Of why I will never live with a techie

Right. Now- it is said by many wisemen that to type when one is raging, icily mad is not an intelligent thing to do. Especially when the cause of anger is a comp that suddenly chooses to turn commie.

But therein lies the point. One does not write to be intelligent, one displays GMAT and IIT entrance scores for that. One writes when one is moved by such passion as to fear any other, louder mode of expression. One afterall, does not really wish the expiry of elderly relatives, or the baying of neighborhood dogs, or the souring of milk.

Personally, at least-

I write when there is such excrutiating rage that deathly quiet happens on my external features only because one-mouthed word is all that's required to unleash the gates of hell upon unsuspecting humanoids, who arent really sure where the brimstone is coming from... mm does anyone know how cosmically unbalancing an ill-timed, "whats wrong ..Oh, its just the computer. Im sure it will get fixed soon" is?

*growls*

No ma, the comp is not a starfish that will grow back an arm.

It is, in fact, cerberus at the gates of hell. It, and all its technical bugs sit there with a bestial greyness, declaring to all the world that THIS is what hell truly is: To have work sitting there, waiting, undone, trembling in its nudity, and to have a machine barefacedly throw up errors and boink sounds at you, accompanied by those disgusting little yellow triangles, telling you- No. You cant proceed. You cannot mail. You cannot upload. Ha.

This...

This is my karma. This is retribution- for all those mothers I killed in a past life, while yelling in Norse... for all those stolen baguettes in the street of 18th century Paris, making myself a club sandwich while some poor sod got lighter-headed on the guillotine... this is where whatever god there is points to me and says- You. Grovel. Realize your puny self is no match for the way I can unravel the strings of your fate, or knit them together in a horrendous everlong green sweater that the aunt you hated the most insisted on giving you at christmas when you were 10.

My comp will not work. It has steadily declared so, inspite of restarts, curses, thumps, tears, yells, dangerous teeth-gritting stares and more thumps.

It is now that I truly realize my helplessness.

Yes. I have turned into that which I had feared the most. A Puter-Wraith.

My life, my work being centralized via this machine, I am left- quivering, gasping, and without bearings- when it decides to "error" me.

Call me impetuous, presumptuous, melodramatic and you're bloody well right. I pride myself on my plumage, do you hear????

Hmpf.

At this point, this rock-bottomed darkness where slimey things play chess and discuss politics in a nasal tone- At this point, I require those I love to be with me [Dictatorial too, true]- Holding me, soothing me... taking away this god-damned rage because jesus... its getting a bit much.

I cannot I WILL NOT have someone who walks in, eyes the machine with a gleam [and me dispassionately], hops into the whirly-chair and then clickety-clacks away at the OS and the antivirus, clearing up bugs nonchalantly the way my mother removed aphids from her moneyplant in Muscat.

I WILL NOT have someone who then declares, "there- its fixed now" and then walks off humming into the other room, probably to check cricket scores or the commentary on the UEFA cup. Thus, I will never live with a techie.

I will however, have this trauma recognized: candles burnt, kisses taken and slowly then... when breathing returns... to have the comp suddenly back to normal order, the way it happened this afternoon. A miracle, to put it simply.

I now hate cookies. Crumbling bastards who apart from causing havoc, often also get stuck in your molars.

*sighs*

So my work is delayed by a few hours....what is one night in the long trail of nights, each plodding desolately into its own shadow under the kitchen table?..

But it is the pity of the thing.... it is the timing of the thing, and its apparent little-ness. Easy for the moor to get up and stifle his wife after a round of billowing soliloquies... jealousy, pride, war, lust, natural disasters, tragic death- These are big things, and somewhere we are equipped with the hearts and words to deal with them. We hear bagpipes in our head. We remember heroes.

But these small, shameful, snide acts of karma? These ignoble moments of being hung in limbo, trying to see whether it is the time to ctrl+alt+del yet again?

It is these insect-bites that crush. That nibble away at your soul. That make you wish you did not laugh so much in your afternoon, because those smiles seem to make this moment worse.

Perspective? Aye. This being a terribly narrowed one, true.

[Dont be sniffy, Im terribly upset over here.]

You are alone, even if the techie is on his way. Even if that way is just the short distance from his side of the bed to where you are sitting, distraught and bloodless, in front of the beast.

Computer bugs reach down further than your hard drive... for me, at least. Cold comfort, a quick fix is. Such is the way that machines work: they KNOW when you use them as solely a means to an end, without the wonder that is noticable in certain cheerful males from Hyderabad, who converse about their capability, their RAM. Computers know your secret fear of them, the cause of your open contempt or at times, your sheepish tender-footing around, especially with .exe files during installing moments.

And they wait, in smug silence, for you to lose your wariness, and assume "heyy, it IS just a machine"... they wait, for a moment when you thump that enter key just a bit too soon and- BANG!

They have you.

White-lipped, as you restore your active desktop...shudder at blue screens....wail over lost documents.

What would I really like right now?

A large staedler pencil, 4 B. A thick notepad, filled with unruled paper that I can doodle, poetrify or lyric on. A hillside, with a shady tree, in a place where 4:30pm means cool sunlight. And with me, the people whom due to these "errors", I cannot reach tonight.

No, I will never live with a techie. Like gynos, they carry around their work in their eyes, their hands.

I am however, curious to know what the man who plays Barney the purple dino on kiddie Television is like.

For now though- I return.

To stay frozen by the grave of my undone night, watching more error boxes, refreshing more pages...

Bug, Be not proud.

You will never hurt us, those of us who were brought to your altar bound, only because you held the promise of words and visuals....

Us, who still dream of memories of beaten drums, of rock paintings, and clay-under-nails, and papyrus, fresh-written...

We will win. For we will restart. With the patience that can only come from knowing, that all in all.....

*shakes my head, smiling*

The Show Must Go On.