I’m waiting for the mail, hoping to get a letter from A.T.& T. with a temporary password so I can restore access to my e-mail. I broke what Matthew calls the eleventh commandment: don’t change anything if your tech stuff is functioning. I changed phone service from one corp for another: A.T. & T. to T-Mobile. In the process I was cut off from my email account both on my phone and my computer, so if you’re wondering why I’m not responding to your emails…In the process I glammed up my life from a ratty android to an i-phone 12 which predictably, I loathe. A large part of the loathing is centered around learning to navigate it. The engineering is an unhappy combination of stubborn and sensitive. So am I, come to think of it. Over and over emojis appear on the screen until I finally realize the icon I am tapping is not Contacts. I hate emojis, like I hate leaf blowers. For a while I thought malicious imps had taken over, not only my phone but my whole life. Everyone knows about malicious imps.
I’m a little more rational now. I can admire the stunning craft, this little packet of ingenuity, and be grateful for what it has enabled (talking to you, for instance), and still think it is a black hole of human folly with its million options engulfing the five things it does that improve the moment. Or, in my case, doesn’t do. Yet, it might…I have talked to four different indifferent representatives from A.T.&T. They can’t text me this temporary password. It must come through the post. Is that meant to be irony? They do this for my own protection. Ha. Should I be surprised Jack, who seemed the nicest, didn’t call me back as promised? Should I be hurt?
Like I said, it’s been over a week. If I were on a two-week monastic retreat, which probably would be a good idea, this separation from email would cause barely a psychic ripple. Instead, having gone nowhere, I enlarge my vocabulary of curses. It bugs me, the dis-connectivity, like a mosquito buzzing in my head.
Of course, I would have let people know I was going to be on retreat. Probably.
Q. What is to prevent (has prevented) you from doing just that: making these days into a retreat, an opportunity to practice detachment, to investigate this addiction to connectivity?
A. The dot by the mail icon. Many times a day I look for it. I may disappear if it does not reappear.
I hear the snap of the mailbox lid.
In Faro's Garden 