mine took a dive yesterday while i was attempting to pull down my sweats and husband's boxers i had rolled down on the top with one hand. i was in too much of a hurry to consider actually putting the phone down and it somehow flew out of my hand just moments before my butt hit the seat. it didn't just land in the bowl with a plunk but went torpedoing down, back into the hole of darkness. a mere nanosecond passed before i stuck my hand in to fetch it. but alas, it was unfetchable. i could feel the edge of it with the tips of my fingers but couldn't grasp it. i realized that with each second it stayed immersed, its chances of full recovery decreased exponentially. i yelled for my daughter who, like a good girl, ran right in, laughed at me then plunged her slightly smaller hand into the bowl and brought it out triumphantly. smart as well as good, she immediately dried it with a towel. we looked at each other pensively, afraid to breathe as we watched the little screen turn slowly from black to the faintest shade of grey. we carried it reverently to the couch where we set it down between us and attempted to finish the movie we were watching before the disaster ensued. a few minutes passed and the wallpaper re-appeared. it was a black and white photograph of jesus i took in a window in new orleans. my reflection was in the glass, inside jesus if you will, it was one of my favorites. i smiled at my daughter and we both sighed, "it should be fine," she said, just as the screen started beeping and flashing a series of numbers and letters in fast forward. satanic looking heirogliphics and texts i had saved appeared, "poopie-poopie-poo" flashed over and over, and the numbers 9-6-3. it was possessed. we laughed even though we knew it wasn't a good sign. not good at all. but i wasn't worried, because for the first time in my cellphone history, i had phone insurance!!! calloo, callay, oh frabulous day! it was by far the nicest cell i've ever owned and it took pretty damn good pictures. i held out for a long time when camera phones were all the rage, in the beginning when those grainy little badly colored pictures everyone was sharing, sending and printing. i acted unimpressed and sat erect and proud on my high-horse. i was, after all, a real photographer. but my goal of always having a camera with me in order to capture those amazing moments that only happen when you don't have your camera was not being met. and, ok, i was just a bit jealous of even the fuzziest images taken by a phone. so when my sentence, i mean contract, with verizon was up for renewal i scored the sleek silver 2.0 meg model. and now i had a camera with me at all times, a camera that took very good pictures and fit snugly in the back pocket of my tightest jeans. 200 pictures in a few months and my memory was full. once again, i was stuck. i thought about backing up, getting a tiny card...translation: i didn't do shit about it. but still i didn't worry. i knew i'd get a new phone and i was pretty sure "they" could "find" my pictures somewhere in the guts of it, even if they were waterlogged.
i emerged from the verizon store with a phone number for an insurance company written on a neon green post-it and a dazed look on my face.
my pictures were gone, they said. "really?" i asked. "really," said the guy who had the newest camera phone and was bragging about how he prints his best photos intermittently, "just for this reason."
gone. it was hard to wrap my mind around this fact but as i drove home with my brain-dead phone, now just an empty shell of my experiences, talent and a few drunken black-mailing shots, i felt a wave of calm wash over me. hadn't i been wanting simplicity more than anything else lately? and didn't it seem like all of the electronic devices in my life had gone haywire of late? hadn't my extreme frustration with all the time wasted trouble-shooting, swearing, shopping and exchanging them force me to re-evaluate which ones actually made my life easier and which i could do without? they were just pictures. granted they were really good, some i would even venture to say were stellar. portraits of the kids, self-portraits i had gone hog wild on, make-up, hair, the works, partly because it was "only" a phone and i was still amazed it could take pictures. i joked about booking a wedding and showing up with only a cellphone. but still they were gone and i needed to learn to let go. i took a deep breath and thought about how easy it would be now, how i could have a do-over of sorts, how i would promise to back up every day, or week, or at least every month. i felt light, happy and enlightened. i had let go of one of the most important things in my life. i relaxed into my new lightness. then i remembered jesus. the jesus on my wallpaper that i took in new orleans when b. and i went to voo-doofest last halloween. i loved that picture. i loved it because it was the first time b. and i went to new orleans together. because i wanted to show him the city i loved like it was alive. i loved that picture for the way it made me feel; happy and thankful and funky all at once. so i cried. then i sobbed. i heard myself blubbering things like, "i want jesus back, i want mary with the braids with my reflection in the window. i want that guy in the suit sleeping on the airport floor in dallas. i want JESUS." and as the tears flowed i started to laugh at my words, at their silliness as well as their profundity. because i had wanted to let go, and maybe i had, but i never grieved. so i cried some more and laughed some more and tormented myself by consciously remembering as many of those marvelous images as i could. then i took one more deep breath and tried to really let go. i told myself that even without physical proof, i had been in all those places and seen all those things. i would remember the ones that wanted to stay implanted in my psyche. and i could also ponder the necessity of going back to new orleans on jesus-quest. as i approached my house i passed through the little town of foscoe where two churches sit across from each other. in front are the white signs where He speaks to us through His servants who, with black letters, spell out deep and important spiritual things. some are basic and some are quite funny. i text them to my sister in california when she's at her boring bank job so she can laugh. "Let Jesus Drive You to Danger," was what the one to my right said. i grabbed for my notebook and jotted it down. i laughed and thought, does Danger know how to drive? does he know where Danger lives? yes, i must admit that i am easily amused. and as of today, just a bit closer to my goals of simplicity and letting go.
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