Bloggers & Indians

I settle into my leather chair and wonder how I might learn to turn the gruesome task of skinning a breathing thing into the artistic form of furniture making. I tugged at the dropping waistband of synthetic running shorts, taking a mental note to find a pattern so that I might sew some Adidas SuperFit HydroMax 2.10 trousers in coming weeks. My coffee, brewed in 1 short minute from a Keurig contraption I refer to as the MochaBot, is hot and filled with cream composed of magical sugar drained of calories and fat. Very sweet air that most definitely come from a cow milked this very morn. I observe as Baby learns Spanish, Algebra, and origami simultaneously from a toy with one sophisticated motherboard. In moments I am soaking up only the most important deadlines from a recorded episode of E! News. Between snippets of The Bachelor drunk-dialing his ex and the hottest trends for summer that are pretty much identical to the hottest trends for last summer, I glance down at my big-brained digital watch. It tells me the time, the date, and (I suspect) holds all sorts of coded information that I’m just not smart enough to know how to retrieve. The Fashion Police holler about that B+ actress wearing a C frock, and I take a note that I am a champion at surviving without.

Six days, two hours, and twenty-one minutes without a computer. No daily blog browsing, no posting, no cyber-banter, and I was walking mostly tall with only a nervous foot jitter to show for it. Over microwaved dinners and bored texts, I was filled with a sense that I lived as the pilgrims lived. I got by with my hands (although mostly filled with modern gadgets) and the earth. I steered the wobbly wagon Jeep diligently avoiding rugged brush pot holes in my path. I ventured on, slow and steady, strong and able into a primitive world. My voyage brought hard times, savage reactions born of necessity, and the knowledge that while life was long and arduous, I was kicking its old-timey ass.

 DAY ONE   

With the brute strength of a thousand villagers, I flexed a muscle to clear the furniture from my cabin. I trudged through murky waters, sweat dripping from my brow. My carpets done considered themselves steamed cleaned and served. The dinner bell rang in tones of a door bell and pizza was delivered.  I hunched, barefoot and exhausted, over the table, taking in the nourishment as fuel for another long day ahead. I was adapting, a brilliant creature, capable of enduring all hardships like mild manual labor and having to order a pizza via telephone. No online order-tracking here.

DAY TWO

I felt it best to chronicle my journey. Best to let fortunate future generations understand the timeline for both progress and demise. I started scribbling on paper that did not involve files or media images or typing:

“O, Mercy. I hath gone too long without eats and drinks. Thy noble spirit can only bear so much. Henceforth and hitherto. Cheerio and four score.Word.”

The whole bit felt wrong, as I’d just consumed my weight in pepperoni goodness. Also, my spirit felt pretty fine, definitely not like I would perish in the coming moons. So I settled for jotting down short stories later to learn that I cannot read my own handwriting. My left hand twitched for a phantom keyboard. No clean and uniform default font here, just troubled ramblings that were about “dogs who eat their poop” or “dudes who like to shoot”.  Still, I persevered, the author of a short piece on pet owners straight out of Compton.

DAY THREE

In the darkest hour of night I sit with my father on the porch. A wild dog howls at the moon, the citronella candle flickers, our beers warm without the luxury of a frosted mug. We laughed. We cried. We drank things. And never once (well, maybe once…or twice) did I stop listening to his words to picture his face in various expressions of emoticon. This was the human interaction I’d read about in history books. There was talking with words and sounds, reading of smiles and tone, and genuine happiness of sharing talk with a human being.

DAY FOUR

As any good survivalist knows, nature must be tamed. You tell your native self, “Self, you run this mother”, and get to work, dirtying your hands with the business of teaching those unruly weeds who’s boss. I cleared my trail yard of unwanted debris. The battery-operated hedge trimmer jolted and danced like a wild steed, butchering the twigs of unsuspecting shrubbery until I was left with an overly-trimmed yard. My flowerbeds, down to nubs, knew they’d witnessed the desperate cruelty of a women without computer distraction. I whispered a callous “I have all day, Begonia. ALL. DAY.” as dirt flew like arrows.

DAY FIVE

With only one knee pad and a helmet to protect me, I braved playtime. Please know that “playtime” is an innocent cover-up for “illegal punching in the town’s ultra-secret Fight Club”. Do not be alarmed. I didn’t neglect my son. I let him watch. So if you’re wondering why the old maid one tent down is sporting an eye patch or doubting the plausibility of my missing acrylic fingernail being due to a random bite from my toddler, consider yourself all up in the loop. As many a villager before me, I proved my worth in knee scrapes and minor injuries.

DAY SIX

The thought of a life without food, water, and shelter blogging was weighing heavy on me. The pizza and subsequent tub-o-dairy treat also weighed heavily. I paced the cabin, shuffling bare feet across clean carpet and anxious to learn if my life would stay so gosh dern trying. My son, the Town Crier, belted an angry yelp. I conquered his nap time and he felt downright robbed about it. As he slept (begrudgingly), I sat still, in laptop-less silence, staring at a wall. I missed the comfort of a reader’s comment, the creative flow of a wordy river. I sat, and sat, and sat some more, unsure if I would ever survive blog again.

TODAY

I responded to a concerned reader’s e-mail the only way I knew how “OH GOD IT WAS AWFUL. I ALMOST DIED”.{Note: Reader, I realize now that my brief, frantic response probably left you thinking of death and dying rather than a simple case of Hard Drive Plague.} I looked wide-eyed and overwhelmed at my screen, unsure of how to use this modern word maker after a life lived with only the most simple and basic necessities. I laughed. I laughed so big. Six days in which I lived a normal life but suffered the startling shock of waking up one morning missing a proverbial arm. Six days in which I did and made and said things outside of this daily techno-chat. Six days without an arm and the joyful realization that my butter-churnin’, candle-dippin’, wilderness-conquering self can thrive without it.

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