A yet unwritten time to come

Some thoughts from my travels turned into a writing piece.

When I put my phone down I can’t help but to leave a sigh. 

In the morning it was a device so I could make it to work on time while navigating through a foreign city. 

By afternoon it was my way to communicate with a friend who just left a memorial service for her dear friend.

At night I received a photo of a new born baby from a friend who went into labor a few days before and now holds onto her healthy child.

Connecting us in more ways than one, sharing emoties sometimes so raw that a call wouldn’t be able to cover it or just leaving a glimpse of a moment in time for you to watch a million times over.

For someone who was the last one in college to have a smartphone and got laughed at in the past until she only recently got data on her phone, I must say I have grown attached to having a device to stay connected. But as fond as I am of it, I also like to turn it off hours before bedtime.
Turning off the rush of constant noise that feels like a village but is actually a whole world tuning in all at the same time. Scrolling, zapping, swiping like it’s nothing.

When noise gets so loud that the frequency becomes a static noise that turns into the absolute deafening silence I have ever heard… is when all the wires in my brain seem to connect.

Connecting dots? Putting memories in line like a slideshow. Voices that seem to use my brain as an echo chamber. Files of the past all laying down on the floor. By even daring to reach at the most precious of times, it feels like it is slipping through my fingers.

I look back at my phone. In the midst of an intense staring contest the screen lights up by an incoming message. However my eyes are wandering not over the starting prompt of the message but to the date.

Just three years ago my life looked completely different. I was grieving a friend and at the same time I wasn’t aware yet that soon I would grief another. While a third friend kept it a little longer to himself that he later that year would become a father.
All this news I read, heard or saw on that device, that for sure is winning this staring contest, turned my eyes glossy.

Making me wonder what more news I will receive on the thing on the table that seems to connect me to others. Then again it doesn’t connect me anymore to the person who used to make me midnight snacks when I was studying or to the person who knew me the best in this entire world. Because both of them belong to the past.

As a flipbook images are being sent of the future by parents that are my friends. Seeing them and their children grow up feels more like pushing the button on a viewfinder and wondering why they couldn’t fit more frames on a reel.

The next day I still find myself in a foreign city commuting to work and walking around at a convention where I normally only would have been together with this companion who is no longer amongst us. It was hard being there without my friend. So I reached out. To my back pocket to grab my device and then to message someone who is still in my present. Maybe not near me in person, but still close to me by this little box that is my flipbook, viewfinder, mailbox, wireless landline and more all in one.

I don’t know what this connecting device will tell me in a few hours or minutes from now, but for all the sorrows, I wouldn’t want to give up on tomorrow. So this thing finds its way in the back pocket of my jeans waiting for a response of a yet unwritten time to come.

Love,