Living in our phones

So you are rolling along and the lady with the STOP sign holds up her hand. And so you sit there and wait and while you wait you check your phone. And there is nothing there but there might be and it is better than just sitting there because existence has become boring. And while you are waiting you see a woman who looks like she could kick your ass and she is wearing a bandanna in the smoky light of just paved hot tar and she is looking at her hand and you realize that in the middle of the hot sun breathing in the heavy petroleum wafting on that steaming asphalt she too is checking her phone. And it hits you...nobody lives in this world anymore.

Because there might be something in that phone that will take her out of this world. She might be taken away from getting cooked on a street and sucking up all sorts of toxins while hot spewing tar and asphalt is laid down by a giant machine with then guys hanging off it and suddenly you see that all these guys are staring at their hands too. They too are looking for the magic life that screen provides. Take me away. Take me to Oz. It might you know and there might be a wizard and a rainbow...anything is better than this crappy existence.

And if no one is living in this life anymore where are we living. Some sort of cyber world where a promise of something greater is just a text or an email or a tweet or a picture away. Something than this grinding malaise of the every day that is existence. And so we see cops and firemen and construction workers and soldiers and sailors and painters and sculptors...the world squinting at their hands because that little world holds so much promise.

So you check your phone one more time as the lady turns her sign from STOP to SLOW. And you proceed on and pass through the crappy world of the every day. But cheer up. There is a text or an email quivering on the horizon. Bailing us out once again.

www.williamhazelgrove.com


 

The Black Ice of Tech

You know what I am talking about. That black ice that looks back at us from our latest bit of tech: our Ipad, out Kindle Fire, our smart phone, our Ultra book. It is a polished granite of black ice that mirrors the world in heartless black and white. We see a strange irony in the very device we are using to transport us to points distant reflects back to us our very terrestrial existence. We see our face and it is not something we want to see. For the black ice gives us who we are at that moment and the years as they have gone by.

And we have become like Rushmore. Craggy chiseled visages staring out from the black onyx as we frown at our keyboards or dab our Ipads with smudgy fingers. The tech is just fine, it is the human behind it we care not to see. And it is a distraction this face staring back at us on the plane train or in the car or in the coffee house. It is peering around our work in progress or appearing magically as the screen goes dead. And there we are. That person who we spend so much time avoiding.

And mostly we just close the lap top or put away the Ipad. But occasionally we stare and see that human. So un tech. So flesh and blood. Tech rolls on while we roll under. And the human face has no chance against that sleek black marble. We are there grimacing, frowning, grunting, groaning, trying to get across our point. And we feel a great relief when that screen flares back up and takes us way from ourselves. And we all know what is going to happen.

The hope I die before I get old generation will demand a screen that does not reflect back those years. There will be a filler, the screen saver that will save us from that awful image under the black ice. Our mortal soul.

www.billhazelgrove.com