace there some buzznet some flickr ... & maybe other things i just can't remember. like that anonymous blog about sexual solipsism or something, ahh, it's all a blur. and i am grateful for that blurring, yes i am.

 

no i'm not.