Oh, losing charge....?

@rabodeají is not wrong:

"I think right now everything in life seems to depend on the percentage charge of all our favorite devices: phones, computers, vapes, cars, electric bicycles… Cables are our ground zero: I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, in hysterical despair, dying of hunger, dragging themselves through the streets, angel heads burned by an old connection to charge their phones.

Airports are now battlefields for power outlets, three chairs are exchanged for one plug, passengers lie down on the floor looking for some battery charger. You see some refugees in the chapels of 'El Dorado' or 'Palma Seca' (or LAX or O'Hare) huddled near every wall outlet and yet far away from the Lord. It’s a new cult. And out of fear of losing that charger cable, people keep their battery insurance in tote bags, they've allowed thieves to ask for ransom for stolen cables and charger cables are sold like cigarettes in shacks, shopping centers, clinics, schools, cemeteries, beauty salons… There is no commercial establishment where a cable for your cell phone would not be sold.

Maybe some of us have experienced the anguish of looking at ourselves in the black mirror that is a dead cell phone, compulsively pressing the power button, in a vain attempt to revive it (and ourselves), in urgent need of a book chapter, a conversation, a task, gossip, a fight… I cannot forget the story of some fifteen-year-old Spanish girls, totally distressed when Instagram lost its life for almost a day. They couldn't find their friends, they couldn't see the stories of their imagined life, nor could they even define themselves very well with their suspended stories. When we are at 0% charge, we are all a bit like those teenagers groping around with their Instagram on pause, with their broken cables and their closed windows, locked in that dark world. Condemned to be outside their screen, an indecipherable reality, so difficult to grasp without guides and without likes. It is very hard to get ‘likes’ in the real world.

So my phone turned itself off by a mistake I made one morning: it happened because sometimes our work load  leads us to be irresponsible and we forget to charge our cell phones. It was one in the afternoon and it was at zero percent charge. By the time I had had two black coffees, my battery was at 70% and my phone was off. I plugged it in and left it alone after making sure that the little thunderbolt that indicates that we were on the way to reestablishing our relationship was on. And then I picked up my phone substitute: a postponed book: The Well-Gardened Mind. That is the name of a mix of essays and personal stories written by a psychiatrist who owns a pair of pruning scissors and a watering can. A written homage to the times and logic of plants, of their growth and death, of their flowering cycles and their daylight whims. It talks about roots and neural networks, some well-fertilized self-help, if you will, but it also has a lot of good plant stories.

When I looked again, my phone was at 33%. I had read about 25 pages of the book and decided to water the plants in the modest garden I have on my balcony. Using the garden hose, and forgive me for using it in these times of drought, is one of the best therapies there is. Anyway, I watered the plants and I pulled off some dry leaves and cleaned some of the whiteflies from the leaves of a recovering croton. Now the charge was at 46%. I decided to leave it off and went to prepare my third coffee of the day and to wash some dishes that looked at me with their greasy watery eyes. The charge was at 69%, maybe I should buy a new cable, and I was already a little anxious about the fights on twitter and the avalanche of WhatsApp messages that awaited me. But I resisted turning it on and I went to get bored for a while on the balcony. There, without coffee, without a book, without a hose, without a cell phone. The phone reached 100% and I turned it on, it illuminated me with its dazzling colors, with the photo of some red clovers that I have as my wallpaper. And suddenly I realized that all that ‘charging time’ had given me some Me Time …

*this post is a translation of a post I found in @rabodeají a blog I've read for years. I thought it was fascinating and so on topic, that I decided to post it here because we all need some Me Time, without the interference of so many cables and devices that keep us from having more time to ourselves…"

XOXO 

P. S. And this was my response to his post:

And all you said is true.

That image you used (reminiscent of Alien) is so accurate that it gave me the creeps. I'm one of those people who has decreed an electronic time-out. I still listen to Long Plays, which force me to get up and put down the book (a real book made of paper!) I'm reading to change sides. I still have a camera (with battery and film) to take pictures and I collect battery-operated AM radios.

If zombies attack us, they're going to kill me because I'm clumsy and careless, not because I'm staring at my iPhone screen trying to get more than two bars…

XOXO