iPhone

        In your right hand you hold the portal to ten thousand dimensions, the great bender of realities, the iPhone. You touch the icon for Co—Star.
     Good morning, You. It’s 46 degrees and slight chance of light rain in your area.

Today at a GlanceYou are a muddy stick. Power in routine. Pressure in routine, thinking & creativity, social life, neuroses, anxiety, integrity, self-love, grocery stores, parking lots, here, and generally existing.
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Through TodayWhy do you continue to contradict yourself? Today is tough. So is this entire year. And the next one. Your desire for human connection will deepen your reliance on technology, and your will shall be lost to an intellect that is not your own. But don’t sweat it. Just be yourself.
DoSound-baths
To-Do Lists
Baader–Meinhof
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Don’tHome Depot
Microwave Popcorn
FaceTime Dad

        Wow Co—Star, there are gentler ways to drag a person, you think. But it was on brand.
        A notification! Your screen time this week averaged 5 hours and 23 minutes a day. Almost a third of your waking life. You think about the other things you could be doing with all that time; they don’t seem appealing. But the real question is, does Co—Star have access to this data? That seems… unfair.
        You google it. 26 minutes later you’re convinced that Co—Star, in fact, does not know how much time you spend on your phone. A relief.
        So it’s the stars then? The alignment of the stars at the moment of your birth told this app that “your will shall be lost to an intellect that is not your own.” Right.
        Just to humor yourself, you google “is astrology real” and after 42 minutes, you aren’t sure.
        A 6 minute search for “average daily screen time” is also inconclusive but yields an estimated range of 3-6 hours and the hypothesis that “teens who spend less time on smartphones are happier.”
        You aren’t a teen, but it does make you wonder. Are you unhappy with your screen time? Are you unhappy because of your screen time? Do you desire real human connection? Haha. You sound like a commercial. It’s all silly, and would make for a cute TikTok someday.
        Someday? Why not now? You get to work and in 17 minutes you have shot, edited, and produced a mockumercial for the imaginary product CellJail, a time-locking jail cell for your delinquent little smartphone.
        2 minutes later a bemused TikTokker informs you that this product already exists in several varieties. Walmart is even marketing them to, uhh, teachers… The fact that your imaginary product is real leaves you with a mix of validation and dread.
        It’s already 10:02? Two hours into your workday-from-home and you have not worked. You really could use a CellJail now. Haha.
        You add a cute handmade version to your cart on Etsy, then hang around in the digital checkout line for a while, staring at the price. In the end, you decide it’s too punitive.
        By 12:30 pm your screen time is over 4 hours and your work time, which is supposed to be spent writing inspirational scripts for a mostly-unheard-of-but-surprisingly-popular-in-Moldova wellness podcast, is still zilch.
        On your “union-mandated lunch break,” (you like to call it that because, Haha, you’re an independent contractor and can’t unionize) you have fallen so far behind that you decide to get serious about limiting your screen time.
        You’ve tried the ecologically-branded app-locking apps like Forest and Space, but building labyrinths within the very thing you’re trying to escape never made much sense. So you google “how to limit screen time” to get a few ideas.
        At the end of your 42 minute lunch break, the max your union was able to negotiate, Haha, you have a plan.
        Well, to be precise, a big-armed, broad-smiling internet man named Anthony Hardesty has a plan. And your plan is to follow it. Hardesty’s plan promises, through the combined might of aromatherapy, meditation, self-talk, rigorous scheduling, and the Pomodoro Technique, to cut your screen time in half in two weeks. And if you so choose, claims Hardesty, you can use the method to leave your phone entirely within two months.
        And it’s free.
        The key to breaking a bad habit, says “Tony Hardmind,” as he calls himself in his first video pep talk, is to replace it. To start, whenever you feel the desire to check your phone, light a relaxing stick of Guru Lulu’s 2-in-1 Lavender + Sage Mini-Incense. The smell will remind you of your intention to avoid your phone, and the sticks are so small that you can repeat this often, at a reasonable price. Whatever cut the honorable Guru Lulu gives Hardesty for the product placement goes unmentioned.
        Things start off okay. The incense smells more like hippie vanilla than lavender and sage, but it doesn’t funk up a room like patchouli, and it does remind you of your goal. It’s a shock to notice how often you go to your phone without intending. What else do you do on autopilot? Is it really you doing it? Who steers the ship if not Theseus?
        After two weeks of the Guru Lulu method, your daily screen time is down to 2:57. A bit short of half, but close enough to accept Hardesty’s marketing. You’re proud. You’ve slipped from inertia’s weighted grip. As far as the ‘superpowers’ Tony Hardmind promised, “a greater attention span, clearer thoughts, a sharper libido…” well, two weeks seems too soon to judge.
        “Week 3 is full speed ahead,” says Hardmind. “But also time to switch lanes.” He wants you to keep a meticulous schedule. Write everything down. Every work hour, ever water break, every allotted train of distracted thought, annotated, down to the minute.
        Then, whenever you deviate from your schedule, mark it in red pen—a ScribeWrite Gel Pen if you can get it, the best on the market—explaining how and why you deviated.
        Every two and a half hours, schedule in 15 minutes of phone time. These are sanctioned breaks with intention, the central pillar of the Pomodoro Technique.
        “I strongly advise you use a Pomodoro timer that is not your phone,” adds Tony. “The best option is Tony’s Crushed Time Pomodoro Sauce™, which I happen to sell on my website.
        Two weeks into the Pomodoro & Gel Pen Plan, you’re a scheduling machine, a living, breathing iCal, just like Tony promised. Your screen time is well under two hours, and you’re more productive than ever. Occasionally, when the timer goes off for your phone break, you skip it and go right on working. You have the drive of a firefighter and the energy of a non-phone-addicted teen. The days are long and robust. Your focus is lapidary.
        It’s only been a month and the ghost is nearly exorcised, you think. Who will you be at zero hours?
        “Reaching zero is difficult, but not impossible,” says Tony, appearing behind you in your bedroom mirror. He puts a hand on your shoulder and whispers, “Do you want to go?”
        “Yes, I want to crush it,” you say, in a practiced line of self-talk.
        “Then come with me.”
        You climb onto Tony’s back and he leaps out of your open window. The night air is cool and fragrant; nonetheless, Tony sweats.
        He hovers above a church. “You see these folks,” he says, trying to catch his breath. “They have very hard minds.”
        All you can make out are some tiny figures in black and white clothing and hats. And maybe a horse-drawn carriage?
        “The pinnacle of discipline,” says Tony. “See, not a phone in sight. Why? Cause a hunnid percent of their time is intentional. A hunnid.”
        Your eyes adjust—it’s an Amish community. One of the women pulls a phone out, laughs, then puts it away.
        “Well, these are New Order,” says Tony. “But you get the idea. So, you still willing to make the sacrifice these hard-minds made? You willing to give up the sweet and easy marshmallow in exchange for two juicy marshmallows of pure, nutritious focus? Are you ready to suffer the—”
        “Yes,” you say. “Yes, I want to crush it.”
        “Great. Schedule’s on my website. You start at 5 AM tomorrow. Welcome to the 5 AM Club!”
        Tony tosses you through your window (behind the back, such focus!) and you land softly in your bed. You’re grateful he delivered you like this, since you could not have found your way home without your phone.
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        Month 2 Week 1: A groggy blur of pre-dawn rituals and mantras like “I do not scroll, I think.” So worn out from thinking about not scrolling that I binged and doom-scrolled on two occasions. Woke up at 5 both times with my little demon slumbering on my chest.
        Month 2 Week 2: Experimenting with separation. Sleeping with the phone buried under six inches of dirt in the backyard, as symbolic practice for its eventual… death? Used the DigThis! SuperShovel as advised. Still, a bit confused… Is Tony reading Derrida? Think it might be working though… Psychology of addiction says running from the thing gets you more hooked, but burying it?
        Month 2 Week 3: Daily schedule heavy enough to crush two secretaries. No time to think. But when I do, God is it glorious! Long, meandering thoughts that branch out into new ideas then circle back seamlessly to their beginnings! Screen time down to 25 min. Dig the phone up once a day on shortened lunch break. Union talks must have stalled. Haha.
        Month 2 Week 4: Finish line in sight. I do not scroll, I think. Tony’s Tips are etched into the grooves of my brain. Can self-say everything. Cemetery tomorrow. Will burn GuruLulu’s Sage + Rosemary Seance Bundle and say a prayer in binary.
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        Tony will be with you in the cemetery. Not just metaphorically, in your phone too. He always FaceTimes in for this kind of thing. He wants his face on the screen when you dump the last mound of dirt on your old crutch, burying it for good. After all, it’s Tony you’re leaving too. The end of this ritual will be the beginning of your new life on your own. The purification must be total.
        In preparation for phonelessness, you buy a landline, a fax machine, some maps, a dictionary, a flashlight, a few astrology books, and an iPod. You suppose that to know the weather, you’ll have to step outside—you would never pay for cable.
        You’re scared and giddy, just as Tony foretold. You put on a long, dark coat, grab your DigThis! SuperShovel, and march off to the cemetery with your most funereal gait.
        Much ado about a small inanimate object, you think, touching the rectangular bulge in your coat pocket. But then you remember diamonds. You want to use your last minutes of screen time to look up the diamond trade and read a wild article full of adventure and injustice, but you resist. There are things you need not know, is a mantra you practiced.
        Instead you think: But the phone isn’t inanimate. Neither are diamonds. They are animate because they animate us. They set imaginations in motion, make us smile, cry, drop down on a knee, or two. What if after your phone there’s nothing to move you? There are things you need not know, you self-say as your shovel collides with the ground.
        The earth moves easily. It isn’t clunky or cumbersome like most analog things. You FaceTime Tony, who is always awake for this kind of thing.
        “I’m proud of you son,” he says. “You crushed it. Now let me go.” You drop him in the pit and refill it. When the last beam of screen light vanishes under the soft, glowing dirt, you feel like you’ve extinguished a fire.
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        The next morning you light a Guru Lulu’s 2-in-1 Lavender + Sage Mini-Incense, open your RockSolid HardMind Day Planner, set Tony’s Crushed Time Pomodoro Sauce™ on simmer, sit on your HolyCraft Dharma-Infused Cushion, and meditate.
        Your thoughts ebb, circling around the items in your Day Planner. You will work for 75 minutes, break to stare out the window for 15, get groceries for 66, unload them for 3, work for 55, light incense for 1, meditate for 15, work for 65, wash the car for 12, call the plumber for… God, how long will that take? How do you budget time for something as fickle as a plumber?
        “When we can’t be precise, we estimate,” says Tony, whispering confidently in your mind’s ear. “But not now! Now you relax.”
        You try to quiet the thoughts, which, though they’re longer and more robust in the post-phone era, still seem just as pointless as the idea for a TikTok ad.
        You stand. 11 minutes before your meditation time’s up.
        “Hey Softmind!” says Tony. “Stick to the script.”
        “Your script is driving me crazier than my iPhone,” you self-say back.
        “You gotta trust the process, bro,” says Tony, calming his voice into a trance-like rhythm.
        “If I’m going to do this, I’m doing it alone. Screw your script.”
        “You are alone,” says Tony.
        You take your ScribeWrite Gel Pen and mark a big X through the entire day’s schedule.
        “I want to crush it,” you say. You grab your keys and drive your unwashed car to the river, where some adult boy scout troop that calls itself The Riverkeepers has carved a path of wooded trails leading God-knows-where.
        Hiking, without water, trail mix, or any idea of how long this could take, yellow-green leaves fall from the canopy like grains of sand in an hourglass, and the buds on the branches jut skyward, threatening rebirth.
        A thought occurs: your solitude would be better served in a bar.
        So you leave the trail and drive to Shooter Lou’s, the one bar in town that’s open at 10:22 AM. It’s another 180 after your 180 to the river—Tony told you to always finish what you started, unless the schedule says to start something else, but Tony’s an egomaniacal snake oil salesman who FaceTimes phone-addicted strangers in cemeteries.
        Shooter Lou’s has a pool table and a pair of dart boards, but rumor has it that it’s named for a bartender in the 50’s who saved the coffers from a would-be robber by shooting him in the temple with a Colt 45. There’s indoor smoking, no windows, and wall-to-wall carpet stained with generations of ash and lite beer. A few nurses sit at the bar in their scrubs, scrolling on their phones and drinking away the night shift; otherwise it’s empty.
        “Mornin,” says the bartender, a tall, leather-skinned blonde woman with ancient eyes.
        You order a gin and soda and sit at the end of the bar, a few chairs from the nearest nurse. While you sip the drink, the nurses are silent—they’re either too exhausted, or they’ve said it all before. The bartender leaves her post to throw darts.
        “If you need anything,” she says. “Pretend you don’t.”
        It’s bizarre to have too much time. Suddenly, your day is loose and inert, like a dress left in a heap on the floor, its once-taut form lost in a sea of folds going nowhere.
        In its anthropocene grave under a dense mound of earth, your old phone vibrates. You feel it on your thigh, as if it were still nested in your pocket. Are you better off now? You consider driving home to check the landline’s answering machine, but that wouldn’t change a thing.
        Instead, you toss darts with the bartender. Her name is Sandy and she’s tired of her job, of work in general, the feints of enthusiasm that cover the fact that we’re all withering slowly from our lies. She was a teacher before this.
        “At least with this job,” she says. “I don’t have to smile.”
        She offers you a cigarette. As you smoke, your thoughts lengthen. All the sounds in the bar—the thuds of the darts, the rumble of the ice-maker, the Lynard Skynard guitar riffs, the jingle of a nurse’s Candy Crush campaign, your heartbeat—seem to slow down.
        You put the cigarette out and lean on a barstool. You feel light-headed. It’s just the nicotine, you self-say, but the feeling persists. You long to be in your bed, tucked away and insulated from the dog-tired passing of time. There is only this moment, only this breath, you self-say, breathing with your belly like Tony taught you.
        Your knees buckle and you fall. You lie there on the grimy carpet, trembling, gasping for air. You feel hot. Overhead, a 75-year-old ceiling fan revolves, pattens of dust swirling on the undersides of the blades.
        “Is he epileptic? asks one of the nurses. You hear feet shuffling around you on the carpet.
        “I don’t know him,” says Sandy.
        Your insides seem to vibrate, a motor humming in your chest. Sandy hands you a cup of water, but you can’t lift your arm to accept it.
        “Where were you before this?” asks a nurse. “Did you take any drugs?”
        You want to speak, to tell her everything that has happened in the past two months, but your jaw is locked.
        Your motor hums louder. You are buoyant. Your body has left the ground—you’re sure of it.
        “What the fuck is happening!” cry the nurses. They reach for you but you flitter through their grasp, too ethereal to be held.
        Sandy is calm. “He’s ascending,” she says.
        “He’s what!?”
        You float higher. There is no pain, just a strong, steady motor churning in your core. There are things you need not know, you think.
        “He’s ascending,” Sandy says as you float up to the rafters and pass seamlessly through the roof.
        High above town, you can finally see everything—your home, the Amish market, the gray stones in the cemetery, the glistening curves of the river, its Keepers hauling dead tree limbs to a truck, the smoke from a barbecue pit billowing up at the same gentle pace as you.
        “He’s ascending,” Sandy says again. “It’s not the first time I’ve seen it.”
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