It’s hard to say
what pleasure I get from traveling
but I just noticed
I get the same buzz from learning a new OS
and how the same things
in a different way
rewire me like a delicious dream.
On My Complete Conversion to Apple Products
More of a “still alive” post than anything else.
On one of my blogs back in 2010 or so I dimly remember this “LOL whut” kind of post that I made from an Apple store. My son’s iPod Touch, which was fairly new, had broken down and I was there, and a little bit on the edgy side, to get it fixed.
I seem to remember thinking the iPads were kinda stupid. Now I’ve got one of those, of course, along with an iPhone, a Mac Mini, and a Macbook Pro. The Mini and the Macbook have only recently come into my life because of a job; I’d remained a resolute Windows user until this past month. I changed jobs this year from a Windows shop to a place where the owner wants everyone on a Mac.
All I lack now is one of those watches, but I’m still in “LOL whut” mode about them.
I’m Playing for Someone Famous Tomorrow
And tonight I had to escape from an extended-stay
motel proxy, which was the only thing I could get
after a five-hour rehearsal in a college town
and eat lamb at a Mediterranean chain restaurant
and watch Office Space again back
in my room.
It’s this transition from the sacred to the mundane
I heard a mixed choir sing a beautiful tune acapella
and it could have made me cry
if I hadn’t had to count 12 bars of four
before coming back in.
September 12
When I turned my iPhone back on as we taxied to the gate
preparing for a dash for my connecting flight
a voicemail had arrived:
The following is important information about your flight
which has been cancelled due to an earlier cancellation
due to weather in your area.
And this is how they told me I’d be emerging from the airport
an abstractly secure place with seemingly no connections
to the city around it
Participation Mystique
Re-reading William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition made me sadly wistful for a time in the recent past, when the book’s heroine Cayce Pollard could seem hip, cool, and high-tech by cabling up a cell phone to an iBook and sending emails to people. She could do almost everything she does in the book now with an iPhone, as owned by every high school student. Continue reading “Participation Mystique”
Novocaine
I only learned today that the local anesthetic
my dentist used for extracting part of a tooth
and building up a partial, stumpy bit
of composite resin
in preparation for a later, larger
extraction of cash for a crown
The Dream of An Office
…Ranks of books
On the sides — old Miltons, Tolstoys, Wuthering
Heights, Ackermann’s Oxford. A holograph
Copy of Keats’s “To Autumn”…— from The Dream of a House, Reynolds Price
I find myself in medias res
as one always does in dreams
in a small office, such as
an associate professor
at a branch campus
like the one I attended
would have.
The Same Earth
My sons march on the same earth
I practiced on a different century ago
but that was before I tried writing a novel
getting married, watching
Remains of the Day.
I can’t recognize the place
because the new band room
and a fence has been added on
and so much grass has grown
since then.
Booze and Jetlag
As shown in a movie like Lost in Translation
best experienced with headphones, the way
sounds of a strange city come at you wrong
out of phase
are what separate you from the self
that worries about the past and future, which
liberates you for a moment
which must nevertheless be saved up for,
and paid with interest.
Still Alive
Still alive, folks! Working on:
a) a job
b) a business
c) a search for a better job (or more business).
poetrytech 