stories
for the information age
These bite-sized stories chronicle my efforts, both pitiful and successful,
to navigate the rapidly-changing world.
My hope is that they help you do the same.
PEOPLE WHO DO NOT CHECK THEIR PHONES:
Bert & Ernie
Elton John, or so he says
Virginia Woolf
Newborn babies
People who do not have phones, like my friend, Drew
Founding fathers
The dog
PEOPLE WHO CHECK THEIR PHONES, BUT IN A HEALTHY MANNER:
The Dalai Lama
The cabinet maker. He checks his phone sometimes, but other times, he is making cabinets, and phone checking is not a good idea while using power tools.
Aunt Barbara
That’s it
PEOPLE WHO CHECK THEIR PHONES INCESSANTLY:
Everyone else
Me
Updated: Dec 23, 2020
My life so far can be divided into chapters of longing. Longing for attention, for safety, for being wanted, for babies, for knowing something that cannot ever be known, like what will happen? Will I do the thing I mean to do? Will we be ok?
I now see my longing as an object. It is a thing I stow away in the top drawer of my bureau – the one with all of the trinkets in tangles – the mismatched earrings, my grandfather’s mother-of-pearl cufflinks, the rusted key to a lock I have lost.
Suddenly, for no apparent reason, I open the drawer and pull out the longing. I eye my reflection in the mirror as I clasp it round my neck. I look better with longing on – it becomes me, it is like the musk I used to wear, which is a perfume, but not a perfume – more of a warm damp sweet that hangs heavily, hungrily in the air. Longing makes my cheeks flush, puts a darting worry in my eye. Everything foolish I have ever done, I have done with longing round my neck – it dangles dangerous, stupid, elicit. It clings to my clavicle, catches the light and shimmers in hectic flecks.
But I am beginning to see that longing is a cheap souvenir, a knick-knack, a charm to put on. I can pry the clasp open and let it slide from my neck into my palm. I can open the velvet-lined drawer, and toss the longing back in with the rest of the junk I keep, but do not need.
LISTEN TO AUDIO VERSION HERE:
Updated: Dec 18, 2020
We are talking, laughing, nodding, pitching in to a communal hum. All of us. Together. Endorphins are being released with each I know what you mean, and this one time, and that's so crazy! Then it happens; one of us looks at her phone, begins clicking. One by one, our heads drop. Silence looms, and we are gone.
In real life, people can be tricky. Real people have opinions and lives, they interrupt and lose interest. But out there, in the electronic realm, everything is easy. Peering into our phones is like peering over the edge of the Grand Canyon -- it is vast and infinite and full of possibility. We stare at it and stare at it, transfixed. As if the thing we are looking at might magically fix everything. As if the answers were out there, and not right here, in the room.
LISTEN TO OUT THERE: