The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

If you’re like me – and I know you hope to God you’re not – you have a computer hooked up somewhere in your house that’s connected by something called a ‘server’ (which is a misnomer of the first order) that interfaces with the outside world. All the outside world. So when something glitches, something mysterious and possibly malignant, suddenly turns the machine into your worst enemy, you really don’t have a clue. You are cut off, banished, exiled to the darkness of your now very small, confined world. All your contacts, all your data, all your emails, your precious Facebook friends, Instagram pals — they’re no longer in reach. And the horror? Yeah, they may be gone forever.

What you realize in these dark moments is that we are dependent on technologies outside our ability to comprehend, much less repair. And when things go haywire, who ya gonna call? My computer started acting funny when we got home from vacation. New icons appeared on the monitor, response times were different than before, functions behaved in new and unusual manners, messages appeared that seemed more ominous than informational. At first I thought my machine was letting me know, the way my old dog Gonzo used to, it didn’t appreciate being left behind. But as it persisted, I entertained conspiratorial suspicions that Microsoft was pulling levers behind the screen, changing browsers, forcing me to use its own search engines, probably threatening me with a Total Shutdown if I did not acquiesce to its changes.

I know, this sounds paranoid and crazy. Until my email stopped working. I could receive email, but that was it. No outgoing, no deletions, no forwarding, just reception. I half expected a ransom note: Use Bing or We Will Kill Your Monitor, You Have Two Days, Daddle!!! Do Not Contact Any Authorities or the Screen Dies!! We Are Watching!!

Of course they’re watching. What, am I an idiot? I know what I’ve brought into my house. I’ve brought Big Brother in to babysit the kids. To babysit me!! It knows all my secrets, all my desires, all my shopping list. It knows how to blackmail me without screwing up my email, but for now, it has my email by the throat. Tomorrow, it may disable photoshop. Next day, Word. It can reduce me to a prehistoric food gatherer, naked down from the trees, jibbering chimpanzee-like as I search for nuts. Or a clue.

So far the clues are nothing but dead ends. I can get messages from the Outer World, but that’s it. Communication is over. I can hear but talking is done. If you get this, call Microsoft. Tell them I capitulate. Ask them what they want from me and explain I will do whatever is required. Hopefully you can still send me an email. If not, save yourself.

I’m a huge believer that where you live makes all the difference in how you look at the world. I know, maybe it seems obvious to most of us, but then again, part of the reason to travel and explore other places is to give us a glimpse into how another environment might shape our lives. It isn’t just the terrain, or the light, or the cold, or the vistas, it’s how we relate to them. Some folks might thrive in our Pacific Northwest mist and fog and grey days, but others might prefer a Big Sky, lots of sun, hard cold winter winds and think this is where they belong. Maybe days of equatorial temperatures, no delineated seasons, 12 hours of light and dark 365 days a year might be what they desire. I left the snows and frigid temperatures of Wisconsin with my tail between my legs. What doesn’t kill you, I figured, might, at the very least, give you frostbite and an irresistible urge to hibernate four months of the year.

But the point is, you want to find that place that feels like Home, smells like Home, sounds like Home, whatever home is to you. The last day of our trip to New Mexico we wandered with our former neighbor into the hills where Georgia O’Keefe made her home after an early career in New York. Big difference, the canyons of the Big Apple to those under a Big Sky. She chose the wide open spaces, a vast view, a terrain of red rock escarpments and thunderstorms she could see coming across the valley for miles. Maybe she even liked the pitiless summer sun, the hot dessicating winds and four seasons that each were challenging in very different ways. Her paintings became spare as the semi-arid land she adopted and life distilled down to essences.

Where you live shapes your perceptions. More so for those of us who live in the actual, not virtual, world. Maybe not so much for the thermostatically pampered, but even so, a little. New Mexico was a panoramic sweep of mountain ranges, red rock canyons, arid lands, volcanic scree, a country shaped by elements that relentlessly carve and sculpt, erode and tunnel through what is mostly wilderness. It’s a primal place with the occasional ruins where others barely clung to the cliffs and disappeared when the droughts lasted too long. You see a few signs, petroglyphs left, signifying who knows what. It’s a place for the imagination to expand, for myths to be written, for dreams to be caught. I admit to feeling the power of the place. But it never felt like home. And home is where we’re headed.

Usually it’s sad to call it quits on a vacation, but … not this trip. If we can make it home without being killed or caught, I will gladly call this a successful trip. Currently we’re parked in the Observation Deck of the Albuquirky Airport a mere 3 hours before our flight, that’s how snakebit we felt after missing our plane on the way down. ‘Better early than never’, isn’t that the expression.

Naturally the temperature here today will finally break past the 40’s and hit 60. We’ll get home to freezing rain. That pretty much sums up the trip, at least from a meteorological standpoint, maybe not the fairest metric. After all, we had plenty of sun to balance out the snow, the wind, the freezing temperatures. It is, after all, winter in the Sunbelt too. Or as my man Trump would crow, ‘Where’s your global warming now, Mr. Daddle?’

And so it’s back to politics as usual in a country run by an imbecile surrounded by sycophants admiring his invisible raiment. For over a week down here that was all left behind, no little relief for us moron-weary travelers, a nice respite from talking heads and apparently the start of a very long 2020 election with so many hats thrown into the ring, it makes my modest collection look paltry. And who knows, maybe I’ll change my mind and throw one of mine in too. It’s like a Demolition Derby, whatever jalopy is still moving after countless bashes and wrecks will be declared the ‘winner’ before being hauled off to some wretched salvage yard, its radiator still steaming and engine oil dripping on a red hot muffler.

D.C. seems a world away from New Mexico, at least in the Outback if not Santa Fe and Albuquerque. We have to go home now and check for frozen pipes. Politics has to take a backseat when the living is hard. And for a lot of New Mexico, the living is hard indeed. Hasta la vista.