Monday, March 28, 2005
The Resurrection
My laptop died over the weekend. I've identified the root cause of the problem : a cooling fan on the back of it stopped spinning, and the resultant heat buildup must of done something nasty to one of the many bits, bolts and bobs and (I suspect) little blue pictsies that work the monitor. The laptop is still (barely) alive, but I can't see what it's thinking unless I plug a monitor into it, and prepare myself for the eventuality of it burning a hole through the table, the earth's mantle, and the fabric of the space time continuum.
So right now I'm sitting here surfing the net (for free!) in a service centre somewhere in the middle of Blueland waiting to present my case before my judge, jury andReaperman Repairman, in the hopes of being deemed worthy of The Great Gift of (Free) Resurrection (as dictated by my warranty agreement)
Fingers crossed. I repainted all the scratches and clawmarks on the casing. They'll buy it if I believe it enough...
Driving in here was a strange experience. I've been here many times in the past. A friend - or rather, I suspect, an ex-friend - of mine used to work here. It's a... blast from the past.
I've lost many friends through the decades, most of them to age and mutual neglect.
A select few cast me away.
And a very select few I cast aside.
The reasons for the former were usually stupid, and if only they knew the truth I suspect things would be... rather different.
In the aftermath of those, I'm just a little saddened, and mostly indifferent. Work and gym see to it that I'm too tired to dwell on low-priority situations. (Echoes of the past, a voice : You have to get your priorities straight)
But the one I cast away : I knew precisely what I was doing and the potential ramifications. I knew I was in the wrong when I did it, and I knew that I would regret it.
And I do.
*****
A friend of mine told me lately that she'd gotten past the self-abuse stage of her grief from a not-so-recent Mother of All Breakups (comes complete with mandatory male mindgames)
I paused for a moment and thought about all the time I spend in the gym trying to squeeze out that extra meter, to cut that extra minute, to set that extra 5 kg on the block... and wondered if perhaps I never really got past that point.
Maybe I'm just... slow.
*****
Said friend complains occasionally how her friend(s) get told they're so pretty, but she doesn't. Only once in a while completely random men rhapsodize to her that she's beautiful. She wonders (without quite saying it) if it's an approachability problem.
I just wonder why it's a problem at all. Damne, I never get saddled with these socio-moral-ethical dilemmas, bugger it.
And the odd time some strange looking bloke checks me out in the gym loo it just feels kinda yucky. purge from memory. delete. Backspace.
*****
Everytime I drive around the bend (in my car. In my car.) I notice, without quite noticing that the building is gone.
And suddenly I'm a teenager again, getting dropped off for German class by my mother.
I smile mechanically, wave goodbye robotically, and wait till she's out of eyesight.
And then I sprint, my lungs filling with the warm, moist miasma that is the afternoon's atmosphere, my legs never breaking stride as I run - I'm running in the same direction my mum drove, but I'm not running after her.
Because I stop just after I round the corner.
I'm here.
I step through the doors into the theatre. People are milling around, more - many more - people than I thought there would be. It's a mess of motion and sound, and somewhere in my mind I am disappointed... it's nothing the way I imagined it would be in my mind's eye. How will I possibly find...
... and then She is here.
Standing before me, resplendant (well I think so anyhow) in her blazer and tie, looking me dead in the eye and smiling.
She doesn't say anything - I beat her to the punchline for once, but she'll never really know what it meant this one time.
"This better be good... I'm missing German for this."
(Unspoken : This is the first class I've ever bunked off in my life.)
So right now I'm sitting here surfing the net (for free!) in a service centre somewhere in the middle of Blueland waiting to present my case before my judge, jury and
Fingers crossed. I repainted all the scratches and clawmarks on the casing. They'll buy it if I believe it enough...
Driving in here was a strange experience. I've been here many times in the past. A friend - or rather, I suspect, an ex-friend - of mine used to work here. It's a... blast from the past.
I've lost many friends through the decades, most of them to age and mutual neglect.
A select few cast me away.
And a very select few I cast aside.
The reasons for the former were usually stupid, and if only they knew the truth I suspect things would be... rather different.
In the aftermath of those, I'm just a little saddened, and mostly indifferent. Work and gym see to it that I'm too tired to dwell on low-priority situations. (Echoes of the past, a voice : You have to get your priorities straight)
But the one I cast away : I knew precisely what I was doing and the potential ramifications. I knew I was in the wrong when I did it, and I knew that I would regret it.
And I do.
*****
A friend of mine told me lately that she'd gotten past the self-abuse stage of her grief from a not-so-recent Mother of All Breakups (comes complete with mandatory male mindgames)
I paused for a moment and thought about all the time I spend in the gym trying to squeeze out that extra meter, to cut that extra minute, to set that extra 5 kg on the block... and wondered if perhaps I never really got past that point.
Maybe I'm just... slow.
*****
Said friend complains occasionally how her friend(s) get told they're so pretty, but she doesn't. Only once in a while completely random men rhapsodize to her that she's beautiful. She wonders (without quite saying it) if it's an approachability problem.
I just wonder why it's a problem at all. Damne, I never get saddled with these socio-moral-ethical dilemmas, bugger it.
And the odd time some strange looking bloke checks me out in the gym loo it just feels kinda yucky. purge from memory. delete. Backspace.
*****
Everytime I drive around the bend (in my car. In my car.) I notice, without quite noticing that the building is gone.
And suddenly I'm a teenager again, getting dropped off for German class by my mother.
I smile mechanically, wave goodbye robotically, and wait till she's out of eyesight.
And then I sprint, my lungs filling with the warm, moist miasma that is the afternoon's atmosphere, my legs never breaking stride as I run - I'm running in the same direction my mum drove, but I'm not running after her.
Because I stop just after I round the corner.
I'm here.
I step through the doors into the theatre. People are milling around, more - many more - people than I thought there would be. It's a mess of motion and sound, and somewhere in my mind I am disappointed... it's nothing the way I imagined it would be in my mind's eye. How will I possibly find...
... and then She is here.
Standing before me, resplendant (well I think so anyhow) in her blazer and tie, looking me dead in the eye and smiling.
She doesn't say anything - I beat her to the punchline for once, but she'll never really know what it meant this one time.
"This better be good... I'm missing German for this."
(Unspoken : This is the first class I've ever bunked off in my life.)
