WHEN WE WERE APART

There were no cellphones back then. Back then, when we were apart, we wrote letters to each other. On legal pads, or binder paper. In black ballpoint pen, cursive slanting across the lines.

I wonder what you'd be like, electronically, if you were still here. Would you poke at your phone all day? Would you take it to bed with you at night? Would you post photographs of your dog? It's strange to think of you in cyberspace after knowing you so well in pen and ink. And in person.

I fantasize that you would be my digital role model. I imagine that the phone would be just an object in your life, an item that you found useful, but not consuming or distracting. I envision that what you did all day would be the thing, not that the phone would be the thing that alleviates the boredom in what you did.

It's bewitching to dream up your digital life.

SLOW LIFE

I have always been a slow reader. But lately, my pace seems to have slowed even more. One good book can take months to finish. Maybe my brain is in decline. Or maybe the internet murdered my attention span. Either way, I’ve all but given up reading novels—they are simply too long.

It turns out very good writers—Joyce, Morrison, Wharton, even old Tolstoy, the maker of the longest book I ever read—all wrote novellas. In little time, I make excellent progress. In a flash, I am sated. I am slow, but still hunger for story—for reminders that beauty can exist in even the tiniest of passages.

I'VE CHANGED MY MIND

I push the weights up and down on the wobbly workout bench. I notice my body in the mirror—still able, but altered somehow. I look away and try to concentrate on the motions. I press the weights up and down with added vigor, aiming for the old familiar vitality, the thing that used to thrust me into life.

But the mirror has confused me. There is a revision at work and I no longer recognize myself. What strikes me is that it's not just my body that has changed; even my old thoughts no longer fit. That’s what it is—I’ve changed my mind about everything.