I met a woman today who gave up having a computer and the internet entirely. She thought that it would help her to stay away from distractions.
Me and my friend stood stunned. Giving up a computer? More unbelievable than meeting a fully functional heroin addict in this day and age. Yet there she was.
"Did it help?"
"Absolutely not," she said with a wry smile. "But I've been doing it for 10 months. Seems like a tragedy to stop now."
It's funny how people think.
The premise of her idea is being ignored for her newly formed habit to continue.
I think aestheticism is an interesting concept. Giving up something has it's own high, and it is a beautiful feeling. I've noticed it with alcohol. I rarely drink, and when my friends are drinking, fading into their own parade, I like the feeling of being adjacent, on the precipice of the world moving on.
Similarly, I think this woman, with her angular cheekbones and her ability to look right through people, had something we were missing, something we desperately could use, even.
We talked about how she had to walk to a staples to email things to people, and about how she had to structure her life by this lack of technology. I realized that she was, in a way, opting out of society, something both admirable and primitive, sad and exciting. The impressive thing was that she had the discipline to move forward. I wanted to ask her more about it, but I realized, and this is a weird realization, that it was not my place to ask. This woman was a secondary character in my life, and really, I had no desire to pursue a friendship.
As we were headed out of the book fair, I asked my friend about her.
"What did you think about her? Cute, eh?"
"Yeah, not my type. Couldn't live without the technology. Great cheekbones though. Total cutie. "
And so it was.
