Living Behind Screens

My first Fourth of July back in Vegas was rather low-key but enjoyable. Climbing on to a roof, we had a 360 degree view of everything from Green Valley Ranch to South Point Station to the Strip to the amazing display of questionable legality from the people across the street. Everything from the burst of dazzling lights, to the shimmer of fading glory, to the smell of sulfur that filled my nostrils was so reminiscent of childhood summers and stock American experience that I wanted to capture the moments and squirrel them away forever. I have been a tad gun shy with my camera, as of late, after the realization that it is not appreciated here as it was in Austin, but felt the urge and pulled it out tonight. Viewing the fireworks, filtered through the tiny digital screen, the situation struck me as ironic. Ironic because I was missing the beauty of the moment by trying to capture it.

I was no longer standing there, feeling the warm breeze wash over my legs or marveling at the majesty of the red burst set against blue-black, star strewn sky. I was fussing over settings, light gradients, and zoom qualities. Looking back at what I captured was nothing compared to the memory I could have made had I just stood there and been checked into the moment. I think it is time that each of us should ponder how what happens on the screens in our lives have begun to push aside and supersede the things that go on in the actual, nondigital world that surrounds us.

The screens we yearn to possess, have instead begun to possess us. In grocery stores and shopping malls all I see are kids, teens and adults walking with their faces straight down, all but oblivious to their immediate surroundings, fixated instead on the screens they hold in their palms. They smile, as if at a human being, while ignoring the sea of living people around them. Isolated in a crowd, they tap away at the tiny keyboard.

I am no less guilty of this. For the moment I wake to the time I lay my head upon the pillow, my phone is never more than three feet from me. I have the same crick in my neck from the straight down stare. I have my headphones in ever time I shop. I don't think I have heard a store employee greet me since the day I bought my first iPod. The last four days has shown me how far the problem extends. My new iPhone manifest a glitch in the hardware and became unpredictable. I could not text message, or check Facebook, or read emails. I felt like a heroine addict with an unreliable dealer. Is this an addiction, or merely the result of our ever shrinking attention span? Perhaps it is both.

Regardless, I cannot go anywhere without my phone. I am sure I am not the only one who has experienced this in the past. You leave home to go to dinner or to Starbucks or the movies, but once you arrive, you realize, to your horror, that you have somehow forgotten your phone. You are inadvertently phoneless, screenless, helpless. What is this? You start to feel vaguely jittery. You feel untethered and unreachable. You briefly consider actually leaving to go home to go your phone. How will you pass the time while the guy in front of you orders to most complicated coffee in the world? Will you really have to be checked in while you zig-zag your way through the grocery store? Will you have to make actual dinner conversation with your co-diner before the food comes? You are only going to be away from it for two hours, at most, yet you are going through classic withdrawal symptoms.

It is hard to remember, but we all seemed to get along pretty well in the days before the screens invaded our lives. We navigated life rather efficiently when we knew that once we left the house, no one would be able to reach us until we came back. We did not need constant connectability, the ability to be reachable at all time. We did not require ceaseless digital bombardment. Had it been offered all at once, instead of a gradual change to the world at large, we probably would have rejected it outright, like a first free taste of heroin.

Screens are in our lives everywhere; TV, movies, computers, phone, cameras, video games, etc. While we will never get away from them, we can for just a moment look away and experience our own lives in full, HD, 3-D color. Go ahead, try it. Look away from this screen. Look around you, out the window or across the room or down the street. Isn't it something? It looks so real, you half-believe you can touch it.

My 31st Fourth

Yesterday was the Fourth of July and the day could not have been better.

Friday's late night bled into a late morning. I did not even get out of bed until noon. I love those days when you wake and then lay with your eyes closed, just letting your mind wonder. I tried not to think of packing, how much the A/C was costing me, or my five year plan.

This year we had a pool party over at Frankie's patent's house. I was not in town last year. I was in Portland, fighting my way onto the MAX train along with every other Oregonian from Clackamas to Hillsbro. It was nice to spend the holiday with my brother but it offered a weird feeling of maturity when the two of us were the ones who were looking up firework times and holding place in the bathroom lines instead of the ones running off our sugar highs.

Loaded with soda, ketchup, two kinds of mustard, and nine ears of corn, I made my way over there mid-afternoon. The triple digit temperature almost had it feeling like home, but the humidity quickly reminds that this is far from a desert. The afternoon was full of hot dogs, sun, pool time, and generally great times.

Red ensured that the party ran smoothly. She is ever the hostess. Recently, with my new calling, I came to a realization that just like my brother and I at Portland fireworks show, that someone has to plan things. I know that sounds like something so obvious, but it has really hit me hard in the last couple of months. How many lessons have I sat through and not given any thought to who prepped them? How many activities have I showed up at and had nothing but a bad attitude? How many parties have I gone to and given no thought except to show up?

Earlier this week, no one had mentioned doing anything for the Fourth. I was asked several times, and in turn I asked others several times. It wasn't until July 2, my mother's birthday, that this party's invite went out. Just like everyone else, I was relieved that I had somewhere to go and did not give thought to what went into actually making that happen. Two separate conversations enlightened me.

The social strata in the ward has somehow made it so that certain people have become responsible for every one's good times. The point was epitomized when Frankie was approached and asked what the plan for after the party was. He said I don't know, and then was asked again in another way. Frankie again, said, I don't know. I felt a stab of guilty that if I was not currently under going my whole self improvement project, and currently working on "going with the flow" and trying to be less of a planner, how easily could it have been me bugging him. How many times in the past was it me? Perspective is an amazing thing.

Along the lines of my self improvement, this Fourth brought me face to face with two things that everyone who knows me, associates with me. A couple of months back, in talking with Frankie, had made the rash decision to try corn. It is a well known fact, and I receive much guff about it, that I do not eat veggies. Not a single one. I am probably the most picky person you have ever met. I like things plain, dry, and bland.

In our conversation we discussed how much easier it would be if I liked more things. I would not have to send things back, could eat what I was served and eating within my points would be so much easier. When / If I get pregnant, I am going to have to face this particular beast. It would be plain selfish to not eat a balanced diet when it affect someone other than myself. Plus, I can spend all the time I want in the gym, but a balanced diet is really the way to health and weight management.

So ear in hand, because I should, I bit into my first corn on the cob. We will say that it wasn't disgusting. I did not particularly enjoy it, but if served to me at dinner, I could eat it. My displeasure was emblazoned on my face and told me to just put the ear down if I hated it. I told him how I at least had to give it a chance. It took me six weeks to make the switch from regular soda to diet, I could barely make it through a bowl of cereal when I switched to skim, and ten years ago you could not have caught me dead with a yogurt. Now are all staples in my diet. He mentioned that my palate just might be in a jag and I just might need to be more open. That is exactly what I am hoping for. If I am really going to be a better person, to change to be someone that others seek out and want to be with, I need to step outside of my comfort zone.

Number two, on my list of things that I am not so great at is swimming. I know, who at my age does not know how to swim? Both the veggies and swimming go back to childhood. The veggies was a control thing, and the swimming, well the swimming just was not exactly something that you did when you were still working on things lower on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Every year when it comes up that I can't swim, invariably, someone says that they are going to teach me how. Honestly, this is really the first time that anyone has taken the time to try to teach me. The lesson only lasted about 1/2 hour, but covered important lessons like close your mouth, don't try to breathe underwater, and why the doggie paddle is so inefficient. Even though I scrapped bottom several times and got the worst chlorine headache I have had in a long time, all in all, I think we made some headway. I may not be able to enter a triathlon any time soon, but the fact they took the time to try to show me was heartwarming and worth the near drowning I had to endure.

As the sun sank into the West, those who were left set about the task of cleaning up. With the grill closed, net wrapped up, dishes washed, doors locked, we left to eat one mighty fine burger and then rolled over to watch the fireworks. Fireworks were done and then we went and watched Transformers. Curled up under a blanket, with the smell of the sun still on my skin, I smiled a secret little smile to myself. What a great day my 31st Fourth was.