I hear and read a lot about
our enslavement to technology—
especially to our smart phones.
I call them that without irony in spite of what people say.
There’s a photographer who wanted to
show us how lonely
we’ve become, how alienated from
each other,
by having people pose—couples,
families, friends and lovers—
holding invisible phones.
He called his project Removed.
Seeing the cleverness in his black and white photos, people began
sharing them on Facebook, on Twitter,
virtually every which way;
which did seem ironic to me.
I placed my smart phone on the kitchen counter
after work today, while I was preparing supper.
It didn’t take long for its black screen to light up and then
it buzz-buzzed as it vibrated.
It was one of my three sons, messaging in, interested
in the day I had, and wanting me to look
at something he’d written; happy to HAHAHAHAHAHA
and emoji in response to
a funny photo I took of the inside of the dishwasher
(there’s a private story there)
We were conspirators in real time,
he in his apartment and me in my kitchen, and I just know
that we were both smiling in real time, and I thought
how wonderful my small black phone is to bring
my beautiful son right into the kitchen next to me,
and just then, his younger brother, working way up
in the Arctic, at 72° 15’ 00” N / 80° 30’ 00” W,
(which is easily found on your GPS-enabled phone)
began texting me too. Bzzz-buzz-buzz
Thanks to my smart phone, my sons
were no longer at
any remove at all.
August 29th 2017
