A Throwback to a Time Outside of Time
When's the last time you navigated this world without a smartphone? Would you do it again?
Merry, merry, and we may find time to appreciate one another as the year closes and all the rest of the following year. If you’d like to appreciate my time, I’ve been revamping my Society6 store, a work in progress to be sure, but the trees, if you can find them, are winning. Have a look.
It occurred to me today, as I woke with language in my head that demanded to be written down, that I may be finding my way back to a time in which this happened daily.
Some of you know that I define my life as before I lived in Bath (England) and after I lived in Bath.
In many ways, this state change was a shift into a very long and arduous healing process that may continue until the day I die, and for that, I am ever seeking to return to Bath, however, this morning I realized that I may also desire a return to this place and TIME for another reason.
Sure I desire the things I had there: a time outside of time and away from my home place, financial freedom (even if it was borrowed), dedicated writing time, and the full ability to do what I wanted when I wanted (which to be fair wasn’t much), but it was also the time just before the dings and beeps of modern tech started.
Back in 2008, the iPhone had yet to make its way to Fargo, and even if it had, with a CDMA connection rather than a GSM it would have been useless in the UK. In either case, the phone I did have did not work there and I went overseas without a working phone. Can you imagine?
How did I navigate? Keep in touch? What on earth did I do with my time? Days I turn off the phone now seem so long and empty.
A few years ago, when in Iowa City, I arrived at work at the UI Writing Center and realized I had forgotten my phone. I don’t know why I brought it up with two of the students I was working with, but they were incredulous. WHAT IF SOMETHING HAPPENS ON YOUR WAY HOME?!
I assured them that there was literally nowhere between the school and my house in which there wasn’t a store, a house, a human with a mobile in a passing car, that I couldn’t stop and ask for help. I literally moved to Europe without a phone for goodness sake. I met the father-in-law of a friend I’d just met through my aunt and uncle at the airport without, I think, even knowing what he looked like! (To be honest, he looks a bit like Sir Elton, just a bit, with blonde hair.) I think he had a sign with my name on it! The absolute only time that has ever happened to me.
I traveled from Colchester to Bath, by train with changes in London, with two heavy suitcases. With those suitcases I could literally not even lift myself, I waited exasperatedly in a pub for a future housemate who’d wanted to meet up to travel to Bath but she didn’t show, I just had to wait as long as I possibly could and then give up.
(When she finally arrived at the house a few days later without much of an apology, I learned quickly what to expect from her in the way of courteousness at the expense of another’s time and energy.)
Once arriving in Bath, I took the second cab I had ever taken because hell if I knew where I was going and bedamned if I was going to roll those suitcases along to get there.
It was messy and awkward and irritating and I had a lot of help with those suitcases up and down the endless Tube steps from people I would never see again (I have learned to pack lighter and ship boxes).
I had to take the time to pause and orient myself. I had to look at maps before I left. I had to write down the address of my new house and keep it accessible. I was not able to play endless games of solitaire on the two-hour train from London.
There are a lot of steps sans phone and a lot of seemingly empty time, but I did do it and so did hundreds and thousands of people in the thousands of years prior to the smartphone. I mean, people literally walked from Rome to northern England back in the day. They WALKED!
My Great Great Grandpa Frank stepped off an oceanliner after weeks at sea, got separated from his family, and when the equivalent of a TSA Agent was about to send him back to Italy, a kind Irishman greeted him like they were family even though they didn’t speak the same language, and pulled him away which allowed Grandpa Frank the opportunity to spot his wife and daughter.
NOW THAT is a moment in which a smartphone would have been handy.
But in truth, I can hardly imagine traveling without one now. I got the iPhone as soon as it was available in Fargo. When I traveled it was useless, but I brought my old pay-as-you-go phone and bought SIM cards before I even left the airport.
I upgraded my iPhone 4 to the 5 strictly because it had a dual internal CDMA and an unlocked GSM SIM slot so when I traveled again I could pop in a UK SIM and still have not just a smartphone, but my smartphone. I strictly purchased the iPhone 5 for this reason. Not because I needed a new phone. And I’m not even sure I ended up traveling with it.
I canceled a contract with whomever, Verizon, I think, to join T-Mobile because it had adopted free international text and data. I tried to convince myself it was the shattered screen of my iPhone 5 so I needed an upgrade anyway, but I never even considered simply replacing the screen.
In short, I have been a woman possessed.
And the sad truth is, I don’t travel enough to warrant any of this and the sadder truth is, aside from maps, text, and calling, don’t phones just take away from, rather than add to, the whole idea of being on holiday in the first place? It’s meant to be a time to disconnect from screens and connect with life, to look up and around us or look down into that book we’ve been meaning to read for eight years but the endless hours of work and obligations got in the way.
It’s a time to slow down.
And so despite my nonchalance at having left my phone at home on a random Wednesday morning, and these two young women sounding, I suspect, a lot like their mothers, I have been right there with them at the detriment of not only my writing but of my brain.
I can’t just sit anymore. I can’t allow myself to be bored. Even now I’m fighting the urge to pick up my phone just to see if there are messages or to navigate over to an Instagram or Facebook tab. Check my email. Get my little drops of dopamine. My little drops of love.
Everything I try, short of literally ditching all digital devices altogether, has had no lasting effect. So what is there left to do?