2000-04-21

Background Music: Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals, Burn to Shine. Brand-new cd for AJ, just bought it this morning. I got tired of flipping stations on the radio looking for their song, “Steal My Kisses,” which makes me dance around the room like a five-year old on a sugar high. The entire cd is excellent, reminding me of Collective Soul and Neil Young and a little cowboy music thrown in for fun.

It’s Good Friday and, although I’m no longer exactly sure what this holy day is supposed to remind us of (it’s been a long time since I did the God thing), I firmly believe that spending the first 10 or 12 years of my life being a god-believer entitles me to take today off with the rest of the up-to-date Christians.

So, having left work at 1pm, I came home and made myself lunch and poured myself a glass of Pinot Noir (hey, we disavowed-Catholics don’t get to throw back a little wine at Mass anymore—we have to compensate somehow). I reread a little of Anne Lamott’s book, Operating Instructions, A Journal of My Son’s First Year, which is so graceful and true and blackly funny that it made me laugh so hard my nose turned red and my breath came in gasps and my eyes teared up and I ended up crying a little bit at the ridiculousness of it all.

But I was mostly crying because I am so happy today. I am so happy, for no good reason, other than being in love and the wind blowing hard enough to rattle my windows and the kitty being curled up on the couch next to me with her nose tucked beneath her tail, and my happiness is wild and bright and brings with it all of my other emotions, herding them like shy jittery sheep, so that I am jumping moment to moment from laughing to crying to feeling serene and peaceful enough to date the Dalai Lama. Or maybe I’m just a little hormonal.

(And I completely stole a line up there from Anne Lamott’s book. Just confessing.)

In the spirit of my (sorta) day off, and my near-buddhist serenity moments, I’m going to give you a series of haiku. Don’t worry. I didn’t write them. J. sent them to me, and all I have to say is that if my computer would give me messages like these, I might find those serenity moments more often.

Subject: haiku

In Japan, Sony Vaio Computers have replaced the impersonal and unhelpful Microsoft error messages with their own Japanese haiku poetry, each only 17 syllables.

A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.

The Web site you seek
Can not be located but
Countless more exist.

Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.

ABORTED effort:
Close all that you have worked on.
You ask way too much.

Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.

Yesterday it worked.
Today it is not working.
Windows is like that.

First snow, then silence.
This thousand dollar screen dies
So beautifully.

With searching comes loss
And the presence of absence:
"My Novel" not found.

The Tao that is seen
Is not the true Tao, until
You bring fresh toner.

Stay the patient course.
Of little worth is your ire.
The network is down.

A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
To a simple stone.

Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.

You step in the stream,
But the water has moved on.
This page is not here.

Out of memory.
We wish to hold the whole sky,
But we never will.

Having been erased,
The document you're seeking
Must now be retyped.

Serious error.
All shortcuts have disappeared.
Screen. Mind. Both are blank.

An original entry today, the holy day? “You ask way too much.” Happy Good Friday.