Flying Blind

My laptop is in "Depot" (the name Apple gives its high-tech service centers scattered around the country) getting a complete overhaul. When I brought it in to the St Louis Genius Bar to have the keyboard replaced last week—because the "e" key was getting balky—the technicians discovered when they opened the hood a "brown, sticky substance" had been corroding the motherboard. Bad, bad, bad.

Not only does that mean a longer delay (sending it out to Depot instead of effecting an in-house repair) but the damage is not covered under warranty—because it looked to them like someone slopped hot chocolate on the keyboard, even though I have no memory whatsoever of having spilled anything on my keyboard, and I'm the only person who uses my machine. Grr.

So here I am, composing this blog on my wife's laptop (until she departs for four days in Chicago to drop Jibran off at Shimer College, and takes her laptop with her) realizing that I'm going to have to operate for the reminder of the week without benefit of digital support (other than what I can manage with my actual fingers). That means:

o  No email (I can hardly wait to see the avalanche that will be waiting for me when I finally get reunited with my refurbished laptop—ugh).

o  No access to my calendar.

o  No access to my address book.

I figure this is Nature's way of telling me to concentrate on the non-electronic aspects of life:

—Organizing and otherwise putting away the myriad boxes of stuff that I just imported from my old bedroom at Sandhill. These are seriously restricting passageways in Moon Lodge and Ma'ikwe will be highly pleased if I can unclog the house. Further, It's an excellent opportunity in that Jibran's departure (as a regular resident in the house) means there is a serendipitous opening for storage in the loft that has heretofore been Jibran's sole domain.

—Helping Sandhill form up and pour a lid for their cistern.

—Continuing to dig out the damaged water line from the house to the cistern at Moon Lodge.

—Keeping abreast of food processing, which tends to get out of control this time of year.

All of which is to say that I'm not exactly out of work, or in danger of expiring from ennui. I just have an unexpected temporary simplification of my how-will-I-spend-my-day menu. My biggest challenge is accepting what I can't control and embracing my reality (rather than lamenting it—and obsessing over the jerk who spilled hot chocolate on my laptop).

While this is not exactly flying blind (I can still see and hear, after all) it's nonetheless an apt metaphor in that I'll be operating the next few days without navigational markers that are digitally based—which is just about all of them in the Information Age. While there is a refreshing, back-to-the-basics quality about this stretch of days, it is also evocative of the dead days of the Mayan calendar, when normal life (whatever that is) is suspended while the mathematically elegant (but slightly inaccurate) human-constructed calendar gets realigned with the earth's actual orbit around the sun.

These are days out of time, or least days out of digital time, and that's probably a good thing, affording me an opportunity to get my psychic gyroscope re-tuned to my physical reality. It also gives me more time to read, of which I never seem to get enough.