I am hoping to never have a smart phone. I don’t need one (as long as landlines are available) nor am I suited neurologically for such a device. I am, as my brother dubbed me long ago, a lightweight. He was referring to my profound allergy to alcohol, but the same goes for electro-techno input. My mind body spirit no like.
That said, I have a giant computer in my office and I’ve become accustomed to having good fast Internet for email and research (including tennis and soccer highlights and Penelope Cruz interviews) and every few weeks someone does call me on my telephone, usually the dentist’s office, so I need a reliable phone.
Before the advent of the Internet, you may or may not recall, the phone and postal service were our main ways of connecting with people we couldn’t reach by shouting. Not only did we somehow survive, we were happier, much happier, according to those agencies annually monitoring such things as collective happiness.
Am I suggesting the Internet and cell phones are the cause of growing unhappiness in the general population? No. Merely noting the coincidence. There’s also accelerating climate catastrophes and the cost of living outstripping income and 1% of the population gaining more and more wealth while almost everyone else has less and less. And then there’s war and over-population and starvation and the melting glaciers and the ongoing pandemic and…
Which is all to say, as I write this, my phone and Internet, which we have bundled (technical term) are out. Not working. And both have been spotty (technical term) for several weeks now. We get our phone and Internet through our very local Mendocino Community Network (MCN), an outfit operating under the auspices of our local school district. Gosh are they ever nice about the frequent outages. Usually the problem is with the phone lines, which MCN rents from AT&T, and usually the problem gets fixed within a few days.
Were I still a mover and shaker in the larger cultural matrix… scratch that. Had I ever been (actually and not delusionally) a mover and shaker in the larger cultural matrix, I might find such frequent outages untenable. But I have never moved or shaken much of anything except my booty, though I certainly aspired to move and shake things in that great big world on the other side of the tracks until one day…I’ll spare you the (yawn) details.
Thus, since I am not (see above paragraph), these outages are merely annoying at first, and then they free up time for thinning the arugula and schlepping firewood and meditating and writing scintillating musings such as this one, which I’m sure you’ll want to send me an email about, and I’ll get your email in a few days when the AT&T person fixes the short in my line.
I know the problem is a short because the boss of MCN, the head of the entire operation, aptly named Sage, personally took my call and ran a check on my line while I held on. I called him on Marcia’s phone, which still works. You see we have two lines, two different phone numbers, that supposedly join forces to give us something called Fusion, ostensibly a much faster Internet connection than one line would give us. They told us this when we signed up for the service. I’m not sure I believe them.
What a great guy, Sage. He explained everything to me in terms even I could understand, sort of, and now I am at peace. Sort of. Even though my phone and Internet still don’t work.
Several friends of ours, tiring of the recurring outages, have given up on our local system and opted for service from giant multi-national corporations offering better and faster and more reliable Internet along with free sports and movies and many other perks. Not I. Multinational corporations creep me out.
Interestingly, or ironically, or mysteriously, and most definitely irksomely, Marcia’s phone and her half of our fusion never go out, unless there’s a power outage in most of California due to a hellacious storm or historic wildfire, whereas my phone and my half of our fusion go spotty and shorty and, I won’t mince my words, dead several times a year even when the weather is fine.
Marcia says my half of our fusion goes spotty and shorty and dead because I get upset about the disconnections, whereas she would not, she claims, be upset if her phone and Internet went out, which is why they don’t. Go out. I have suggested to her it’s easy not to be upset when she never experiences the outages, but she insists that on some metaphysical level I am causing my own outages, whereas she simply doesn’t cause outages of things she needs.
She also can drink coffee and booze and eat gluten and dairy and feel just fine, and I can’t. So maybe she’s on to something. Maybe these outages are the result of my karma. Of course they are.
I’m going to bring this up with Sage the next time I call him on Marcia’s phone after they fix my phone and Internet and then they go out again. I’ll say, “Sage? Do you think these recurring outages of my line could be the result of my karma?”
And I’ll bet you a dollar he says, “Unlikely, but not entirely outside the realm of possibility.” And then he’ll call AT&T.
fin