confessions of a Luddite

I still have a flip phone--a banged-up but 100% operable, slick Sony Ericsson. When I left my cell phone charger at the Super 8 in Wooster, Ohio, last December, I couldn't buy a replacement charger at any store in NYC. The clerks at two Radio Shacks laughed; the salespeople at two T-Mobile stores stared as if I were speaking in the grown-ups' language of a Charlie Brown TV special. (Mwah-mwah, flip phone, mwahm wahma?)  Best Buy was a beacon of hope: the label on an antique cell charger promised to work with my phone. It didn't. But the Best Buy guy told me I could just buy one on E-Bay for 99 cents, duh, which I did.

    Homeless people have better phones than I do. Some of them also have MP3 players and portable DVD players, neither of which I have ever owned. 

    Correction: I owned a Nano for two of weeks. A well-meaning guy I was dating gave me his semi-operable Nano for Valentine's Day (he had a new one). You couldn't forward or rewind, but you could poke "play" and hear some dance beats. He asked for it back after we broke up. I lose umbrellas, gloves, hats, scarves and sunglasses on subways as quickly as boyfriends, so I've never invested in music gadgets since my COBY CD player broke around 2001. Needless to say, I do not own a Kindle.

   I'm terrified of the day my phone dies, when I will have to face again the option to upgrade to the new century. Despite my Amish-like ways, I'm a loyal Apple devotee. I love my Mac laptop. I have a crush on i-phones and i-tablets. But I shudder at the thought of being reachable 24/7, of being tempted to check work email or update my status or snap photos of the Jesus silhouette on my French toast or Google the Moore-Willis daughters at any given moment. I like to uni-task. I try not to text and walk at the same time. If I'm texting, how I can be fully attentive to my surroundings? How will I notice the pattern of clouds above or the scent of lilacs and dogwoods in bloom as I pass by? How will I have uninterrupted expanses of time to reflect, meditate, daydream? 

   Whenever I obsess about the evils of new technology and its devastation of attention spans, I think of Keats reclined in the tall grass and a nightingale close by singing. I imagine him listening, uninterrupted, still, enchanted, inspired. I can't picture him with a cell phone vibrating beside him, a Word window popping open on his tablet, a Facebook news stream updating him every millisecond with the status of his 999 "friends." He couldn't have tweeted an "Ode to a Nightingale" in 140 characters (although some scientific advances, like a TB vaccine, would have worked in his favor.) 

    One of the highlights of my weekend is turning off my phone, shutting down my laptop, and curling up on the couch for a nap. Mattie drowses at my feet, and it's so quiet I can hear us breathe.   

  

not tonight dear, i'm watching law & order

The postcard project is a challenge: apparently, I have zero time each day to write. That's right, no time on the 45 minute subway ride to and from work. No time while watching Law and Order: Criminal Intent. No time during my lunch break at work, and certainly no time on weekends. The post office is extremely far away (next door), and I'm not sure they make postcard stamps anymore. I have a repetitive stress injury in my right shoulder. I'm getting a migraine almost daily, I ran out of pens and paper. I'm plum out of ideas. I'm not sure where mail drop-boxes are, or if snail mail even exists. My fingers are frozen. I'm a terrible writer. I quit.

Postcard #1, Revised

Every day is every day is every day.
I'm thinking of too much
at once. Of an hour lost in a station
where engines idled in the tracks,
where fume and perfume and goodbye
fought for air. Every day is night, every night
another morning. I've walked into this season,
this ocean before. I didn't know I was weary
until you asked. I won't speak of flowers
or weather, of which enough has been said.
I'll spend most of my life
softening into forgiveness. The task
has chosen me. A fortuneteller
once told me to listen
as a whale listens
for pitches too high, too low
for most ears to comprehend.
I'm swimming to the source.
I'm holding my breath.

Postcard #2
(Experiment: rewrite the poem backwards in couplets)

I'm holding

my breath.

I'm swimming

to the source.

A fortuneteller once told me

to listen

as a whale listens
for pitches too high,

too low
for most ears to comprehend.

The task has chosen
me. I'll spend most of my life

softening into forgiveness.
I won't speak of flowers

or weather: enough
has been said. I didn't know

I was weary
until you asked.

I've walked into this
season, this ocean

before. Every day is night,
every night

another morning,
an hour lost

in a train station.
I think of too much

at once. Every day
is every

day is
every day.

Postcard #3, draft #1

(Experiment: rewrite with "every day" as anaphora, using the same words in original)

Every day is a fortuneteller.

Every day is holding
its breath. Every day is flowers
or weather, morning or night.
Every day I’m softening
into forgiveness. Every day is a season,
an ocean I’ve walked into
before. Every day is another hour
lost in a station, fumes swimming
in the tracks. Every day I’m weary
of perfume. Every day I won’t speak,
won’t listen to the ocean’s pitches.
Every day is a whale
and I’m thinking of too much at once,
fighting for air.
Every day is a fortune, every day a task
that has chosen me.

Postcard #3

(Experiment: with scissors, cut the poem so each line is its own slip of paper. Rearrange.)

Every day is a fortuneteller.
    Every day is holding
        its breath. Every day is flowers

lost in a station, fumes swimming

    fighting for air.
        Every day is a fortune, every day a task

in the tracks. Every day I’m weary
    Every day is a whale
        or weather, morning or night.

Every day I’m softening

    into forgiveness. Every day is a season,
        and I’m thinking of too much at once

Every day is another hour
     that has chosen me.

Postcard #4

(experiment: use a new anaphora, rewrite with same words as original)

since a flower is a fortuneteller

since every morning is holding its breath
since every train station is another lost hour
since the weather is every softening
since in the tracks another flowering
since in every ocean, a whale fights for air
since goodbye is a perfume
since night is forgiveness
since listening is saying and saying is a flowering
since every day is at once
since choosing is a task
since you asked me to--

Postcard #1 (April in April Poetry Month)

APRIL is poetry month. How lovely to have an entire month named after Me and my Profession. I'm participating in a poetry postcard project with fellow writers in Kundiman (an organization for Asian American poets). The challenge: through the entire month of April, write a new poem on a postcard every day and send it the next name on the list, flooding mailboxes with my genius verse. Mailmen will weep! Mountains will move! Hearts will throb with inspiration! Meanwhile, my own mailbox will be bursting with gorgeous lyric and sultry song. My mailman will finally believe that not only 1800-PET-MEDS and student loan companies are after me. Nay, I am sung to by Orpheus himself, by all the Muses and their daughters, by the most talented Asian-American bards of our time! (PS: You don't have to be a poet to do something everyday for a month. What will you do for 10 minutes every day to bring joy or change into your life?)

Postcard #1
Every day is every day is every day.
I'm thinking of too much
at once. Of an hour lost in a station
where engines idled in the tracks,
where fume and perfume and goodbye
fought for air. Every day is night, every night
another morning. I've walked into this season,
this ocean before. I didn't know I was weary
until you asked. I won't speak of flowers
or weather, of which enough has been said.
I'll spend most of my life
softening into forgiveness. The task
has chosen me. A fortuneteller
once told me to listen
as a whale listens
for pitches too high, too low
for most ears to comprehend.
I'm swimming to the source.
I'm holding my breath.