I woke up alone this morning.
Unable to roll left for fear of a growling small cat, or roll right for fear of a playful fully-clawed big cat. The cats are not company, they are Bed Wedges, so they can herd me to their food dishes as soon as possible after dawn.
So, I was alone.
No smart phone within reach.
No smart phone in the house.
No Smart Phone.
No instant time check available. No check for messages, texts, calls. No check for weather (I was forced to open the door in my pajamas and step outside). No Pandora to cosy up to and grease the path to consciousness.
Alone, alone, alone.
My phone was simply nowhere to be found last night. Probably dead. Not in bag, pocket, car. Possibly left at a Convention Center where 5,000+ Democrats had convened for nearly 12 hours yesterday. I had no way to call and find out. And dreaded the answer. Something to ponder as the gray day flooded the bed full of cat.
Feeling my mental way blindly through the first waking minutes, I fed cats, exposed my pajamas to the neighbors, forewent the radio news (way too early to endure The Trump Show). I considered FB messaging a few people to let them know I was alive, then re-considered. That was their job. If I was dead, it would not be my problem. In the event that my heart gives out or a murderer makes it past the cats and a baseball bat, I certainly would not be hitting 911 for a quick fix--which is one of my ongoing Ms. Manners dilemmas anyway ("When to call for Emergency Responders?"). Nope, today if everything mine goes south, I'll be content to decompose a few days. Technology will not be complicit to a clean, mess-less exit on my behalf. My feeling is that Death Is Better Off Without Technology.
Slowly coming to terms with this smartphone absence in the ether, I experienced a kind of buoyancy. Specifically: my little ship of state was, suddenly, not tied up at any dock. Cast my brain to the wind, like. All the things I planned to worry about today are still on the agenda, but felt somehow different. No one could call to see what I was up to, which eliminated obligatory Defense of Intended Actions. Which gets to be a burden, because its hard enough to Just Go Do Something without explaining or justifying it. With the effortless contact of an iPhone, anyone can demand anything with minimal effort. But sans-phone, no texts to remind me that at the Health Food Store if I spent $50 I could get 10% off of supplements I will never ever purchase. No reminders that there were a couple of birthdays, events, appointments that I as a proud functioning member of Elite Smartphone Users must be aware of. Being not-hooked-into my phone partially delivers me from being held socially accountable.
It's disorienting, as we all know.
But as wonder in the Brave (Old) (Pre-Smartphone) World swelled in me, I heard the empty sound of my broken doorbell not-working. I opened the door to my phone, in the apologetic hands of a passenger in my car to the convention. She was the agent of its disappearance, and before the noon hour she realized it wasn't her phone, and I was restored to the alternate iPhone universe.
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, indeed.
How far down the "Luddite" path is realistic? Back to exclusive land-line phone use?
Little breaks in reality become more frequent with age. Waking up alone aka without-instant validation/reality-as-data is different, not bad. Self-validation is one of those things I feel better with in my pocket, but if it has a cracked case, better off finding alternate sources, Mom would say. Never.
1. Ernest Hemingway, misogynist royale, "The Short Happy Life of Frances Macomber" 1936? A coward goes hunting in Africa with manly EH guide. Francis' beautiful ball-cutting wife (in EH stories it's a beautiful-women job) was implicit in Francis' offing of himself after he attained courage on the shoot. He enjoyed his courage for a very short time. Like, hours.
2. I know that a list of adjectives is a prescribed place to insert commas. I just like to not use them. (You know who you are)
3. I love hyphenated words. I love German words that take up whole sentences, and aspire to move English in that direction with the gentle nudge of hyphens. Thank you for participating in this project.
Unable to roll left for fear of a growling small cat, or roll right for fear of a playful fully-clawed big cat. The cats are not company, they are Bed Wedges, so they can herd me to their food dishes as soon as possible after dawn.
So, I was alone.
No smart phone within reach.
No smart phone in the house.
No Smart Phone.
No instant time check available. No check for messages, texts, calls. No check for weather (I was forced to open the door in my pajamas and step outside). No Pandora to cosy up to and grease the path to consciousness.
Alone, alone, alone.
My phone was simply nowhere to be found last night. Probably dead. Not in bag, pocket, car. Possibly left at a Convention Center where 5,000+ Democrats had convened for nearly 12 hours yesterday. I had no way to call and find out. And dreaded the answer. Something to ponder as the gray day flooded the bed full of cat.
Feeling my mental way blindly through the first waking minutes, I fed cats, exposed my pajamas to the neighbors, forewent the radio news (way too early to endure The Trump Show). I considered FB messaging a few people to let them know I was alive, then re-considered. That was their job. If I was dead, it would not be my problem. In the event that my heart gives out or a murderer makes it past the cats and a baseball bat, I certainly would not be hitting 911 for a quick fix--which is one of my ongoing Ms. Manners dilemmas anyway ("When to call for Emergency Responders?"). Nope, today if everything mine goes south, I'll be content to decompose a few days. Technology will not be complicit to a clean, mess-less exit on my behalf. My feeling is that Death Is Better Off Without Technology.
Slowly coming to terms with this smartphone absence in the ether, I experienced a kind of buoyancy. Specifically: my little ship of state was, suddenly, not tied up at any dock. Cast my brain to the wind, like. All the things I planned to worry about today are still on the agenda, but felt somehow different. No one could call to see what I was up to, which eliminated obligatory Defense of Intended Actions. Which gets to be a burden, because its hard enough to Just Go Do Something without explaining or justifying it. With the effortless contact of an iPhone, anyone can demand anything with minimal effort. But sans-phone, no texts to remind me that at the Health Food Store if I spent $50 I could get 10% off of supplements I will never ever purchase. No reminders that there were a couple of birthdays, events, appointments that I as a proud functioning member of Elite Smartphone Users must be aware of. Being not-hooked-into my phone partially delivers me from being held socially accountable.
It's disorienting, as we all know.
But as wonder in the Brave (Old) (Pre-Smartphone) World swelled in me, I heard the empty sound of my broken doorbell not-working. I opened the door to my phone, in the apologetic hands of a passenger in my car to the convention. She was the agent of its disappearance, and before the noon hour she realized it wasn't her phone, and I was restored to the alternate iPhone universe.
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, indeed.
How far down the "Luddite" path is realistic? Back to exclusive land-line phone use?
Little breaks in reality become more frequent with age. Waking up alone aka without-instant validation/reality-as-data is different, not bad. Self-validation is one of those things I feel better with in my pocket, but if it has a cracked case, better off finding alternate sources, Mom would say. Never.
1. Ernest Hemingway, misogynist royale, "The Short Happy Life of Frances Macomber" 1936? A coward goes hunting in Africa with manly EH guide. Francis' beautiful ball-cutting wife (in EH stories it's a beautiful-women job) was implicit in Francis' offing of himself after he attained courage on the shoot. He enjoyed his courage for a very short time. Like, hours.
2. I know that a list of adjectives is a prescribed place to insert commas. I just like to not use them. (You know who you are)
3. I love hyphenated words. I love German words that take up whole sentences, and aspire to move English in that direction with the gentle nudge of hyphens. Thank you for participating in this project.
