iPhone 16 Pro Max

iPhone 16 Pro Max

What are you looking for
there in the bright light?

What are you sliding your fingers
toward?

Zoom in, 
and the room fades to gray.

Squint a little longer, and the world 
shrinks to a rectangle,

every beauty, every horror
flattened in a box.

The earth 
used to be round.

You used to love
its curves,

used to spin in circles
just for a taste

of falling. 

Photo by Howard Bouchevereau on Unsplash

The Prompt

The poem above was inspired by an all-too-frequent experience in my life: me, reflexively picking up my phone and beginning to mindlessly scroll this or that thing, then asking myself, suddenly incredulous, what are you even looking for?

My relationship with technology in general and my phone in particular is a place of ongoing learning and challenge in my life. More days than not, I spend a bit more time engaged with my phone that I want to—often in ways that really don’t justify the verb “engaged.” I don’t mean to talk about this as if there’s some universal moral principle that should govern phone usage. For many people, hours and hours engaged with virtual life is rich or rewarding or necessary. I just don’t happen to be inclined that way.

Substack is a lovely, rich, rewarding feature of my life, and even then, I find it works best for me served up in small doses. When it comes down to it, I need grass itching at my shins and mosquitoes hovering around my head and sweat dripping from my hairline. I need open skies and movement and belly laughs side by side with other bodies/souls doing this weird human thing. I need hugs and snuggles and possibly even fist bumps. I need guitar strings and piano keys and garlic sautéing in a pan. I need to try new things and be terrible at them (last night, it was darts). I need to try new things, get myself properly frightened, and then sometimes, be surprised how well they go (rock climbing . . . sometimes). Every now and then, I need a taste of falling. I don’t find any of this on my phone.

I’m 43, so I had a reasonably long stretch of pre-smartphone life (and even a little bit of pre-internet life). This makes it interesting to look back at the arc of my relationship with technology. I think some of that comes through in my poem.

If you would like a prompt to play with today, I invite you to look back over the span of your life and notice how your relationship with technology has developed, changed, ebbed, or flowed. What’s the first computer you remember using? The first cell phone? Can you hear the sound of dial-up internet in your mind? If so, what feelings or memories ride the wave of that sound? What feelings come with the sound of your cellphone pinging to let you know a text has come in?

When’s the last time you went somewhere and left your cell phone behind? What do you recall about the emotions, sensations, or experiences that accompanied that?

Do you have a favorite tech gadget? A least favorite? What makes you like or dislike them? What do they represent?

As you consider the storyline of your relationship with technology, allow yourself to imagine forward a bit. How would you like that relationship to shift or grow (or remain steady) from here?

As you contemplate these questions, notice where the heat is. Notice where your minds wants to linger, where your thoughts pick up pace, or where your emotions build. What poem might be waiting there for you? As always, I would be so delighted to get to read whatever you come up with! For all my love of the non-digital world, I’m so glad we are “gathered” in this space.