The Trouble With Reality

For the past month, I’ve been living without the Internet. When I return home at night, I can contentedly relax among the books and music and movies I’ve deemed important enough to purchase. Without any television stations or websites to scroll through, I’ve avoided hours of advertisements and instantaneous new bits, headlines, and sound bites.

Or, at least I did.

Yesterday, I finally succumbed to the blinking modem box. Why? Out of necessity. I don’t say this light-heartedly, as I have had to work diligently for the past month in order to maintain my college identity by walking several times a day to the library or computer center to remain “connected” to the University. Case in point: the other day I waited until evening to check my e-mail. One day. Simply a number of hours. And to my dismay, I discovered not one, not five, but eighteen e-mails. Eighteen! Most of them, contrary to popular belief, were not junk mail, but correspondence from professors, peers, coaches, and administration.

Homework assignments, practice times, bill statements, refund checks, degree requirements, online banking, submission deadlines, and must I add, blog posts all consume my time…online.

Thoreau would say this is fickle. He would respond to these communications just as he writes in “Solitude” by stating, “Society is commonly too cheap” (129). He believes that our relations with one another are superficial and fleeting, mostly lacking substance and thought. He quips, “We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are” (129). This makes me wonder if valuable, substantive relations can truly be maintained while enrolled in school. It seems as if I’m always too busy, consumed with the systematic routines that academic life demands.

So, when the Internet guy showed up to my place, he hooked up the modem, but not the router. I still can’t get it to work. Right now, instead of having my own password-protected connection, I’m piggybacking on someone else’s named GreenFish (who I hope doesn’t create a password anytime soon). I spent hours trying to get it to work, unplugging cables and restarting things, and of course there isn’t a tech support number on the router’s box, rather, you have to go online and “troubleshoot.” I finally decided to forget it, grabbed my jacket and went for walk at 10:30 at night.

I’ve always enjoyed strolling the streets at night alone. The quietness provides a hospitable solace; a calm stillness envelops the air, as families settle into their homes. Down Main Street, trucks and cars still filter in and out, though the traffic is lighter, and a few passersby wander to their respective dwellings. Lights glow from the bookshops and clothing boutiques and florists. As I wander out further from the center of town, I notice everyday things that I always pass by and seem to miss noticing. A mailbox. A streetlamp. A pay phone.

Tonight, the moon is full and she sends her beams dancing about the picket fences and open fields, bouncing off of rooftop shingles and front porch steps. Alone at night, I am not lonely. Thoreau, my man, you are right, “Tonight is a delicious evening” (122).

In a short while, I’ll shuffle back to my apartment where I, too, live alone. It is here I am able to “work” in my “field” and “chop” in my “woods” (128), as Thoreau describes the life of a scholar. I cannot escape reality. It follows me in my days. It wraps its cords around my wrists and sometimes I must oblige.

Still, there is comfort in the moonlight delights in nights as delicious as these.