Email 101 Poem by Gayathri Seetharam

EMAIL 101 (An old and long poem, please)
-Gayathri B. Seetharam
I have 2 Estee Lauder lipsticks
Among other lipsticks by other cosmetic brands
May I add, only the higher end brands
For I trust those not to damage my soft luscious lips.
They are Emotional and Carnal
And since I am going to avow
This Saturday that my husband
Is "still the one I love"
Like Shania Twain on a white horse,
I would like to say
To my riders on the storm of yore
And the passengers of the chariots of fire of mine
Yes! I refer to my days of ambition
When there were others
In my hours of love and passion
And work which had the usage of electronic mail
The knowhow of which I mastered in spring 1994
From the Dept. of Continuing Engineering Education
Affiliated to University of Toronto
Under Prof. Stefano who GOD bless his soul
Gave me The certificate of completion.

But alas! My email has been blocked
By hexes against me
And not even email expertise
Via the mailer daemon and the email server
From my actual enemies
Who are, to all purposes, good friends.
So my resumes reach when the reason is obsolete
My essays reach after a delay
And responses to me, not leading to a
Surge in my career advancement
Reach me with a delay
And sometimes, not at all
But it is the very thing for
Facebook and Twitter users
And cellphone owners
To scoff at mere email knowhow
But I have it down pat.

Learn email from a C programming course
In UNIX and all the paraphernalia clicks
Into a complete sent or forwarded email
In one's amygdala and hippocampus.
The trick, my Emotional and Carnal Instinct's
Awakeners and the other Intelluctual instinct companions
Is to single click with one's I finger
That is, the index finger on one's right hand
On the first key of the mouse, internal or external
When placing the arrowmark-cursor
On the Send, in the box
After having composed one's message.

And Gentlemen of the new millennium
Who start off the day
With the clicketty clack of the keyboard
And send emails which go destinations
Since you have the earlier key stroke
Mastered to perfection
Please be aware that to forward
From ‘Sent' email
One has to click on the forward box
When the body of the message is in front of one,
Which in Yahoo is an arrowmark facing right
A lopsided U turn around the bend of
Just composing and sending,
Or an arrowmark in a box facing towards the right,
And then type the email address again
In the address box
And clicking on the Send box with
The arrowmark-cursor placed on it
And clicking with the right index finger
On the mouse,
Remember, when you move the mouse
The arrowmark cursor or the ‘I' cursor moves.

If you cannot master the art of
Clicking on the mouse
For it is a feminine art or so they said
In the Hollywood movie,
"American Pie" since doubleclicking
One's mouse, as a female
Is to explore one's inner self
Or have sex with oneself.
Then one can engage in a masculine activity
Which is to ‘Control' (ctrl)and ‘enter'
Simultaneously for that is the way
Of leaders and lovers
Messieur, do not bristle in indignation
For when I say, control (in UNIX, it is control) ,
I refer to one's own mind which
Must be kept free of distracting thoughts.
In certain computers like IPADS
The ‘ctrl' key is the thinking cap which
One dons to invert the ‘v' to
Send the email
Or it could be the beginning of
The learning curve, ABC,
Which one has to master to
Reach a plateau of knowledge
Or become blasé at sending email which
IS not selectively blocked like mine.

But tarry a while, said Portio
To the bad man, Shylock
Before you get your pound of flesh,
You must see to it that
There must not be a drop of blood,
In attaching files, one must compose one's message
And then to get one's pound of flesh without spilling
A drop of blood, that is to actually attach the file
To the composed message,
One must click on the figure of paperclip
With the arrowmark-cursor placed on the
Box with paperclip or paperpin or fold back clip sketch,
Then when list of directories are
In front of one, double click
On the USB key or Lexar drive
And access your file list,
Highlight by shading the required file
And clicking with the right index finger on the file
Do not hit the enter key for you will go
Into Rename file mode.
But for the file to attach,
One must place the arrowmark-cursor
On the ‘Open' box and
Click with the right index finger
Or the ‘I' cursor mode for the same action,
Works to attach
One's resume or work.

Please carry on with assignments
In Email 101
I shall bid you a fond farewell and say
As Juliet said to Romeo
Parting is such a sweet sorrow
But sometimes, an absolute necessity,
I add to this oft quoted Shakespearean line.

I forget, says my alterself and
After enjoying a Mozart symphony
Do I refer to a piece of music,
Nay, I refer to 3 squares of chocolate
Along with English breakfast tea, I resume
Where I left off.
I painted a simple painting
Unique in the theme that
It represents the blue coloured scrolls of
Father Time on the hopefully evergreen Mother Earth
And it struck me that scrolling down a list of received emails
In Inbox or the ‘Sent' option
The latter to forward only or for reference
Is an arduous task for some
It is the same as scrolling down a WORD file
And I do not refer to pg up and pg dn
Place the arrowmark-cursor which transforms into the
‘I' cursor when inside the narrow margin at the top of list
And then press down with the index finger
On the first key of the mouse
Voila! The list scrolls down.

I am the kind of gal who plans dinners
And saves memories of usually happy occasions
So I shall talk about chips and cakes
Which I have eaten since the past weekend
On Saturday, in a friend's house who went the
Whole nine yards and hosted a dinner with
Her husband, I partook of an almond sponge cake
With apricot and brown sugar topping
This was absolutely delicious and enjoyed with
Stone ground chips with a zesty flavour,
It gladdened my soul
And made me full of glee
Along with sips of tasty liqueurs and great food
And company with old time favourites sung
With the strumming of the guitar by the host.
This week, after my feminine engagements
Like the hairstylist and the esthetician
I stopped by a few stores
And managed to squeeze in some work
But the icing on this cake with a jamoicha almond fudge cake
And a slice of banana bread
Picked up at Timothy's
Their trademark, surely,
The former, along with Pringles crunchy chips, put me
In a pensive and productive mood
And the latter in a content mood
Planning trysts a la mode Canadienne
And setting the mood for a date.

Coming back to Phase 2 of Email 101
I shall tell you how to save a file from
Received message in Inbox
And leave the learning of
Copying and pasting the file
Onto one's directory and yes!
There is this option
But first things come first
And I am sure that the neighbourhood
UPS Store and Nexus will benefit from some
Money exchanges in their direction,
To enter save mode
Highlight the received file
By shading the file
And click on the first key of the mouse
With your index finger
Automatically, Yahoo asks the prompt,
Save File? And includes the Yes and No option
One below the other,
Highlight the Yes option
And it hooks up to the list of directories page
Double click on hard drive or Lexar
File automatically saves.

Received files save and thereby,
Your memories and pictures can be retrieved
And enjoyed for
Keats said that a thing of beauty
Is a joy forever
And both email and memories (happy ones and the really sad ones
Yellowed with age may turn into a golden shade)
Provide one with happiness.

But there must be no "fill in the blanks"
In the method of blank verse that I have adopted
Besides, a story must have a beginning and an ending
So to copy and paste a sent file
If one cannot execute a Save command
Because if one cannot treasure memories
Then one can copy and paste reading material
From literature and science and art and
Thus execute the ‘enjoy' mode
Highlight a received file by shading the name
In the received message in Inbox
Enter simultaneously, control and ‘c'
As said, ‘control' can be ‘ctrl' or
The inverted ‘v' or ‘ABC'
And c is typing the letter ‘c'
File will be in copy mode
Then choose the directory
And when list of files are visible
Enter ‘control' and ‘v' simultaneously,
I enter a jammed mode and repeat
Control can be ‘ctrl' or the inverted ‘v'
Or the key with ‘ABC'
Abracadabra! File will paste
And you can access the copied file.

Didn't I say that this is all in Yahoo and Hotmail
Gmail which was straightforward like Yahoo of Yore
Has had a facelift not through the help of Renergie Multi Facelift by Lancome
Which is gradual like Clinique Youth Surge of mine
But a sudden one,
Everybody is stumped and are resorting to Facebook for
An User-friendly user interface
But Messieur and Mesdame, you speak to me,
Gayathri B. Seetharam, the beautiful, the intelligent and the talented
Who on a good day, can be really special
One look and I can hear the bells ring
Mamma Mia, here you go again
The Ring O Bells mystery did not go in vain
I solve mysteries and in Gmail email
The box with Send is to send when clicked on
And the box with the picture of pencil
Is to make your sketches of e-letters,
Official or personal or friendly compositions;
The arrowmark pointing towards the right
Is to forward your email
After typing the email address
You need to click on ‘Send'
OR the commands discussed earlier
Perhaps, you can use your cell phone
To operate email from
Leastways, you have the internet and can access your webpage;
The box with the candle in Gmail makes wishes for
A birthday, or an anniversary or a communion or
You said it, a graduation;
Perhaps, you can attach a jpeg file by copying and pasting
Onto a WORD document with an essay about yourself.
With the same commands discussed earlier
For attaching a file (but Gmail has turned into a traitor;
Albeit a friendly neighbourhood Peter Parker
Like whom you can spin webs with your email and
Facebook accounts and didn't I say, cellphone;
It has replaced the straightforward ‘Attach' with the
Picture of a stapler) ,
If you want to write a short essay and add an image
Clicked via a camera, its jpeg
But if it's from a book, its usually a pdf file
You can convert a pdf file to a WORD 2013 file
By opening it in WORD rather than Windows Manager
And copy and paste it onto a new WORD file with
A short essay on your own experience
And attach it with the picture of the stapler
Being clicked on
This will lead you to the list of directories
And out of your debonair derby hat or becoming beret
You can become the loving sender of email.
Mostly, I believe in phone calls but one has to
Have the Universe with the ether or the strings
It is either email or facebook or the cellphone text message.

Is my email a part of
A Mobius strip or lost highway
For everywhere I see in the
Present, the year of 2015,
My sent email has no hope of
Reaching the intended destination
But positive hexes I write
For the advancement of my career
And my family's wellbeing
And hope in vain that
My emails will reach the
Special people whom I wish to reach.
Am I that special, I wonder in wonderment
Perhaps, because I was born and bred and undergrad
Schooled in India,
Lived a precious 2 years in Phoenix, Arizona
And since then have worn the colour and composition of my sweatshirt,
Which is a Roots Canada
Red coloured one with
A white embroidered maple leaf on the left side
Not cross stitch which signifies multiplication of resources surely
But also stands for slashes in personal budget which is tight
But I have credit cards which tide me through,
Or not chain stitch which stands for wheels in motion in Canada surely
But also for the feeling of being in chains which has never been true
For I have lived in democracies,
It is a long and short stitch
Which stands for the length of duration of Canada's wait times for funding surely
But also for the long and short clauses that are a part of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,
I, with true Indo-Canadian spirit, pray.