I was pretty relaxed about it because I use loads of computers in my life ... but this was different... it was mine and it was new! Two of the most important concepts in modern society and I don't get to examine them very often...
Well I was a bit disappointed by the screen because I thought 15" was smaller. It is that annoying 768 depth which means that you are forever scrolling down... I don't see the point of wide unless you are watching video but that seems to dominate the mindsets of laptop designers at the moment. I knew that I didn't like Dell keyboards and true to form the keyboard is not great - the enter key needs quite a smarp hammer to register. I had been persuaded that HP has changed the Dell keyboard - evidently not so. The mouse pad is sometimes unresponsive. I can't believe that of the 3 USB ports 2 are right next to the power socket so you can't plug in anything that has more than a 5mm overlap - amazing oversight. The soundcard has quite high latency on midi processing but I didn't buy it with this in mind. I've already filled up the 150GB drive - thought it would be enough but see that more is an advantage these days. It doesn't have a video out and it has no expansion slot if I ever want to upgrade the sound card. Quite a lot over oversights by the designers!! Amazing given the obscene amount of work stored up in the chips and display design.
Now that is the negative list and compiling it took me through some interesting landscape. This is "my" computer and being "mine" I want it to be perfect. It felt for the first time in a long time that "new page" feeling that I used to get at school when turning to a fresh leaf in my exercise book and writing on the fresh clean paper. This computer represents a new start, it is pristine and possibly perfect.
I had a gentle resurgence of the mind set that I had held with "my muse". Of the being in competition with other people. "My" computer was now ranked with other computers - if it failed then I failed. I would be sitting with my failed computer against those people with bigger and better computers, living lives of greater perfection, greater and cleaner new starts, fresher and lighter. I would be left behind in the dirt.
I was drawn into that mindset again and started to think that it was true again. That really I ought to fight for "my muse" - or now something like her - I ought to fight for my piece of perfection, my pristine pure self.
It is incredibly evocative. It looks like truth ( and I thought I had seen it all!).
Then I got a grip on myself with a few well chosen thoughts. I am created this perfection at the expense of others. It is inside me, and outside I care nothing for. "My" computer is a world of perfection, and as long as it is perfect and satisfies me I care for nothing else. This is exactly like the world of "my muse" that I so dearly (and still dearly) wish for. I can still dream with all the radiance of before in that place of stunning beauty and peace where all wishes are fulfilled, where everything is light and perfect and leaves nothing wanting. It is still there like it actually exists! Still so evocative a thought; its fragrance fills the heart and the mind effortously and I am brought under its spell.
Well not quite. I'm a lot tougher now that I was 10 years ago! and I've had 10 years of Buddhist training.
Quite extraordinary to find all this still intact inside me. There is some truth. The computer can and should be a symbol of rebirth and restart. If that is what it takes then good that I am brought to slough off the past and take this vehicle into the future. Hopefully it will be the platform on which I begin to write Anura and Alexandria. When I first picked up the box I hugged it to feel if this destiny was possible - it's not blinding but it is there.
I have come to think recently that maybe I have become defeatest. I have an arsenal of arguments which disintegrate any desire of wish. These are good, they have enabled me to espace from "My Muse" and to find some stability and peace but i think maybe they can be overused. Maybe it is time to reembrace the other side the "allez" as I was calling it - but in balance with the "arretez" this time. What starts must stop and vice versa.
Well it is fair to say I love my new computer. Dillion is its project name. It is not perfect - its a bottom of the range Dell - but bottom of the range is good enough these days to do what I want and it does exactly that. No complaints really - the positives are unlistable because they are boundless - that is why we often miss them :-)
Addendum: didn't quite get this point out. The problem above was that i was beginning to define myself in opposition to the world around me through the computer. This Dell is unique and so it sets inself apart from other Dells. By it becoming "mine" I am then made to separate from the other people who own computers and other things. This is that feeling I hated with "my muse" of being brought in to opposition with other people. It is a cage in which we become limited, finite and mortal. It is ridiculous really that beings who are fundamentally birds gets trapped into cages so easily. This separation of people is the move which begins all that "ego" stuff I was discussing. The wall goes up and we start to work on perfecting the inside of our "ego" nest. "my" computer becomes an object of concern because its imperfections become my imperfections.
This is the first time I've had the opportunity to experience this. Now I see with more clarity the attraction of cars and handbags and shoes and houses and partners and children etc etc - these are "mine" and enable us to play the game of being "someone". It is as Hegel says the process with which we start to understand the notion of self. What I find tiresome tho in retrospect is that already I can see where this goes while I have the feeling that for many people they play this game blindly and with no purpose... at least none that has become apparent to me... yet.
