After 15 months together--most of which were blissfully happy--it's over between me and my iPod. On a bus back to New York over Thanksgiving weekend, songs kept skipping, and so I restarted it only to discover that all 2500+ songs were gone. When I try to plug it in to Sarah's computer, I am told that "The system cannot read the inserted disc" or something devastating like that. My reaction has been surprisingly mature. It's been a week now and life has been okay. I'm getting a lot more reading done on the subway, and walking down the street I do feel more a part of the world.
The trouble, as I found out yesterday, is the bus. My work takes me to various places that make it necessary to ride the M86 back and forth across town. I can't read on the bus for fear of vomiting, so this had been prime iPod time. I'd look out the window and lip-synch to myself, ignoring the people around me. But now I have nothing to do on the bus. Yesterday I found myself reverting to an old habit that I associate with the summer of 2003, when I first moved here: I stare at people. I like to look at what people are wearing, what they're reading, what they're writing, etc. Obviously the people who are most fun to watch are the ones who are a little bit crazy--the ones who draw fellow passengers in sketchpads, the ones who have facial tics, the ones who pray, and so forth. Yesterday I happened to be across a woman in fur and a ton of makeup who was talking to herself, so naturally I stared. It didn't take too long before we made eye contact and I got freaked out and concentrated hard for the rest of the ride on not looking at her. One day I'm going to stare at the wrong person and get my ass kicked. Or mugged.
So that's why I need a new iPod (or to wait the five hours it will take to get it serviced at the Apple store in SoHo): too keep my mind busy enough that I don't have to stare at people and therefore put myself in danger.
Or, I guess I could start using one of my three portable CD players again. But that just feels so backwards now.
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well, i still don't have an i-pod. and i still didn't put it on my christmas list. maybe this is why. i know technology is fickle. all it does is break and become obsolete. so, if the soho apple store fixes it, can they re-input all your 2500 songs? or do you have to re-load/re-purchase them all?
how times have changed. there was an epoch when moira could not be separated from even the cases and liner notes of her CDs, let alone the actual discs. what has become of us?
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