Sententia

Last night while walking back from frisbee practice I walked past a few other students, as usual. Three in a row we're talking on their cell phones and I was reminded of my love/hate relationship with cell phones. For me they allow easy communication with those I don't get to see much, easier organization of meetings etc., and an easy place to take a brief note. Seeing those students also reminded me of how whenever I set off on a walk that will be more than 5 minutes I usually think of who I need to call. It's only in the moments where my hate relationship for phones is present that I notice what a burden they are and how they keep me from enjoying the moment around me. There is no ordinary moment and I'd rather Be Here Now than Back There wondering what I "have to do" next.

Back in the middle of January, Valpo had a pretty big celebration of Martin Luther Kind Jr. weekend. One of the guests was poet Lawson Fusao Inada. I attended his reading, and his focus group the following day. At age 4 he and his family were unjustly "interned" (held in a camp-like prison) in Fresno, Arkansas, for the duration of WWII, as were most families with Japanese heritage. Inada read poems from his book Legends From Camp. I really enjoyed his style of writing and reading. All this description just to say that during the focus group at one point cell phones came up. Inada was describing a moment he had had recently in line at a pharmacy. The girl in front of him in line was on their phone, and Inada shared what he wondered in the moment "What do you say on the phone while in line? 'Hi mom, yeah, I'm at the store, yeah, I'm in line, yeah I'll be home soon.'" He then laughed uproariously which alone was quite funny to behold. His tone of honest amazement in the girl's need to call her mom made me stop and think. I asked myself "yeah, what do we say on the phone?" The image he imprinted on my brain was someone talking at (not to) a phone, just a piece of plastic with electronic chips in it, not a tool for communication. It was simply a visceral, basic, earthly, ideal feeling that made me realize just how fake cell phones are to our true experience of life on earth.

On a side note, it's moments like I had listening to Inada that I've always wanted to write about. I'm really happy I can do that here.