Today’s journaling / reflection prompt: What do you wish to spend more time doing? How are you passing time now? And when does it feel like you’re experiencing time itself or “spending” time? (How do you feel about these experiences? What needs to change?)
This morning I dropped my phone into a vat of pancake batter.
An animated “plop” as batter flew everywhere, slippers and pyjama pants splashed with dull yellow goo. Expletives abound, a string of “shit, oh shitty shit” welcoming K home from the grocery store as the front door clicked hesitantly.
“Boib? You ok?”
I had gotten distracted by the movie playing in the background (iPad atop rice cooker) keeping me company as I lazily spooned batter into pan, half awake, waiting for bubbles and sizzles one after another. The protagonist did a drop kick while I put the chocolate chips back on the shelf, fingers distractedly grazing the top of the phone I was balancing in front of the baking powder with the pancake recipe, and down it went, face-first. Virtual drop kick begets real phone face plant.
In the immediate moments after, I couldn’t help but think of the line that left me in stitches from heartwarming movie, The Mitchells vs. The Machines. In it, the smart assistant character rails against its creator a Tech Bro archetype (“when I was young - 3 years ago…”). Tech Bro asks his creation, “why don’t you think I still care about you?” to which creation responds, “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because you designed my replacement ON MY FACE!”
This scene, and many others, were a sharp prod - I’ve been facing “digital faces” and screens for far too long this year.
Last week, K and I spent eight days on a road trip through the English countryside, all the way down to the southwestern coast. It was the most at ease I had felt in a long time.
I put in my out-of-office email auto-response, “please expect a delay as I won’t have access to internet.” K laughed, “that’s a bit extreme, don’t you think?” (And he was right, we had amazing data coverage.) But I was insistent. I wanted to be completely “off the grid” - whatever that meant on a journey that is entirely built on Google Maps and the Airbnb app and all the other modern conveniences our tech affords us in new, unknown experiences.
I felt some inarticulate urge to spend time passing time without distractions that came with having the world of information at my fingertips. My mind is in so many places at once these days. Just looking at my search history feels overwhelming - impulses of an erratic creature bent on knowing ridiculous things that don’t matter, not really.
I wanted things to be simpler, if only for a week. And simpler they were.
For eight glorious days, we drove through small villages and towns where everyone waved a hand from the steering wheel when we waited for them to pass in tight and winding one-way roads, to which we acknowledged with another hand up. Lots of gentle smiling across the dashboards.
We listened to Harry Potter audiobooks from the beginning and sang along to Ed Sheeran while gazing at slightly changing scenery in front of the windshield for hours in a day, rolling hills, changing sun - a good kind of bored.
The roads themselves were like rivers, weird directionally and flowing and unplanned, cutting through long uninterrupted pastures sprinkled with cows grazing, sheep sleeping. At one point, we saw a road sign for “FORD” to which K guessed correctly, “like a fjord?” and we were faced 40m later with a small creek to drive through. (“Check your brakes” came another considerate road sign immediately 20m after.)
On long walks along the coast and through forests, farm footpaths, overlooking lakes and the ocean, where we would only see a few others over a few hours, people greeted us with hearty “Hullo!”s as they approached, partners and dogs and walking sticks in tow. We got used to responding with a “Hiya” or the more advanced level in Brit-ness, “Alright?” (“Or-right?”)
One scruffy man with his large backpack (or “rucksack” says very local copyeditor K) told us he’d been hiking down the coastline for four months, traveling all the way down from Hull, while his dog patiently received my scratches behind the ear. “It’s bad on my knees!” We nodded vigorously, pretending to know where Hull was, and off he went again. Later, we were astonished after googling just how far he’d come.
When we finally came home, after many nights of looking up at bright stars (“look! the big dipper! wait, there’s so many…”) and hearing only animal sounds in the quiet mornings, our street came alive in a distinctly human-built way - car horns, people yelling across the way, scooters, construction… “Don’t you feel that London energy?” K said when we reached the city, excited by the contrast and faster pace. I nodded and held onto him a little tighter. It was exciting; I was on edge again.
My first day logged back onto work was a shock to the system. I only had a handful of meetings, but it felt so deeply unnatural to see myself on the screen, to hear my coworkers through one ear on my headphones and to sit, clicking and typing, for hours at a time. In between calls, I looked over at the flowers K bought and willed them to open, missing all the blooms we had seen in such abundance.
My body became sore. My hands, unthinking, would reach my shoulders between calls to massage them. It was a familiar soreness inhabiting the usual places, whose only strangeness was its absence while we were gone, like pressing down on your nail and seeing the red rush back when you let go, and learning that your nail is red underneath, not white, all along.
For now, my phone is propped up in a mug of rice, like it’s soaking at the edge of an onsen, or maybe bathing in a “ford.” I’m taking a break from mindless searching this afternoon; I’ll be looking for the stars tonight.
Margin Notes
Hello dear friend,
Who knew there was so much debate in Stephen Fry vs. Jim Dale for Harry Potter audiobooks? I’m Team Fry and K is a convert after growing up on Team Dale. What say you? Choose wisely.
Until next time, be well, sending you big hugs, Kerri
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