Internet Down Until 2 a.m. - That Throws Off a Friday Evening (But I Guess That Is a Good Thing)

I imagine that when cable goes out and the Internet is down, there is a number catastrophe crashing and burning underground. My neighbor texted about six and asked, "Do you have cable?" but I wasn't home. When I got home at 9, it was out, but so was the Internet, even for my phone. I think it was a regional thing, because friends in Fairfield were out, too.

How do I know? Because I went to bed at 9:15.

At 2 a.m., I series of slight dings came through on the iPad upstairs, letting me know that messages were coming in. I got up to get some water and, being a creature of habit, sat down to get a morning post up and ready.

No joke. I sort of short-circuited, only because the online life is synonymous to being awake, and I have my routines before I go to bed: I write, I read, I scan social media, I watch a couple videos, then I play Words with Friends. That couldn't happen.

That's sort of when I realized the vulnerability of the digital age. The algorithms and codes that bring us images and letters and voices and mail and beeps/blops/boops need systems to travel through. We had a bit of rain last and lots of winds (heard it was wisps of Dorian flying through), but I didn't think it was enough to crash wires and trees and poles.

I could have picked up a book, but the two I'm reading now are actually on my iPhone.

I used to say that the way to destroy American life was to find away to petrify everyone from eating fast food. Now I realize that fear, angst and drama would arise by paralyzing our technology. We would implode (or at least I would). I'm too accustom to the quickness and pace of my fingers dancing, mind wondering, and brain receiving, so when the Feed (thanks MT Anderson, for that allusion) goes out, I'm not quite sure how to exist.

It is strange to think about the fact that we now do life through simulacra rather than traditional ways of being. Across campus, everyone is moving quickly, but all behind the black boxes they are reading and viewing. They exist, but not with each other in real-time, but a facade of time posing as authentic and genuine trapped and presented through codes we don't see, in wires behind the curtain, within pipelines, and confetti'd through the air above our head like Willy Wonka's chocolate bar for Tommy TV.

Pavlov got it right. We're conditioned. I heard the evidence the world was right again, and knew I couldn't fall back to sleep until I checked to be sure everything was in its place...email, text messages, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Words with Friends and Chrysalis Crandall. A create of habit, I had to write or it would be a sleepless night.

Now, back to bed.