Shark fin

The cell phone has ceased to be a novelty. Therefore, I'm giving the damn thing up.

The cell phone was pretty cool, at first. A toy. Call as many people as I wanted, whenever I wanted. With the cell phone, I made calls when, before, I was thinking. I found I was using it as a way to put noice in the silence. When I realized I so craved silence, I began to understand that quiet, for me, is a time of prayer. Prayer is a lot of work, and I was avoiding work by using the cell phone.

I praying than I thought. When I quit my regular job almost four years ago, the line between leisure and work disappeared. Where I used to give up my own creativity and thought when I clocked in, I worked when I wanted and work faded into the rhythm of life. It was a nice arrangement, far better than the fragmentation that occurred when the clock divided the day.

Then, my wife and I bought cell phones. At first, I was against it, being a Luddite underneath. But, also a member of the real world, I relented when she said she wanted to get a hold of me in my sort of fuzzy life. It was understandable, wanting to contact your husband when he's in the fog.

It wasn't long, however, before the convenience turned into necessity. I needed the phone. Well, not really need, but want. Not necessity but desire. Desire, of course, became a kind of addiction. How many minutes did I have left? Did I remember to charge it? Did I have my phone with me? Dammit, did I leave it at home again? Did I leave the thing in some public place? What happened when some stranger found a phone they could use without limits? How much would this cost me?

And I hardly talked to my wife on it. When she called, I was in the middle of something. Then, I had to hear about how much more I talked on the phone than she did--me, the Luddite, subsumed in consumer culture, lost in the great messiness of fractures and fractures of fractures I so wanted to dodge when I quit the job.

I put up with this for a long time, something like three years. Low-level misery. Finally, with a new kid in the house and not enough time to study, I said screw it.

It's over for the cell phone. I might use it when I walk the dogs in the evening. Might.