NEW LAPTOP TOUCH SCREEN MEETS ATROPHIED LEFT BRAIN

       anonymous art of revolution


A new laptop has attached itself to my consciousness. It has an awful lot of aspects invisible to me that will always be invisible to me. Most of them. I'm looking at a diamond and seeing only maybe three facets. But they're the only ones I use, need, want. First time Tim the Techman worked on my computer, he asked what I used it for. I said, A glorified typewriter. And that's it. I like to look at utube and facebook, which has changed radically and continues to change to the same degree. I like the new facebook. In the earlier one, pre-twitter, people wrote chatty quips like on twitter now. It was different, but it had it's own chatty style. Now facebook is a half dozen "memes" (cartoons with photo for the picture) each day from every place I clicked like until I learned I could not unclick like once it was done and these things started taking over my facebook page. I actually prefer targeted ads and political content to be specific to me, as perceived by corporate statistical analyses. A cartoon that makes me laugh instead of snarl. I don't want fascist propaganda in my facebook page. I don't want crap about subscribing to Ann Coulter's blog. I prefer to see posts from a place called Americans against the republican party, Americans against the tea party, Everlasting GOP stoppers, Ayn Rand drew Social Security, ARM (anti republican movement), Occupy Wall St, Hillbilly hangout, Ralph Stanley museum. Plus all the sweet sentiments from people I know and like. I don't worry over the privacy issue. We have no privacy. It will not be coming back any time soon. Don't worry, be happy.


First experience with the new laptop about made me bananas. Touch screen. I'd never done anything like that before. Had seen it in commercials and on cell phones of friends. I can adjust the size of a picture or page by fingertips on the monitor. A monitor cleaner will be in order next. Or maybe all the touching will keep it clean. We'll see. The first thing that made me nuts was having to pick where I want to go from a screen that looks like a toy baby Vada plays with. Push a button, it plays Old MacDonald. Another button makes a duck quack. Another button makes a cow moo. Always having to go back to that page takes me back to Mario Brothers, Super Mario, dropping down a hole you didn't know was there. Places to jump up and boing a number you don't know is there. Never one for video games, I was somewhat repelled by having to learn a computer made easy for people who grew up playing video games. Facing a computer designed for children with touch-screen interaction was a little too much like inter-active tv, calling a 900 number to vote yes or no, emailing a tv show's website repeatedly. I went into it thinking all I want is a glorified typewriter I can look at utube with and do emails, store pictures in and write this.


Now I have something I can Skype with, which I don't want to do but probably will get into at some point. Most of the inter-active buttons to touch or click on are about buying something or other, a vacation to Paris or Barcelona, or some resort something or other in Tahiti or any other tourist spot on earth. Cruises. Lord NO! If I ever learn how to make those buttons go away that link me up to some site that wants my credit card number for no telling what, I'll vanish them and get them out of sight. I feel like I'm at a Walmart serve-yourself register when that page is up. Insert credit card. Over time I'd like to de-commercialize this thing I can only call a product. Filling out all the introductory information like thinking up passwords and so forth, I was asked to give the laptop a name. I'd never thought about naming one, but do have a sense that a computer is a consciousness of a sort I don't understand. I went within for a name the way I look for something. I shut my eyes, blanked my mind and waited for a name to rise. Jezebel came up clearly. I thought, no, then thought, yes. That's what came up. First thing to my mind by association is Sade's song Jezebel, remembering seeing her sing it in concert, one of my favorite of her songs. I'd named a black kitten Tar Baby from a Sade song. Laptop now is named after a Sade song like a cat I loved for fifteen years. It reminds me of how much I love her music.


Such was my initial response to something that looked like the laptop it is replacing, but worked very differently. This is Windows 8 (I think) and the other was Windows 2000 (I think). Big difference initially. By today, four days later, I'm close to as familiar with it as the previous computer. It is flowing smoothly by now. When I say "it" I mean me. I'm the one flowing smoothly. Before I began to flow smoothly, I had to go over and around a run of rocks everywhere. After first couple hours with it, I had found the limits of what I was able to do, had gone to as far as I could go in each possible direction until I came to stasis. I couldn't get past several different points, so I shut it down and went to bed frustrated. I took it as something on the order of learning to throw darts at a dartboard. First several throws, the wall gets hit as much as the target. When it does hit the target, it's nowhere near the number throwing for.  As time goes by, the darts land in the same quadrant as the number aimed for, and then hit the number one out of three throws, then two out of three throws. Skill at throwing darts comes slowly. I decided to calm down and learn the computer like learning to throw darts. Develop a new skill.


In my years of creeping dementia, it is good to have a mental problem to fuss over. I welcome it as a mental exercise, a new skill. Seeing how fast I'm tuning into Belle's consciousness, it won't be long until I understand at least the basic workings of my new friend. Looks like a princess in her new dress. Where did you get that? Do you really want to know? she says. It came as evidence of the truth in old hillbilly wisdom, "Be good to a kid and you'll have a friend for life." I have two "kids" I prayed up. They were the children of some of my friends. I guess I did what a "God parent" does, prayed them up, the prayers in their cases for their survival. They made it. Now that they're grown up, we're still friends like we were when they were little. I watched them grow up. One lives in the East and one in the West. The Western one was visiting from Portlandia. Our bond of friendship is better than kin. Parent-child tension is absent, never was a consideration. Betrayal of even the least trust impossible. It gives me a feeling that tells me I've lived a good life. In some cases I've done the right thing. I see it something like the ground I cared for grew a fulfilling garden. Helped two children who had enough going against them to call it everything. Gave them an adult friend who understood what they were going through and affirmed for them that it was not their fault, and a lot of times it's nobody's fault. They've come to characterize karma for me in everyday life and remind me of gratitude that my parachute put my feet down in the mountains. I never once thought about a karmic return. If I had, I could not have guessed it as it worked out. I had not imagined I'd ever see either of them again after they finished high school. The gift of the dinosaur replacement was intended toward my happiness, and it worked. I'm like Vada playing with toys on the floor.


*

HILLBILLY TRUST

fiddlin art wooten

This morning, lying awake just after waking, facing the wall, I heard from behind me, like right up close to my back where TarBaby would often be in the morning, I heard a cat purring. I lay quietly listening. He could not have come into the house, because windows and door were closed. It was TarBaby's particular purr. Caterpillar has been sleeping about 5 feet away, so I reasoned it was Caterpillar. I turned over to look, no cat in sight. The purring stopped as soon as I turned. If I hear it again, I'll stay still and listen. Another case of hearing him at the door and finding nothing there. That one I can dismiss as a surprise wheeze in my breathing that sounded like a cat saying, Mao. As far as I can tell, this is the first time TarBaby has contacted me. This was unmistakable. A couple mornings when I was sleeping on the floor at Jr's I felt TarBaby beside my back. He was living in the body then, so it doesn't necessarily mean he's dead, though after 2 weeks I can't help but think he is. By dead I mean spirit left the body, spirit still living, only body dead.

The rest of the day I put programs in the laptop for the printer, scanner, etc. Only came upon one thing to make me raise my voice and Tapo look over to see what set the giant off. For Microsoft Word, for some reason they wanted the 25 figure "product key," which, of course, was on the bottom of the computer. I turned it up on a corner, wrote down the letters and numbers painstakingly attentive to double, triple checking with a magnifying glass. I entered them. Not it. I turn the computer up again and every letter as I have it entered is correct. I tried again. Incorrect. What made Tapo look up was when I said, It IS correct!!! I checked and re-checked countless times and it never would receive what I gave it, which was correct. I wrote to a help line a direct declarative statement of the issue. The answer I received was I gave too many questions to answer. Wanted me to narrow it down to one question. The computer answer genie doesn't appear to have much better sense than a committee. The thing about it is, I know it's me. Something about it I'm not doing right. I typed all the letters and numbers with caps lock on because it was all cap letters, and numbers are numbers with caps lock too. Tomorrow's exploration will be to see if it will receive what I type in if I don't use caps lock for the numbers, do the numbers in lower case, as it were. I'm not trying it any more today because I've dawdled in tech mechanics enough for one day.

The painting above of Art Wooten was the first in my series of mountain musicians, the first ones on wood. Jr's response to seeing his friend Art when I handed it to him was astonishment. He had no idea I could get a likeness that was like seeing Art himself. Up to that moment Jr had felt sorry for me because I couldn't weld, couldn't fix tractors, couldn't work a sawmill, couldn't drive a truck, didn't hunt, couldn't cut up a deer hanging by it's back feet, couldn't do nothing that was practical. He never said anything, but for quite a while he took me for plain pitiful. Then he saw I could paint a likeness of someone he knows so he recognized him. He didn't feel sorry for me after that. Next I showed him one I painted of him picking banjo. That one caused him to get quiet for a moment, look at the floor and say, 'Thank you.' Every time I finished one of the paintings, I took it to show him.

Sometimes we'd talk about them. He said, "I don't see how you do it. How did you learn how to do that?" I told him I figured it out the same way he figured out a banjo and learned to work on tractors and weld. He understood that. It took the mystery out of it, made it something he could comprehend. I told him it's one of them things, like he got the gift for banjo pickin and I got the gift for painting. We all get our own talent. A lot of people think painting is something you either have or don't have. They tried it once and it was terrible. So was everybody's first attempt. But if that's when you give up, it's a pretty good sign it's of no interest as something to spend any time doing. Right now, I don't know what's up with my painting. Haven't touched it in 2-3 weeks. I look at it every day, but seldom approach it. In this grieving period over Jr, I don't feel like painting or anything, and then TarBaby in there too, I don't have what it takes to want to paint. I don't want to do anything. I like to see people and I like to be here alone. Now, it's best to stay at home because I feel so down and out. No need to pass it around like the flu any more than I have to.

It could be a good time to keep an abstraction going, to add something to it every once in awhile, build it over a period of time until it's finished. No. It's a good time to take it easy, let this sorrow play its course and pass. I've an idea if I talked with a particular psychotherapist I'd be told I'm depressed and pills would help. But I want Jr to have a full grieving cycle. I miss him. I miss his spirit. Jr's spirit was wide awake and alive at all times. I'm not afraid of sorrow. I find when I'm in what I'll call a depression, I'm working in my head on something that's an issue that's come up, something I need to deal with that's more than just trimming toenails. I'm of the mind I'd rather deal with my own issues than be going about happy all the time like it's the Ozzie and Harriet Show. That's ok too, but I feel better about it when it's my own temperament I'm living with. It's not harmful to others. It's harmful to myself, but in such a slow way it's hard to notice. I don't want to get old and helpless anyway. I'm every day glad I was able to keep Jr out of the nursing home, except for the physical therapy rounds, made it possible for him to fade away at home, the only place he wanted to be. It gives me a big inner glow to do such a thing for a Blue Ridge Mountain hillbilly banjo pickin sawmiller and tractor mechanic who trusted me so well he told me the contents of his will the day he signed it, trusting absolutely I'd never tell anyone. And I still won't. Such trust is for all time. It's the kind of trust that doesn't come lightly or quickly. It's earned. That's the part that makes me feel good about it, that in my time with Jr Maxwell I earned his trust. That's important to me. Way up there high important. It was never a purpose, because I never would have believed it possible. Very different in hindsight from in foresight.

SHOULD'VE

n road work on 18 south

UPS just now dropped off my new computer replacement, an HP laptop. Latest in this and that. Can watch movies on it. Not that I will, but it will do that. As usual, when I opened the box, took out all the stuffings, got the laptop out and the accessories that go with it, put the stuffings back in, there wasn't room in the box for all the stuffings, let alone the computer. It was very well packed. Ordered it from amazon just a few days ago. I don't dare attempt to put it together before I write you. It looks really simple. They have everything concise as possible, good instructions. But the reason I am not a mechanic is there is always something that's going to be a hangup. It looks deceptively simple. I want to get what needs doing out of the way before I jump into something that can potentially take hours or days. It could all be done in an hour, which probably will be the case. But I don't count on it.

I was settling in to write to you when UPS stopped in front. I knew what it was, and sure enough, it was. It feels odd to guess something right anymore. My experience with shit-happens moments recently is not very conducive to optimism about approaching a mechanical, albeit tech, device with a mind to putting it together to make it work. Ultimately, I can see it as a possibility, but scheduling it is another matter. It figures in the Unknown category. There, it's a crap shoot. This computer I'm on is a dinosaur so old its eggs are petrified. It works all right, but it takes between a half hour and an hour to get it up and running. When it's going, it's a matter of click and wait for water to boil, click an wait. It's an interesting exercise in patience. Or should I say a challenge to patience. If computers weren't so sensitive I'd be inclined to cuss it, but I do anyway. I don't like to, because it is my friend. It was very expensive back 15 or so years ago and I got way more than I needed. It's become so SLOW. I'm so bored with slow, esp while paying for DSL. I'm looking forward to click-and-there-it-is. Another temporarily satisfied spoiled American. That's my cog on the wheel. Keeping the bloodstream of the economy flowing.

Maybe tomorrow I can write you on the new instrument. It looks kind of scary. I opened it. Liked the size of the screen. The keyboard and that little rectangle for finger mouse, something to get used to. I'll miss my old friend. There's that thing about 3s again. Jr, TarBaby and computer. 3 big vacancies. The computer has a replacement, but the other 2 can never be replaced. It's all mortality in action. The rolling wheel of time.

I found a note I made yesterday morning. I pushed the button when I got up to start the radio. The news was on. First sentence I heard was, "He should have challenged the pervading culture of secrecy." I laughed out loud and went about getting coffee going. That meaningless word should again. He should, like applied in hindsight is even more meaningless. When I hear should, I automatically think, not necessarily. How does this guy know? He's a young guy in some kind of radio journalism. Talking through his ass is really what he was doing. I didn't listen for who it was who should have, because I knew immediately it was about Catholic priests and bishops and the Church and prison and secrecy. When you're in a culture of secrecy, you don't challenge it. Like when you're in the world of making white liquor, you don't rat. Maybe some years later some commentator might see your story, 2 years in prison for making liquor. He should have.... But he didn't. And he'd do the 2 years again before he would do what this guy in a totally different context believes he should have done. Because it doesn't even apply.

In any "pervading culture of secrecy," you rat, you die, or an equivalent that's worse. This middle class journalist might live in a subdivision where all the houses are new and all just alike as far as you can see, a maze like an enormous trailer park. The bishop in the pervading culture of secrecy was in a world of men wearing silk and satin gowns festooned with expensive lace, draping themselves in gold jewelry, big gems for rings, golden slippers. When the underbelly of the Vatican gets exposed, it's going to make Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, Oral Roberts and the rest of them look like the small time they really are. At least they wear men's clothes. Now that the expose has begun, it's going to get worse and continue to get worse. The way the media jumps into feeding frenzies in this time, bringing down the powerful, most recently Tiger Woods for turning out to be ordinary, it can get bad for the Church. In this Age of breaking down traditions, every one to the last one in the darkest corner, the Church is yet to break. When it does, it's going to be ugly. Real ugly.

It's getting time to conclude this and see what can be done with the new computer. I'm not undoing the old one first. For me, this tech stuff is like jumping into a swimming pool with no lights on a moonless night. It's too wierd to think about. All I can do is settle into it, get out the instructions. Will put on a cd of the Carolina Chocolate Drops to entertain my right brain while my atrophied left brain takes an IQ test. It looks like they have it down to where you merely have to be sentient to be able to figure it out. I'm grateful for that. I like that there is only one cord. Or so it appears now. Again, it's a dark swimming pool. What if it has inflatable dolls floating all over it and I can't see them? I don't dare anticipate.