On this, my natal day, I spent many happy hours fighting with electronics and seeking tech support for a surprising number of unexpected software glitches. But I never cracked, because it is my birthday, and I am happy to be alive.
I wonder if a time will come, later in life, when I decide to get away from technology again, and get off the internet and go outside more. I can see that. In my house, in New York state, giving over websurfing for woodswalking. In my later years. When I'm no longer touring for a living and having to be really, really in touch with everything. I'll have a pet or two, and write poetry on a tablet with a pen out by the pond, and stop ruining my eyes at the screen. I'll get up in the morning and linger over tea on the porch, and plan the gardening, and mend the shed. And wave to the occasional mile-off neighbor as he walks down my dirt road with his doggie.
Yes, I could look forward to that.
Anyway, my sister and brother in law took me out for dinner at a fabulous Thai restaurant, and then we got out mom's old miniature liquor bottle collection and dumped most of them out. These were from the 60s, 70s, and perhaps beyond -- some from Germany and other places, some in languages we couldn't even decipher. It's the sort of thing I'd collect, I think; and I might even start my own soon, as a tribute to her. I wonder if she thought one day she'd drink them. Anyway, some had evaporated or leaked a little, and some were downright nasty to smell. But a chance few were still sealed and good -- I took home a little Grand Marnier, a Russian liqueur that tasted like chocolate, and a spot of rum (to go in the Christmas eggnog). She also got out her watch collection -- between mom and my sister there were 7 or 8 sitting in a drawer -- and I chose two, as I've lost my other one. Maybe I can hold onto these for a while. (The things I lose on the road...)
All that's really left to go through, of mom's and dad's, are boxes of photographs. That'll take a long night, and perhaps two or three miniature liquor bottles, to get through.
On this, my natal day, I received a lovely email from a long lost friend who loves Spoonerisms, and he wrote, "Burpy Hathday!" I also received several phone felicitations (that sounds nastier than it actually is) containing many happy returns. In the mail came my Strunk & White's The Elements of Style which I can't wait to read just like a little bedtime story. I ALSO received a dividend check from my auto insurance company for about $67. My hair's nice and spiky, all my comfy clothes are clean, and I weigh what I weighed in high school. All in all, a great 45th birthday.
Calling tech support today reminded me of a poem I wrote a while back -- during the thick of the invasion of Iraq -- when that song "Everybody Has Fun Tonight," or whatever the hell it was called, was popular. I had called, you guessed it, tech support for a computer problem, and was waiting on hold for a long time and this song was playing into my captive ear, and I was thinking about Bush jigging us to hell in a handbasket. So I wrote this:
Tech Support
I am listening to bad music on hold
alternative bubble gum pop
The Bangles meet Sandra Dee
at a skinhead bar
choke rock
pink gogo boots and midriff displays
nothing left to pierce
I am waiting for tech support
while my worldview is challenged by "Everybody has fun tonight"
Repititious as propaganda (They're evil so we must destroy them)
Bang, bang
Everybody has fun tonight.
I am staring at an error message
wondering what went wrong
why the man we didn't elect
is taking us toward mass destruction everybody has fun tonight
What would I tell him if I could
step up to the mic?
