Technology = My Enemy

So my computer is busted. I don't know what happened, but it pretends like it's going to turn on, gets to the wallpaper of the old man standing on a street corner in a plaid coat and red hunting cap, and then it just sort of wheezes and stops--the cursor impotently hovering over that frozen image of the old man. I've hijacked my roomate's computer for this entry, but if the thing doesn't fix itself soon I'm going to freak out.

There was a point in time when I came to learn that nothing written on a computer actually exists untill you print (unless of course it's on the internet, but that's a whole other life lesson). At school I printed tirelessly-- every third paragraph I'd run to the library, foolishly I never had a printer of my own. That is not untill last spring, when I got a free one someone left among all the old clothes and discarded tupperwear in front of the Tea House. I was thrilled by the find, but when I finally got around to hooking it up it told me it needed a new ink cartridge. Right now it's sitting under my desk in a resigning heap. Now my computer won't turn on and I've got to face the fact that whatever is on there doesn't really exist.

This is why I'm freaking out. It's like being faced with your own mortality. I'm conflicted--feeling like all those word files were all really nothing, pitiful wastes of time, and at the same time like I should have done more. Maybe if I'd worked harder, come out with something substantial it wouldn't seem so pitful and, hell, I'd probably have more of a record of it. The thing is there isn't really one thing I can put my finger on and say: oh that thing, that's where it all accumulated to, that's the real piece of work, the one that matters. Mostly it's the little things that I might have forgotten about--really it all comes down to individual sentences, a turn of a phrase, the littlest whispers of an inspired thought.

Honestly though, I know my old man computer isn't actually dead. I've been assured that if worst comes to worst all I need is a computer nerd to get the files off of it for me.

My thoughts return to a certain especially hot computer nerd from school. Big pants and a skateboard is all I'm willing to say. It was Sophomore year and this same stupid computer was having problems, I'd just gotten it and even as I was fist setting it up it behaved like a crumgeon. The hot computer nerd payed me a house call and it was just like one of those 70's pornos with the plumber and the housewife, except the sex part was only in my head.

Anyway, my point is there may be a silver lining here.