Fuck. I just spent over an hour trying to enlarge the icons on this laptop, to no avail. How very frustrating. Simple computer things often baffle me. If left to my thinking, we would still be striking sticks together to make fire.

This computer is supposed to be dead. It is, at least, seven years old, is machine gun bullet like ridden with bits and pieces from meals that I have had, over the years, sitting in front of this computer, and cranking out poems, and journal entrees. The five is missing. The computer hasn’t let me get on the internet in a couple of years.

There are a lot of memories on this computer, most of which have been transferred to a new, faster model. I thought that this machine was dead, but I never gave up on it, never put it by the side of the road for it to be found by a new home, a home that would hopefully give it life.

Computer repairs are not on the books for a man eking it out somewhere down below minimum wage. Those computer guys, and gals, are expensive. A blessing was bestowed upon me, though, yesterday when the man at the computer store fixed my computer for me for free.

It is so weird, and fun, to have this computer back in my existence.

I am thankful to the man, and to the machine; more to the man at this minute as the computer is only letting me play one song over and over: “Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More,” by The Allman Brothers. Hey, maybe the machine is trying to tell the man something?

--Mikel K

November 3, 2012