Not working….

It’s a day when everything—including this blogger—is not working.

Well, I have those days. Yesterday, when I should have been resting, I industriously compiled the largest post I’ve ever written. Today, I am fretting.

It’s the damn iPod. Why is it that I absolutely crave every Apple product, and then instantly hate them the moment I start to use them? Do I have a secret aluminum fetish?

OK—news of the day. The iPod (curious—computer seems to know that word….) that put—or conversely shuffled—music into my ear, has died. And curiously, the death took the form of refusing to display anything except that annoying little apple with the bite taken out of it. It was the techie equivalent of the children’s “nyah nhay NA nyah nyah.”

(Incidentally, and just to fill up space, did you know that that sequence of sounds exists in ALL cultures? And that kids use it the same way? Just one of those facts that fill my brain, shoving out where the house keys are….)

Well, I took the iPod to Radio Shack and they said they might—a shake of the head here—be able to fix it. So now I have a new iPod—not the Touch but the Classic. The new Touch, it seems, has gotten all fancy: camera, video cam, email, I don’t know whatnot. The Classic, I’m happy to report, has but four buttons, three of which I will probably never use. I did check, there appears to be no nemesis—the dreaded shuffle button.

Unless, of course, it’s hidden somewhere on the elegant aluminum sheath, and I activate it….

Right, so spending 250 bucks made me hungry, and I go to the café where a completely annoying woman is screaming into her iPad. She’s on Skype, or rather she’s dragging us all onto Skype—her Skype.

OK—and am I being paranoid in thinking she was using up all the Internet? Because for some reason the connection was terrible. She was closer to the modem, if that makes any difference. (If I’m right, please tell me. Otherwise, no….)

Well, my new iPod has now come to life. Because I have iTunes already installed, it’s synched its way through my library—those 2500 “songs” that are motets, arias, cantatas. It has greeted me cordially by saying “Welcome.”

So what am I supposed to do? Say “Welcome” back?

The manual, I think, which was artfully or zenfully hidden in the bowels of the box, beneath the iPod and above the little gadgets—ear buds, cable, dock.

The little manual, of course, doesn’t deign to do words. Just little pictures. I study these for a bit. The USB cable has to go into the USB port.

Thanks, Apple!

Oh, and don’t submerge the device in water….

Guys!

Well, I press the round button in the center of the dial. And Welcome goes away! Now what we have is a little list on the left side of the display. The first item says “cover flow.” Right, so what happens if I click it? I do, and discover the covers of every album I own doing the stupid Robert Burns (or whoever—Ms. Taí will know) effect that Apple loves so much. (Speaking of which, shouldn’t it be aPple?)

Guess what! I now have Beethoven’s Ninth symphony playing!

I know why—it’s the first “song” on the iTunes library. Why?  Because iTunes has decided to organize itself by artist. The mezzo in the last movement is Agnes Baltsa.

Agnes—A—get it?

I was always perfectly happy to scroll by Baltsa in the past, but now there’s a problem. I cannot scroll. I put my finger on the display—no luck. I press the down button, but that’s “play / pause.” There is absolutely no way I can get my way down the list to “playlist.”

Oh, and guess what!

There IS a shuffle button!

Worse, Apple has again hidden the volume button. On the Touch, it was on the side of the chassis. On the Classic? Who knows….

Hey, guess what! The stupid little black wheel turns out to be a dial! I just started whirling my albums all around—Now I’m hearing Zelenka!

It’s so typical Mac—I’m right back in high school and EVERYBODY knows where to get dope except me. I’m buying it off the undercover cop….

Well, I know what I have to do. They’re expecting me, the boys at Radio Shack. They probably have a pool going on how long it will take me to come back in the door, swearing under my breath, and ranting that their stupid product is defective. They’ll sigh, customers will look on in interest or disdain. It will develop that the volume button has been there all along, or that merely flipping my wrist in just such a way will roar the machine to epic volumes. I’ll learn all of this and forget half of it and have to go back and the boys will explain it all over again.

Of course, I will swear never to buy another stupid aPple product again.

Until the next sleek little device comes out….

P.S.—Jimmy, whom I know better than my own brothers, has just shown me the little dial thing. And when you have achieved the herculean task of actually making the thing play what you want it to play, then all you have to do is swing the little unlabeled dial again, and that becomes the dial volume.

Wouldn’t tell me where to get the dope, though….

Madness Revisited

Another killing, another mass killing. This time not in Oslo, but in Colorado atmidnight.

In a movie theater….

OK, you know the facts as well as I. How can you not? It’s all over the news, all of the radio, all over the TV. Twelve people are dead. Fifty injured. The gunman is 24, and is supposed to have acted alone.

Questions arise. The first being, of course, why?

Well, we’ll probably know, or think we know. We’ll get the profile, the backstory, the teachers interviewed, the neighbors quizzed. We’ll see the anguished mom as she races to Colorado to be with her son. We’ll do the whole damn thing.

My take?

The kid had never been alone at night in a forest.

There’s something about it, you know. I used to do it at the Acres—leave the comfortable back bedroom and trot up the hill. Open the shack, blow up the air mattress, and climb into the top bunk.

The first thing is darkness—a darkness so absolute that the old cliché is true. You cannot see the hand in front of your face.

Right. That’s why you have the flashlight.

Second is the sound. At first, it’s the sound of wind high up through the trees. It’s a constant whoosh, varying in intensity, but still constant. You shine the flashlight upward, and see trees swaying.

The forest is communicating. Quite literally—through branches, through roots, through fungi in the soil. 

In fact, the forest is the macro extension of the human brain. The dendrites that form our nervous system? The word is derived from the Greek word for tree.

And so our brain is a forest. And the forest is a brain.

Another sound—the telltale sound of a mouse. You shine the flashlight at the counter, and she’s there. She stares at you. You at her. You give her permission. She goes to the wood box, and retrieves her smallest young. Takes it in her mouth and goes outside. Returns, repeats the procedure. Five times.

On her last trip, she looks back.

It’s not thanks, but acknowledgement.

The eyes are adjusted now. In fall and winter you see stars, more than you’ll ever see in the city. You remember an old friend who climbed to her roof after the hurricane had shut plunged the entire island of Puerto Rico into darkness. She spent hours on her back, at last seeing the stars.

You doze, but not for long. Something is moving, and then snorting. Then a crash through the woods.

Deer.

And yes, they do snort.

I tell you all this because I have seen it, felt it. The experience can be unsettling. What’s out there? Is there something moving, something approaching….

…something I can’t see?

You’re alone. Go outside? Flash on the flashlight?

I’ve done that. And the woods appears normal. It’s just your fear.

Something swoops onto the tree. You remember—the flying squirrel.

I used to describe this to my students, in the days when I was working, had a job. I told them about Franny, who turned off the refrigerator before she went to sleep —it was too loud. And my students?

Most of them slept with the TV on. In fact, most of the TVs were on even as we spoke. They were never turned off.

The question is whether they should ever be turned on. Neurologically, the right side of the brain is stimulated by the cathode ray tube, plasma screens, computer screens. It’s why Internet pornography is so addictive. It’s why volunteers, even if paid to do so, cannot give up television. It’s why your eye is drawn to a TV, if one is on in a room.

Easy to bash television. There’s a 32-inch TV fifteen feet from where I sit. My iPad is charging—I will play electronic Sudoku for perhaps an hour throughout the day.

My worry? This 24 year old kid—which he neurologically is—grew up as skewed as he is because the only reality he saw was provided by screens constantly jolting his dendrites into an alpha state.

He’s never seen the mouse, the young pup in her mouth, the tail hanging down. 

His only reality is a movie house at midnight, smoke bombs, and killing.