Around seventy years after being defeated by Christ, the Devil struck back. Glass had been around for some thirty-five hundred years prior, but not until around 100 C.E. did the devil realize the potential. In Egypt the Serpent guided the lonely glass-maker’s mind towards forming the molten silicon dioxide into a barrier between the world outside and the home. Other materials had been used before, but never one that offered such a high-fidelity to the world outside. One could get a sense of the thing, without the trouble of being subject to it’s forces; nature was being corralled. It took another fifteen-hundred years for the damage to be total. By the early 17th century, most European homes had glass windows.
We can now mistake the view for the goodness. We can look out at a fabricated beauty, free from heat, or cold. Free from bugs, wind, and stench. We can isolate ourselves and still pretend we exist.
I don’t believe time exists, but I am quite fantastic at wasting it.
And so. Thirty days ago I deleted all the gods of time from my phone. Facebook and games. It only takes me, on average, fifty-three seconds to begin and finalize a bowel movement. My phone has extended this otherwise brief and refreshing action into a decade of miserable minutes.
It was a pathetic gesture. The importance I gave the role that games on my phone had in my life was perhaps overblown. But perhaps not. I’m not against fun; against leisure. But leisure and fun should serve a function. Restoration, building relationships. Sitting on the toilet infinitely upgrading some bullshit serves no goodness. The Devil’s glass-gods were pretty secure in my hands.
This plays into a much larger narrative in my life. The question of purpose or destiny. Sometimes my vanity torments my lack of global importance. I love science, and the devil knows it. I’m no Werner Heisenberg, and that pisses me off. Maybe if I learn my multiplication tables, I could change the world? So I replace the games on my phone with a few false starts in the Khan Academy early math program.
The glass keeps me inside. The phones keep our heads down, eyes averted. Kids these days.
With no games on my phone, I started reading a little more. It’s more difficult than it used to be. My brain has been subtly rewired. More difficult to focus. I started praying a little more, but that’s harder too. I don’t trust my prayers in the synagogues and street corners. So I cling to established liturgy. It at least serves as a scaffold to hang my thoughts on.
To be honest I didn’t make the full thirty days. At day twenty-something I download Star Wars tower defence.
I wonder if I should cut off my phone that makes me stumble; drop it “accidentally” into the toilet and then order the new iphone. I promise to at least open the glass window while I waste my time here. Because time doesn’t exist.
