Rocket blog

Last Friday I sacrificed a vacation day to fix the hard drive on my laptop. After enduring a couple of hours of frustration and failure, playing the part of Dave to my MacBook’s Hal, I made an appointment with the Genius Bar at the Apple Store in the Providence Place Mall. Arriving 15 minutes early, I was encouraged to play with the computers on site, so I positioned myself in front of a screen the size of Fenway’s Green Monster and started scrolling through online newspapers. Next to me was a man who appeared to be in his 30s, dancing in place and singing at high volume to Elton John’s “Rocket Man.”

Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids
In fact it’s cold as hell
And there’s no one there to raise them if you did
And all this science I don’t understand
It’s just my job five days a week
A rocket man, a rocket man

While he sang and moved without rhythm, Rocket Man tried to make eye contact. I kept the corner of my left eye on alert in the event of rocket launch, while studiously reading the latest news on the Celtics and Bruins. My 15-minute wait turned into 45, and Rocket Man continued grooving to the beat of his own planet, eventually working his way through the entire Elton John discography.

Finally the Genius Bar opened. I left Rocket Man to “Crocodile Rock” and “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” on his own. After a couple of hours of diagnostics and repairs and installing updates, I had my computer back, took note of Rocket Man’s sudden disappearance from the Apple atmosphere, slogged through Providence traffic and got to my home on the cove just as the sun went down. Even though I was grateful that my pictures had been salvaged on iPhoto, it felt like a waste of a day, until I rounded the bend to watch and listen to masses of geese migrating, joining one another in V formation, flying above the waves and below the blood-red sunset. Somehow though, in the cacophony of honking, all I could hear was “Rocket Man.”

The tedium of the mundane can be transcended by an instant of nature, and a fleeting moment can save a day. But I think it’s gonna be a long, long time before I get that damn song out of my head...

This week’s question: If hell had a jukebox, what songs would play on it?

Rhody on Ice
This week’s size of Rhode Island reference links to an artistic rendering of the famed 2002 Larsen B Ice Shelf collapse. For some reason, the clunky drawing has the Ocean State toppled over horizontally, like the chalk outline of a homicide victim.