the gallery of the cherry blossoms hung among this, the haunted spring for if march showers bring promise we can not await their offering in the quiet of april showers quarrel more prayers wait for the arrival of the summer sun
notes… haiku feel (for me), sort of, one of those as I say ‘wrote itself’, sometimes I feel like the words come from somewhere else, I could take all the credit, but when I think about it the universe has collaborated to create me at this instant (and you, incidentally)… so, a lot had to happen for this little post of words, and it actually did…
not to sound morbid, but to be honest, this is what populated my head, maybe I should step back a second though, and set up the story, it’s a simple matter I assure you but also kind of a hallmark of the time…
I come home last night (as I do), so my home internet decides to crap out, there was some sort of power failure in my town, over what? over why? I have no idea, just coming home to a few blinking clocks, the microwave and such, no big deal, I think, until I spot the ominous blue blink, my cable modem is usually a stalwart, a bell-weather, steady in the storm, a good old green light signal for all intersections, do not pass go, and collect two hundred, but not tonight, just this blinking blue light as if I just rebooted it, but according to the microwave the time is 2:36am, so (quick math) the power went out two hours ago plus thirty six (damn I’m quick), so this thing has been rebooting for some time, with not a good result, yech, I have to say, being a computer tech the last thing you want to come home to is computer problems, well anyway, I figure it possibly can not be anything dire (mistake) so I troubleshoot away, but quickly arrive at the same dead end with a blinking blue light, I even checked the cable outside to the street pole, all looks well, but just staring at me that blinking blue hell, but that is just the gate, next step is calling tech support which you need telephone acrobatics and a gps just to navigate the phone response system, then I hear the words “unexpected call volume”, kind of like letting the air out of a balloon my hope fluttered out like said balloon laying flat on the floor like some sad empty sack, this would have been enough, but no, the internet company decided, “hey, this guy is down, let’s kick him in his nethers for good measure”, well, maybe not EXACTLY like that but I swear the sentiment seeped through the phone like spikes into my lobes, “please visit our website for help”, that is of course after I picked the option for ‘I don’t have internet’, kind of hard to surf the web with no connection, and hearing that between the ‘call volume message’ was a slow winding spiral into a boiling pot of dementia, so an hour passes, I finally get what I guess is a human, and I can not get them to skip the basic troubleshooting, these people stick to the script as if they are being held hostage (so does that make this kind of a stockholm situation?), anyway, of course nothing works, they can see my modem but nothing else, yeah, lots of help, ok, things happen, I get it, so I settle on getting a tech on site, no problem, I understand, things break… my appointment, first available, the 28th… I mean seriously, over a week? So I agree, I mean what else can you do when you are negotiating with the hand hiking that wedgie sky high and your toes ain’t on the ground… I figure I can take it, no big deal, I have tons of video, movies, TV to catch up on… ah, but fate was not done, just flipping me over to make sure both sides got those nice grill marks on…
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as it turns out, today, due to the corona virus situation, my boss hatched a plan (not complaining, actually a good thing) where we will work from home 3 days out of 6 starting… today, of course, well, I kind of need internet to accomplish such things, basic phone hotspots work in a pinch but not for heavy duty file transfers and the like, which is like… what I do, often, it’s not just the ole hook up to your PC tech support, anyway, so I searched my immediate area to find a proper phone store to buy a 5G hotspot to do the trick, and that brings me back to the top of this whole shindig…
so I was looking at the guy behind the counter, seemed like a good dude, we are exchanging the unusual banter, unusual because this is a quite unusual time around here, stores closed, Hilti for some reason next door, the chinese place (great soup) also decided to pack it in for a few weeks, and then…
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in my head I thought “am I talking to a dead man?”, which is a strange and awful thought, but these are strange and awful times but then I thought “am I the dead man?” for surely one’s own mortality crosses your mind, regardless of how rational you may be, no one I know is perfect at keeping out all the demons all the time, in a week will this be one of the last things one of us did? the possibility exists, the uncertainty certainly persists and is permeating the very landscape, on my way home I noticed a couple walking their two bouncy kids down the sidewalk in my little suburban tree lined perfect looking America town, and I thought if that was the last thing I was doing, if the world ended tomorrow, that would have been a nice last thought.
notes… I am not sure but I think chronicling such things is important in times of crisis, at least lest we look back and forget, maybe lessons learned won’t become lessons washed away by the happiness of complacent things, we seek comfort, and love, of that I have no doubt, I just wish there was a way to mesh us all together in the human cause without the executioner’s axe swinging freely around, but perhaps that is not always our nature and needs to be summoned, maybe one day I’ll figure something out…
Shades of My Garden 