The Gori Details

Disconnected

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by

Giancarlo Gori
in , , ,

The made plans and all that amazing literature that followed leave me with nothing more than a heavy sigh and some freakish fears and concern.  Why? Oh my am I glad you asked!

You see, nothing about the tale has anything to do with this post or why I feel fear. It is however appropriate since my plan for the day failed on such a scale as to make me both laugh and nearly cry. How could something this easy be so freaking hard?

The this to which I refer is adding a wireless modem to an old, slow PC so I can achieve internet access at my new domicile. The room I am renting does not have cable. The entire place does not actually. Dish TV and DSL internet.

Easy right? Put in the disc and follow the instructions. Hmm. That’s funny. Not only does it not work, the process seems to have rat-fucked the would be host machine as well. Now, not only do I have two computers that cannot access the internet, my gracious host has two too that do the same not connecting.  Already very happy at taking my unemployed broke ass in, I can tell.

Being much more savy than I, I abandon ship to allow quite work and unabashed cursing of me. And also to come continue packing and prepping to be out of this place in two days.

While I am doing this packing it occurs to me that all those jokes of be the homeless guy with a lap top, sitting at the Coffee Bean sipping on the same small cup for two hours just for the free internet, are all coming true!

Whole – Lee – Crap!

I have spent a lot of time thinking now about not being in touch via the internet. My cell phone does not do it. It may, I don’t know. Just know that I do not pay for it to do it. It makes and receives calls and (of course) has replaced my wrist watch.

I find my self somewhere between really angry that I could not figure the thing out and really freaking stressed out over not being on-line. Creepy. Have I become so used to the never present – never real – never soft touch of others, experiencing ‘friends and companionship’  only in electronic format that without it, I am feeling lonely and anxious – before it has even happened?

Whole – Lee – Crap!

I am making lists in my head of when I can be at the bean. What kind of auto reply I can use to let people know, I am on limited connection times. How weird and dependent will it look to do that? How much a looser do you look like with only 90 minutes of internet per day? What if someone wants my services but I take to long to reply? What if someone has the offer of a life time, OF MY LIFE TIME and I miss it while in line for a Large Extra Fat Whole Natural Mothers Milk Mocha?!?!?

Don’t you get it? Life, MY LIFE, could be occurring with unchecked acceleration and one handed steering while I dither and dally and read PRINTED WORDS! I will be, a non-connected person. I will not know the latest, the newest, the sickest, the fastest of everything that really has nothing to do with nor affects me yet; I have become dedicated to reading and knowing every day; three to four times per day!

I am going back twenty years! One giant step backwards after another! At this rate , my mother Betty will be in labor again for Thanksgiving oh-10!

No face book, no yahoo news, no fantasy racing, no random surveys on jock itch, toe jam, erectile dysfunction, lower mortgage rates, higher returns, young singles or old money! WTF will I do?!?!

The thing is, the only thing it does effect is work. I can walk to the bean in the morning and check email, reply and note in said reply, do not expect reply again for 24 hrs.  In a few months, if all goes well, I will have some extra cash to get  the router that works with the AT&T modem (since they refuse to offer support for the one I do own without charging to tell me the info I need)

Until that time I will live like did in the dark ages of the 80’s. Shame I got rid of my Members Only jacket just last week as I packed for this move. Good think I still have the books – the very same books I disparaged for their bulk only a few day past, wishing for a kindle or equivalent! HA! Lesson learned.

Look for the smoke signals my friends, a stray symbol upon a cloud, feather on the breeze, perhaps a message in a bottle.  Please, just keep looking, as I will keep trying to put myself out there, somewhere, somehow, just as I am.

Peace,

A V

Comments

One response to “Disconnected”

  1. Amica H. Jean Avatar
    Amica H. Jean

    Ah. Here at last you touch upon what is truly important to you, the touch of another human. Everything else, the rantings of drunken neighbors, the loss of possessions, were nothing to you. You have fallen in to the same trap so many have fallen into before: believing that the Internet can give you what you need. Instead of watching a sunset, we download a picture on our desktop. Email has taken the place of ‘snail-mail’. Do you ever miss the joy of opening a mailbox and seeing a letter, a real letter, from a friend in there? Throwing aside all the junk mail, the circulars for cheap aluminum siding, and the pleas for help from unknown charities, I would look at the address and imagine that person sitting down to write, HANDWRITE, to me. The effort of finding a pen, paper, envelope and stamp and then getting it to the post office! And even if it is a short note, I keep it. I tuck it away in my box of letters and re-read it often. I have challenged myself this year to move ‘out of the box’ so to speak, the Internet box. I have mailed, with stamps obtained after waiting in line at the post office, handwritten letters to friends for their birthdays. I have refused Facebook invitations and instead called my friend-request on the phone to chat. I make eye-contact with clerks and hang up my cell at the bank. Connecting with the real world is more of a process than re-connecting with the electronic one. Although I will miss your notes of interest, I am glad that you will be making friends in the real world.

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