it's like bambi meets godzilla

I remember thinking that this was the first time in a long time that I’d actually turned my phone off. It beeped at me with a sort of sick finality. You turn it off and you severe a limb, no connection.

Somehow the world will still go around, I told myself. Somehow I can make it without knowing that there could be someone trying to reach me right at this very moment. And then the moment of technological disconexia floods through my head. It’s as though suddenly I’ve been turned mute, even if I wanted to yell the world couldn’t hear me.

So that’s it. There is no phone. There is no television. Just the yellow glow of the lamp on the desk, muted by the ugly pink shade. I swear the person who invented pink lampshades had a love affair with salmon.

I settle back in my chair, the worn leather upholstery creaking and moaning. Something is missing but I can’t quite tell. It’s just that you sit here without any sort of contact to other people and you feel like the world has come to a complete standstill. Where once your head would have been full of songs and voices and jingles the moment you disconnect yourself from the world it all stops. No noises. No voices. No sense of the world that you think should be beyond the door. If you get up from your seat to open the door or window you’d suddenly realize that you’re in a box of a room with no doors or windows to speak of at all.

Locked away from the world.

Locked away from existence.

All because you turned off your phone.

And then the heaviness of realizing that you have to come face to face with your own conscious beings to filter through neurons and thoughts. And you sit there and you realize that you have no idea what to make of yourself.

But there isn’t anything else to do you know. All you can do is sit there and stare at the ugly pink lampshade and wonder why it’s that particular colour. Maybe salmon pink holds some secret to a deeper meaning to life.

I look down at the desk where my phone sits. The screen is dark for the first time in what feels like a lifetime. It isn’t a phone anymore, it’s an empty husk.

I push my chair back away from the desk, stand up and walk the few steps to the bed. Take the plunge.

Somewhere I am in a world where this box of dusky, yellow light is all I know.

And I fall asleep thinking about how much I hate the lampshade.

it's like bambi meets godzilla