It’s new–all of it: this iPad, the keyboard and my unruffled attitude toward crap out of my control. I’ve spent far too long getting angry. I still dive in too deeply. My rage takes over in the car as if there is no driver–the brain–to put the brakes on, say, “Wait a minute here before you let the profanity spew and boiling temperature rise up and befoul the air.” So when I dropped my device, cracked its screen to smithereens, even broke the keyboard attached in one fell swoop, I became aware that the immediate response differed from the usual alarm, outrage and certain anger that trail out on the path to no one’s advantage.
No doubt I regretted the loss, felt the twinges of its absence. After all, I spend much of my writing life and relaxation on this little wonder of technology. Without it, I would have to re-arrange my life not just a little. Instead of writing wherever I find most comfortable–on my bed propped up with downy pillows, in a new-found coffee shop on the fly, on a browsing bench in a book store–the loss would require my having to sit at my desk at the pc. Not that I don’t already do that. I just like convenience, portability and options.
The iPad mini, most often tucked in my purse, afforded me a notebook to tap out my thoughts as they occurred. Only a writer finds necessity in something so expensive for that purpose. The truth is, however, I hardly write longhand any more. Typing allows my mind to race and my fingers to fly. Though the pen and paper still have their place (nothing like the texture of various writing instruments in hand gliding over paper), I depend on a keyboard for the lion’s share of my writing.
I had to. I buckled up, hunkered down, sucked it up and coughed up the bucks to buy a new Apple IPad Mini 32 gb and Logitech Bluetooth keyboard. What’s not new, decidedly, is my word choice. This ten minute ditty crawls with clichés. Situational irony–sort of. Writing in the new with the way too old and tired (ought to be retired).
In the gaze of the other 